EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE聽|聽March 24, 2012

American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网 Presidential Sessions focus on outreach, chemistry innovations

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SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2012 鈥� More than a dozen symposia and other events at the American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网 (ACS) 243rd National Meeting & Exposition are being sponsored or recommended by noted science communicator and ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D. They range from a science outreach event for children at PETCO Park to news from an emerging field of chemistry that promises to produce medicines inside patients鈥� bodies, as well as a symposium on communicating science to the public.

Communicating science is a major part of Shakhashiri鈥檚 presidential theme for the year. The William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Shakhashiri is noted internationally for pioneering the use of demonstrations in the teaching of chemistry in classrooms, as well as to the public in museums, convention centers, shopping malls and retirement homes 鈥� and at his Science is Fun website. The Encyclopedia Britannica termed Shakhashiri the "dean of lecture demonstrators in America."

Shakhashiri said the symposia connect with the grand challenges that face society and scientists in the 21st century, challenges that range from helping to sustain Earth and its people in the face of population growth and climate change to finite resources, malnutrition and spreading disease.

A schedule of the sessions appears at the end of this press release, and individual topics can be accessed online.

Among the speakers in the plenary session, which is among Shakhashiri鈥檚 recommendations:

  • Roger Tsien, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Departments of Pharmacology and Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego
  • Laura Kiessling, University of Wisconsin, Hilldale Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry & Laurens Anderson Professor of Biochemistry; Director, Keck Center for Chemical Genomics; Program Director, Chemical Biological Interface Training Program; Editor-in-Chief, ACS Chemical Biology
  • Samuel Stupp, Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science and Medicine; Director, Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine Northwestern University
  • J. Craig Venter, Founder and President, J. Craig Venter Institute; Founder and CEO, Synthetic Genomics Inc.

Carolyn Bertozzi will deliver the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture. She is the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of sugars that coat the surfaces of cells. Her innovations could someday lead to new ways of making medicines 鈥� inside the human body.

Another highlight of the ACS 243rd National Meeting & Exposition is a session called, 鈥淐ommunicating Chemistry to the Public.鈥� A featured speaker is Paul Raeburn, winner of the ACS 2012 James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public. Raeburn is a distinguished science writer, author, editor and program director of New Horizons in Science. Other speakers include ACS President Shakhashiri and the following:

  • Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon, which transforms the periodic table into engaging and interesting historical stories
  • K.C. Cole, Professor, USC Annenberg School of Journalism and long-time science writer for the Los Angeles Times
  • Carmen Drahl, Associate Editor, Chemical & Engineering News
  • Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief, Scientific American
  • Joann Rodgers, Faculty Scholar and Senior Communications Adviser, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
  • Pam Sturner, Executive Director, Leopold Leadership Program, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University

Another recommended session is the 鈥淧residential Symposium: Production of Fuel Directly from Sunlight: A Grand Challenge for Chemistry of the 21st 颁别苍迟耻谤测.鈥� Harry B. Gray, Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and Founding Director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology, and Nate Lewis, who is the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, co-organized this set of talks on this timely subject.

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The American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网 (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The 中国365bet中文官网 is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical聽Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world鈥檚 scientific knowledge. ACS鈥� main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Registered journalists can subscribe to the to access embargoed and public science press releases. For media inquiries, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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The theme of the ACS 243rd National Meeting &
Exposition is 鈥淐hemistry of Life.鈥