Voting Period: November 8 to November 18, 2024. Silicon Valley ACS members eligible to vote for our leadership group will soon receive an email notification to cast their votes online. A sample ballot, plus biographies and statements for candidates, are shown below in preparation for receiving the email. Silicon Valley ACS is a volunteer-run organization. Please show them your support by voting!
Sample Ballot
Chair-Elect (3-year commitment: Chair-elect in 2025, Chair in 2026, Immediate Past Chair in 2027). Vote for ONE (1)
| Natalie McClure | |
| Write-in (please specify) |
Secretary (2-year term, 2025-2026. Vote for ONE (1)
| | Jigisha Shah |
| | Write-in (please specify) |
Councilor (2 open positions for 3-year terms, 2025-2027. Vote for TWO (2)
| Linda Brunauer | |
| Jane Frommer | |
| Write-in (please specify) |
Alternate Councilor (2 open positions for 3-year terms, 2025-2027. Vote for TWO (2)
| Eefei Chen | |
| Jose Ramirez | |
| Write-in (please specify) |
Biographies and Statements for Candidates
Chair-Elect
Natalie McClure
Biography: Natalie McClure is a regulatory affairs consultant with extensive experience in drug development, regulatory affairs and quality assurance. She obtained her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University in 1979 and BS in Chemistry from the University of Michigan. She started her career at Syntex Research, working in the process development laboratories on new synthetic approaches to prostaglandin and large-scale peptide synthesis and then changed career direction to drug regulatory affairs. Natalie is also an instructor at the UC Berkeley Extension program offering several courses in drug development and regulatory affairs. Natalie has been very active in ACS Silicon Valley section, serving as chair and councilor. Natalie currently serves on the Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC) for ACS at the national level. She is passionate about introducing students to the excitement and fun of science.
Statement: I am running for my third term as Chair for Silicon Valley section. The local section serves a very important role for ACS membership, to provide outreach events for students and an opportunity for our section members to meet and share ideas. As Chair Elect (and subsequently Chair), I will continue the various programs that we offer such out our NCW and CCEW outreach, chemistry Olympiad and our awards programs. I would like to revitalize the seminar program which has not fully recovered from the Covid disruptions. In addition, in 2025, our section is co-hosting a Western Regional meeting. I will work to ensure that our section members’ needs are represented in this meeting.
I ask for your vote and support as Chair Elect. Thank you.
Secretary
Jigisha Shah
Biography: Jigisha Shah has been active in the Silicon Valley ACS section since 2016, serving as the Secretary and Chair. She has been heavily involved in outreach activity
The Local Section and the local chemistry community have benefited from both established and new programs in which Jigisha has held major leadership roles. She demonstrates care and energy in providing children, students, and teachers learning opportunities in the sciences.
Among these are:
- Teach-the-Teachers, a day-long workshop for middle school teachers with hands-on experimentation, colorful lectures, and take-home materials for their classrooms
- Pop-Up Chemistry, a collaboration with the Redwood City Library to provide middle school students and their families monthly hands-on science experiments with both materials and instruction
- Monitoring Water Quality, a hands-on science project for school children to take responsibility for monitoring their watershed
- Paving the Path, a mentoring program for community college students navigating the transition to 4-year institutions
In her professional life at Vera Therapeutics in Brisbane, Jigisha is a member of the regulatory affairs team, working through peer-to-peer interaction with life science partners in navigating the regulatory submission life-cycle.
Prior to her work in regulatory affairs, Jigisha taught organic chemistry at San Jose City College. Her doctoral research at Syracuse University under the guidance of Dr. John Chisholm centered on reactions of indoles with trichloroacetimidates. Jigisha grew up in India where she received her B.Sc. in Chemistry in 2006 and M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry in 2008 from Fergusson College, India.
During her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and sparking children’s interest in science.
Statement: My involvement in the Silicon Valley Section of the American Chemical Society has opened doors to new opportunities that would not have been possible otherwise. I am connected through our local section to a network of exceptional chemists both locally and nationally. After many years of being on the receiving end of this support, it is fulfilling to contribute my time and efforts back into our community. As the secretary and the past chair of the section, I have been exposed to a wide range of ACS activities and am well positioned to choose impactful directions for my efforts as a member of the ExComm. I will strive both to serve our existing members’ needs by developing key engagement and networking strategies, and to empower the next generation of chemists by supporting outreach, Student Chapters, and YCC, modernizing events to be of higher practical value and building a future pipeline into our organization.
Councilor
Linda Brunauer
Biography: Linda Brunauer received the B. S. degree in Chemistry with an Emphasis in Biochemistry from San Jose State University and the Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. Following graduate school, she was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry, Stanford University. In 1988 she joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Santa Clara University (SCU), where she is currently an Associate Professor. In 1996 she was named Faculty Advisor of the Year at SCU for her work with the SCU Chemistry Club and in 1999 she received the Ottenberg Award for Outstanding Service to the Section. In 1999 she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for her work in SCU’s summer school program and in 2003 she received SCU’s highest award for teaching, the Brutocao Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2013 she received an ACS Salute to Excellence Award for her efforts supporting regional testing of the National Chemistry Olympiad. She has served as faculty advisor for the SCU Student ACS Member Chapter for over 30 years; during this time the Chapter has earned awards from the ACS each year since 1993. She is a passionate advocate of science education, publishing articles in the Journal of Chemical Education and, served many years as a volunteer at the Bio-Link Depot in Oakland, helping numerous high school, community college, and university educators in the Bay Area secure free laboratory supplies for their classroom instruction. She is active in the Silicon Valley Section of the ACS and has served as a member of the Executive Committee as Student Affairs Chairperson (1989-present) and Councilor (1998-present).
