By Jigisha Shah
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities ―
Amidst all the hardship stemming from the pandemic, racial injustice, blackouts, wildfires, millions of kids studying from home and missing the much-needed school environment, we saw glimpses of hope, heroism and endurance. Let us all bid a not-so-fond farewell to a challenging and difficult 2020 and welcome with open arms the possibility of a better 2021.
For those of you who don’t know me yet, I’m Jigisha Shah, the new chair of the ACS Silicon Valley Section. I work in the regulatory affairs department at Cytokinetics in South San Francisco and love every moment of it! I have been active in our local ACS section for the past five years and am so very proud of everything our section does. Our executive committee is remarkable in their dedication and support. I would like to first acknowledge Matt Greaney, our outgoing 2020 Chair, for his leadership and support throughout the past year. Under his leadership, we at Silicon Valley ACS were able to adapt to these un- precedented times and were still able to do good deeds in our community. I am also extremely grateful to Grace Baysinger for revamping our newsletter, the primary venue for reaching our membership. In collaboration with Jane Frommer, Grace is also working on our swanky new website. Do keep an eye out for the new-and-improved website, to be launched in early 2021. I want to give a huge shout-out to Natalie McClure for leading many of our outreach projects like Teach-the-Teachers and Pop-Up Chemistry with able support from Sogol Teschler and Avni Gandhi. I also want to thank Sally Peters for yet again flawlessly managing the Chemistry Olympiad process and Laura Yaeger for her wonderful job as secretary to the section.
We ended 2020 on a high note. Silicon Valley ACS was awarded two ChemLuminary Awards – the ACS ‘academy awards’ for service in chemistry – for the Bay Area Chemistry Symposium (BACS), a one-day lecture and net- working event with technical presentations from Bay Area chemists in industry and academia. Recognizing its potential for recruiting local talent, it received strong industrial support and positive audience feedback. Matt and his group are busy organizing the second BACS for November, 2021. A ChemLuminary Award for outstanding student chapter was received by Linda Brunauer and her students at Santa Clara University.
I would like to welcome three new members to our SVACS leadership team: Stephanie Benight (Chair-Elect), Prasad Raut (Secretary) and Dipti Shin- gnapurkar (Alternate Councilor). We are so thrilled to have your fresh ideas and energy!
And now on to our program for 2021. We will kick off 2021 with a talk from the Mosher Award winner, Professor P. Andrew Evans of Queen’s University. He will speak about stereoselective construction of challenging C-C bonds on January 21.
In subsequent 2021 monthly events, the membership of Silicon Valley ACS will display interests that extend beyond chemistry. We’re also lovers of art, crafts, music, food and so much more. So, for the love of fun, this year we will feature talks focusing on chemistry that makes sensory experiences possible. Dr Steven Pollack, a material scientist and a lutherie, will talk about materials that influence the sounds of guitars in February. Professor Harry Klee will speak about the chemical and genetic make-up of “flavor” in fruits and vegetables. My goal is to have at least one talk every month. Hopefully in the second half of the year, we will be able to have some in-person events.
We will continue supporting our community of schools through pro- grams like Teach-the-Teachers and Pop-Up Chemistry with an online twist. We will also be working on a water quality project where our aim is to provide small kits for students to collect data and map the quality of water in our re- gion’s watersheds. One goal is to inspire action to preserve the quality of wa- ter through involvement by citizen monitoring. We will also kick-start Paving the Path (PTP), a two-pronged program that aims to benefit both prospective transfer students attending community colleges and successful transfer stu- dents attending 4-year colleges and universities. This program will support first generation college students and students of underrepresented groups in science classes. The program has been made possible with generous sup- port from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in the San Jose State University Department of Chemistry and from the ACS National Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC).
I’ll continue to update our members through this forum of a monthly column in our newsletter, and I ask that you reach out to me and/or my fellow Councilors and Officers anytime you’d like. We all volunteered for these roles because this is what we love doing. There is always room for new ideas and volunteers, and there will always be open ears to listen to whatever input you may have. I wish you all a great start to 2021, and I hope to meet you in person soon!
