Thanks to all of you who attended our last meeting of the semester and participated in the officer elections for the next academic year. Congratulations to the elected officers for ‘10-’11:

President: Alicia Burris
Vice President: Matt Rush
Secretary: Donovan Briggs
Treasurer: Jarrod Cullan
Activities Director: Sami Corber
Communications Director: Diana Crain

Also, don’t forget that the Chemistry Club Bowling event will be held this Tuesday, April 27 at 9:00-11:00 pm at Gage Bowl (located on Huntoon and Gage). Tickets are $10 and can be purchased from David Reed, Diana Crain, Alicia Burris, or me. Tickets may also be purchased at the door. This will cover shoes and bowling from 9pm to 11pm. Feel free to bring friends! We hope to see you there!

Now that email is back, I’d like to thank everybody who attended the first Chemistry Club meeting of the year on August 20 and the Lake Party on August 28. We had a great turnout, and had lots of fun! Chemistry Club is a great way for all of you to meet some of your fellow science majors, participate in lots of fun activities, and get more involved on campus. I hope those of you who came had a good time and are excited to see what else Chemistry Club has to offer!

We had several important topics on our agenda for the first meeting:

• Club dues are $11 for the semester and $20 for the entire school year. This will go towards providing luncheon materials for meetings and for club-sponsored activities throughout the year.
• Club t-shirts will be ordered in January this year. Everyone is encouraged to submit a t-shirt design, and the winning design will be featured on this year’s club shirt.
• Club t-shirts from previous years can be purchased for $10 (short-sleeve) or $15 (long-sleeve). Sizes vary; first come first served.
• National Chemistry Week is October 18-24 (Mole Day October 23!). We would like to plan something this year, so all suggestions are appreciated.
• We would love to hear any ideas you may have concerning fun social activities for this year. Some activities that have been suggested are: Bowling, Royals games, ice skating, Frisbee golf, intramurals…… Everyone is encouraged to come up with other ideas!
• If you would like to become a member of the American Chemical Society, you can check out the website at http://ACS.org for more information or you can talk to Dr. Schmidt or one of the officers.
• The Chemistry Club Constitution is currently being revised; the new version will be emailed at a later date.

Please feel free to contact any of the officers or Dr. Schmidt regarding questions, comments, or ideas!

• David Reed, President
• Diana Crain, Vice President
• Lilly Varner, Secretary
• Nick Hill, Treasurer
• Alicia Burris and Scott Bush, Communication Directors
• Dr. Schmidt, Advisor

Our first meeting of the semester will be held Thursday, February 12. Funding forms for the annual KAS conference have been submitted to WSGA. The conference will be held at Washburn University, and will be March 27 and 28. Volunteers will be needed to assist with the conference. The search for guest speakers for Chemistry Club meetings continues. Several schools in the nearby area have been contacted, and a few have responded. Other career oriented speakers have also been contacted. T-shirt plans have been finalized and order forms will be available at the February 12 Chemistry Club meeting. More discussion was held on ideas for a Stoffer Hall Battle. Our club would like to plan a “green activity”. Chemistry Day will be held April 2.

The Department of Forensic Science at Virginia Commonwealth University is holding a Spring Open House for all interested students on February 27, 2009, from 9am to 2pm, in the Richmond Salons of the University’s Student Commons. A PDF version of the flyer is available on our website at http://www.has.vcu.edu/forensics/index.html.

Students will learn about the Department’s Masters degree program in Forensic Science. Research posters and hands-on demonstrations will also be available to promote discussion about internship opportunities within the Department and in the forensic science community.

Faculty of the Department of Forensic Science will be available to answer questions about our degree programs and about careers in forensic science. Current students will be available to meet with prospective students to answer their most pressing concerns about what the program is like from a student perspective. We will also have available representatives from Financial Aid, Graduate Admissions, and International Education to address any other questions students may have about graduate school and VCU.

