Madalyn Radlauer receiving the Abraham Ottenberg Service Award from Peter Rusch, Chair of the Ottenberg Award Committee at the 2024 Annual Picnic & Awards. Also pictured are Todd Eberspacher and Amanda Nelson, Chair and Chair-Elect of the Silicon Valley ACS Section. Image credit: Jane Frommer.
By Peter Rusch, Chair of the Ottenberg Award Committee
Madalyn is a dedicated, talented, and hard-working member of the Silicon Valley ACS Section (SVACS). She joined the SVACS Executive Committee from 2018-2019 as an Alternate Councilor and has served as a Councilor from 2020-present. She Chaired or Co-Chaired the Nominators Committee for about five years. She also led two rounds of Strategic Planning efforts for our Section, which laid the groundwork for more engagement by newer members of the Executive Committee team. Madalyn also helped lead efforts for SVACS’ Paving the Path Initiative, a mentoring program for community college transfer students. She championed numerous efforts to collaborate with the California local section and San Jose State University Chemistry and Chemical Engineering clubs to offer programming such as trivia night, networking events, and escape room activities aimed at younger chemists.
At the ACS National Level, Madalyn has served on the Women Chemists Committee (WCC) since 2021 where her efforts have centered on promoting diversity, inclusion, equity, and respect (DEIR). With WCC, she was a liaison to the International Activities Committee, where she served on the Women Chemists of Color sub-committee. She also organized events and symposia around the WCC 95th Anniversary (2022), Women Entrepreneurs (2023), and Celebrating Chemistry Beyond the Binary (2024). In addition to authoring an honor thesis and a doctoral dissertation, Madalyn has co-authored 14 peer reviewed journal articles, and one patent. She has also co-authored 40 abstracts for oral presentations given at conferences at ACS including one at Pacifichem.
At the fall 2023 ACS National Meeting, she gave a presentation titled “Lessons from Lab: The nut doesn’t fall far from the academic tree” refering to her time as an undergraduate when she was mentored by Bob Waymouth, Chemistry Professor at Stanford University. In her abstract, she said, “When I was an undergraduate, Bob Waymouth taught me that polymers and catalysts are really cool, so I have studied them at every stage in my academic career. Now at San José State University with my primarily undergraduate research group, my students are learning that same lesson. Our research focuses on the use of polymeric scaffolds to alter the microenvironment around a catalytic center.”
In recognition of all her research and mentoring efforts at SJSU, Madalyn has received an Early Career Investigator Award from the San Jose State University Research Foundation, in 2021. For more details, please see Silicon Valley Chemist, May 2022, p5 to read an article about Madalyn winning this award.
