Happy New Year.
Here we are again at the beginning of a new year. The past few years have been a challenging time, but we have made it through them and even learned new skills. I am quite confident that we are all more skilled at zoom conference calls, presenting papers and attending seminars remotely and we even learned how to continue hands-on chemistry outreach to middle school students via remote distribution of the experimental supplies, videos and the ubiquitous zoom calls. But while we have grown and gained new skills, we have also lost some sense of community and contact with each other. In 2023, it is my plan that the Silicon Valley section will return to some of our old activities. The first of these will be the Harry and Carol Mosher Award which will be presented to Stanford Professor Dick Zare in February. Please stay tuned for the final details which cannot be finalized until Stanford’s teaching schedules are determined. Due to the rising costs of dinners and due to a desire to hold this meeting at a location where students as well as the public can attend, we will be having a wine and appetizer reception followed by the awards presentation and seminar at the SAPP Center in the Stanford Chemistry Department.
We will be exploring the format for additional future seminars and other events. Some may continue to be conducted by zoom which offers the opportunity to hear the seminar from the comfort of your living room and in any time zone. Surprisingly, we typically had more attendees for the zoom meetings than we used to get in person, including some people who joined from the East Coast and from Asia. We are also hoping to master hybrid meetings to try to capture the best of both settings. While the speaker at our November dinner meeting, Dr. Fatma Kaplan, gave us an excellent presentation on her company developing beneficial nematodes to decrease the use of pesticides, our first attempt at a hybrid session was not completely successful from a technology perspective. We will continue to work on that aspect.
The third annual Bay Area Chemistry Symposium was held at UC Berkeley on November 10, 2022. This award-winning program is a collaboration between the Silicon Valley local section, the California local section, the academic community, and the pharmaceutical industry. As we have noted in previous newsletters, the BACS was awarded the Partners for Progress and Prosperity Regional Award at the Western Regional ACS meeting this past October. The third annual BACS was a resounding success and plans are already starting for the fourth annual event, which may even broaden its scope to include more aspects of the Bay Area chemistry enterprises beyond pharmaceuticals.
Our section offers multiple grant opportunities and recognitions for chemists at all levels of involvement in our various awards. It is not too soon to start thinking about your colleagues who deserve recognition for their teaching skills, their scientific contributions and/or their service to ACS. Also, the BUBBLE grant is accepting applications from local schools (elementary through high school) to support and enhance teaching of science. Please check our website (www.siliconvalleyacs.org/awards) for details. Lastly, the section can nominate up to 7 members of our section for ACS Fellowships. This honor is designed to recognize members of ACS for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession and the Society. Unlike some of the similar awards by other scientific societies, the ACS Fellows Program uniquely recognizes a different standard of achievement and service. Specifically, the Fellow of the American Chemical Society designation is awarded to a member who, in some capacity, has provided excellent volunteer service to the ACS community, in addition to professional accomplishments. If you are interested in helping nominate a colleague for this honor, please contact me and we can discuss the nomination requirements. The deadline for this nomination is April 1.
As you can see, the Silicon Valley section is very active. All these events (and many others that were not addressed in this newsletter) need volunteer support. Please join us for any aspect of any event that interests you. We welcome all interested parties. I hope to meet you soon.
Respectfully submitted,
Natalie McClure