Please make this information available to your student body. If students plan to attend they should RSVP to fos@vcu.edu by February 20th, 2009.

For additional information about this Open House and about our forensic science degree program contact:

Tracey Dawson Cruz, Ph.D.
Graduate Director
Department of Forensic Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
804-828-0642
tcdawson@vcu.edu

-or-

Angelica Bega-Hart
Administrative Assistant
Department of Forensic Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
804-828-8420
aebega@vcu.edu

OPPORTUNITIES FOR U.S. CHEMISTRY UNDERGRADUATES IN GERMANY, FRANCE, ITALY, AND THE UK

Are you an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry, biochemistry, materials science or molecular biology? Are you interested in living and doing research in Germany, France, Italy or the UK next summer? If you are a current sophomore or junior with prior research experience, the American Chemical Society encourages you to apply for the ACS-IREU program. This program, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), allows US citizens or residents currently enrolled at US institutions to participate in a 10-week research program at various universities in Germany or at one of the following institutions:

• CPE-Lyon (France)
• University of Perugia (Italy)
• University of Strathclyde (Scotland, United Kingdom)

Selected applicants will receive a generous award – up to $5,600 for air travel, living expenses, insurance, pre-departure orientation, language instruction, and presenting at an ACS National meeting.

For more information and application materials go to www.acs.org/ireu or write to ireu@acs.org.

Applications are now open. All application materials are due January 31, 2009.

FOR ALL FACULTY, STAFF & STUDENTS!

Speaker:Dr. David M. Haaland, Senior Scientist, Sandia National Laboratories
Adjunct Professor, University of New Mexico

Abstract:
We have developed a 3D hyperspectral confocal fluorescence microscope that can optically section live cells with submicron spatial resolution. For each voxel within the specimen, the microscope records the entire emission spectrum from 500 nm to 800 nm. When coupled with multivariate curve resolution (MCR), the new microscope can “discover,” quantify, and resolve multiple spatially and spectrally overlapped emission components, thereby greatly increasing the number of fluorescent labels that can be monitored simultaneously. The design and operation of the microscope will be discussed and a detailed description of the multivariate methods used to analyze the hyperspectral images will be presented. The utility of the new approach will be demonstrated with a number of hyperspectral images from biological samples. For example, we have imaged live Synechocystis cells with the new microscope. Synechocystis is a cyanobacterium, a class of organisms responsible for a large fraction of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. In these experiments, cells from wild type cells and from mutants lacking a photosystem or a step in chlorophyll biosynthesis were imaged to better understand relative concentrations and spatial distributions of photosynthetic pigments in these bacteria. Six autofluorescence species were resolved in the cells, and for the first time the heterogeneity of pigment distribution within and between cells was observed. Hyperspectral images obtained from other biological systems including corn plant leaves, HeLa cells interacting with cytokines, multiple fluorescent proteins in macrophage cells, and Rat Basophilic Leukemia cells labeled with multiple-color quantum dots will also be presented. The new microscope and associated multivariate analyses constitute an enabling new technology for cell imaging and for understanding a variety of molecular and physical processes occurring in live cells.

Sandia is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-ACO4-94AL85000. A portion of this work was supported by the Microscale Immune Studies Laboratory Grand Challenge LDRD.

When: Thursday, October 23, 2008
Where: Buehler 415, University of Tennessee Main Campus.

All students and faculty are invited to attend.

Web cast: http://www.chem.utk.edu/seminars.html (link active up to 10 minutes prior)

Viewers who miss the live webcast can view the archived webcast, which is usually posted within 24 hours, and can be viewed up to 6 months, at http://www.chem.utk.edu/seminars.html

Web cast set up:

You must have Real Player to view the Chemistry webcast. Instructions for downloading are at this link:
http://oit.utk.edu/dst/realdownload.php

If you are having difficulty contact Pam Roach at roach@ion.chem.utk.edu or (865) 974-3260 or 974-3141. Leave a message with your contact information. A technical person will then be in touch with you.