Statement: It has been an honor to serve the Section as a member of the Executive Committee. Over the past 25+ years, I have endeavored to increase the level of communication between the local section and the various student member chapters. During this time, I have worked to foster student participation in a variety of SCVACS activities such as National Chemistry Week, the Chemistry Olympiad and the annual Northern California Undergraduate Research Symposium. As a Councilor I have served the section by participation at ACS National meetings and have served on the Women Chemists Committee. Although I plan to continue as Student Affairs Chairperson, I ask for your vote for Councilor.
Jane Frommer
Biography: Jane Frommer received a BS in Chemistry from Tufts University with biochemical research at MIT and Mass General Hospital, and a PhD in organometallic chemistry from Caltech.
Her professional career bridged multiple areas of research, including electronically conducting polymers at Honeywell (then Allied), atomic force microscopy development at the University of Basel, and materials science scanning probe studies at the IBM Almaden Research labs. Her roles in the scientific community have included serving on panels and advisory boards in government and academia; visiting professorships on university faculties; scientific editorial boards; and establishing programs to mentor young scientists. She is a Fellow of the ACS, the recipient of the 2017 ACS National Industrial Chemist Award, and the 2020 Perkin Medalist in recognition of lifetime achievement in applied chemistry.
Candidate Statement: Extending the reach of the Silicon Valley ACS is a driving interest in my activity as a Councilor. In particular, making newcomers aware of the value of professional networks for careers and for local community. This has taken the form of supporting community college programs that expose the potential of a chemistry major, of administering grants for K-12 science teachers, and of partnering with affiliated scientific organizations such as the Golden Gate Polymer Forum.
As Councilor, I strive to draw in new participants and ideas for the on-going rejuvenation of the Silicon Valley ACS in its mission to serve a twenty-first century membership and community.
Alternate Councilor
Eefei Chen
Biography: Eefei Chen graduated with an ScB in Chemistry from Brown University and attended graduate school at Georgetown University. Although she graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry, she has little experience with biochemical research, rather her hands-on experiences are in the field of Biophysics. In graduate school, she was introduced to the use of lasers to trigger reactions in studies of bioinorganic molecules. As a postdoctoral fellow, and then researcher, in the lab of David S. Kliger at UCSC, the application of lasers was extended to the study of protein folding and function. One of her favorite projects was building a nanosecond laser temperature-jump optical rotatory dispersion system to study early events in protein folding/unfolding.
Eefei has received the Grants-in-Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Scholarship, the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the ACS Silicon Valley Outreach Volunteer of the Year award.
Through these experiences, Eefei discovered her talent in communicating science through graphic design. In addition to holding a full-time research job in the Kliger lab at UCSC, she demonstrated her graphics talent through her Women Pioneers in Chemistry & Biochemistry exhibit (2016) that was displayed in the UCSC Physical Sciences Building, her theater program for the performances of No Belles, Legends of Women in Science (2019) on 5 Bay area campuses, and a multitude of flyers for fun and interesting scientific topics Zoomed during COVID, including A Muggle’s Guide to Harry Potter’s Chemistry.
Statement: If you have ever experienced the wonderment in the eyes/faces of students’ (K through college), then you understand the passion I have for helping students understand scientific concepts. I am most excited when I can help a student feel more confident in their studies or in the poster they are presenting for a science fair. Since the late 1990s, I have been a judge for science fairs at our local Santa Cruz elementary and middle schools – Mission Hill, Bonny Doon Elementary, and Brooknoll Elementary – and I have consulted on local high school science fair projects that went on to the County Science Fair. I have also been a judge at the SACNAS National Conference and Intel ISEF. I have worked with UCSC ACCESS (Advancing Community College Education for Science Students), CAMP (California Alliance for Minority Participation), and MARC/MBRS (Minority Access to Research Programs/Minority Biomedical Research Support) students to prepare them for oral and poster presentations.
As Alternate Councilor, I want to be involved with outreach not only on the college level, but also on the elementary/middle/high school levels. It is important to introduce science at a young age with the hopes of inspiring and encouraging the next generation of scientists. The broad outreach offered by SVACS can make this possible.
Jose Ramirez
Biography: As a laboratory lecturer for the general chemistry series at San Jose State University, I work with the current generation of students, one-on-one. This provides insight into their challenges and accomplishments. It also allows me to share with them the benefit of my own experience in education systems as a non-traditional student.
I began my academic journey at Hartnell College, a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) in Salinas. I then transferred to UC Berkeley for chemistry – a turbulent experience as a chemist in training and as an individual navigating the challenges of a first-generation college student in a student body of high achievers. Graduate studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign exposed me to a different part of the country and to new areas of research in the nature of phi-bonding of lanthanide and actinide f-block metal complexes.
Over the course of my education, I held a number of internships around the Bay area, including Genentech, UC Santa Cruz, MBARI, and the Naval Postgraduate School. This collection of work sites provided me an invaluable exposure to numerous work environments involving chemistry.
In addition to teaching at SJSU, I pursue my enthusiasm for carrying out experiments as a visiting researcher in the Radlauer research group for polymer-based metalloenzyme mimics.
Statement: Drawing from my own academic journey as a first-generation, non-traditional student, I am committed to creating and supporting SVACS programs that foster an inclusive learning environment that empowers students and scientists to overcome barriers and thrive in their academic and professional pursuits.
I would like to plan and hold (bi)monthly casual networking mixers specifically designed for transfer students to build community, connect with peers, faculty, and/or industry professionals in an approachable, low-pressure environment. By fostering these connections and offering career insights from guest speakers, these sessions will help transfer students expand their networks, gain valuable support, and ultimately improve retention through a stronger sense of belonging and professional engagement.
