Many congratulations to Aria Mingo, an undergraduate student at Cornell University. Aria is the first person to have applied for funding through our web form, and was seeking ~$250 to fill in a funding gap, and allow her to travel to the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS), to present her work in a poster titled “Human Milk Oligosaccharides Ameliorate Nosocomial Infections as Protective Coatings”. Helping students to advance their careers as scientists is one of our top priorities as a local section, and while our funding is limited, we’re absolutely delighted to have been able to assist Aria in sharing her work.

Abstract: Increasing rates of morbidity and mortality within hospitals are caused by pathogenic bacteria colonizing indwelling medical devices. This abiotic surface adherence is caused by the ability of bacteria to form biofilms. Bacterial biofilms are three-dimensional communities of microorganisms surrounded by a self produced extracellular polymeric matrix. Bacterial biofilms confer increased resistance to antibiotics, resulting in invasive infections among immunocompromised patients. Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), the carbohydrate component of human breast milk, are known to promote growth of commensal bacteria while inhibiting the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the infant gut. Recent studies have shown that outside the neonate, HMOs have both antibacterial and biofilm-inhibiting properties. With this in mind, we employed HMOs as anti-adhesive coatings against various pathogens to assess abiotic bacterial adherence to various materials. HMOs were used to reduce bacterial adhesion on surfaces imitating those most commonly populated by nosocomial pathogens, including catheters, prostheses and pacemakers, among others. The ESKAPE pathogens (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter species) exhibit high antibiotic resistance and are responsible for 15.5% of hospital-acquired infections. Plastic surfaces (24-well plate base) and glass surfaces (glass coverslip) were exposed to HMOs for 12 hours. After the solution evaporated, bacterial cells were added to the surfaces and incubated. The next day, bacterial density (OD600) and biofilm formation (OD560) were spectrophotometrically determined. While HMO treatment did not elicit any changes in bacterial density, significant decreases in bacterial adherence were observed across strains assessed in this study. The results indicate that the addition of HMOs reduces the adherence of both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria on both plastic and glass surfaces. This research highlights the potential for HMOs as protective coatings on indwelling medical devices to mitigate the spread of hospital-acquired infections.

We are happy to announce the winners of our 2024 Executive Committee election: Andrew Musser for Chair, Phillip Milner for Chair Elect, and Leah McEwan for Treasurer. Approximately 15% of our local section cast a vote, which is pretty good really! If you’d like to participate in the governance of the local section, our next election will be in October next year. And if you’d like to participate in any other way, we’d be happy to work with you. Otherwise, keep an eye on this space, and your email, for upcoming events, activities, and outreach opportunities!

Congratulations to all of our volunteers, and all the kids who they interacted with, at 2024’s Spooky Science event at the Ithaca ScienCenter! The ScienCenter is a great, hands-on science museum for kids, and every year they run a special ‘Spooky Science’ event with free admission and special Halloween-themed activities. This year, students from Cornell University helped students make slime (an event the parents assure us is much more enjoyable when the mess is in someone else’s house!) while students from Ithaca College helped to run some fun hands-off demonstrations for the kids to marvel at.

Many thanks to all of the volunteers for making the events a success, and to the ScienCenter for giving us a great chance to interact with so many fun kids!

With the year drawing to an end, it’s time to elect local section members to serve on our executive committee. As both our chair and chair elect this year have taken new positions outside of the Ithaca area, that leaves us with four positions open. These are:

The Chair.  The Chair is the leader of our local section, and helps to set our goals and run events. In practice, the executive committee tries to share the load of leadership, so don’t be afraid, but if you have a vision for getting something new off the ground, we’d love to help you make that vision a reality. This is a one-year position.

The Chair Elect. The Chair Elect is second in command, and largely helps the Chair make things happen. This year’s Chair Elect will become Chair next year, so this is a two-year position.

The Treasurer.  The Treasurer is a key point of interface with the ACS national group, and manages our finances. This is also a two year position.

The Alternate Councilor. Our councilor has one year left in her term, but we are allowed an alternate. The Councilor, or alternate, attends ACS meetings and special governance sections, and votes on matters that effect the society and/or the local section. This is a great way to have a major voice in how the ACS is run, and what its priorities are. In practice, we also grant executive committee voting rights to councilor and alternate councilor, so you’ll have major influence in how things are done in the local section, too. This would be a three year commitment.

To run for any of the local section positions (Chair, Chair Elect, or Treasurer), you must be a member of the local section – this includes both regular ACS members and student and postdoc ACS members at the reduced dues rates. This eligibility is governed by our local section bylaws, and in the recent revision, we really wanted to encourage more junior members of our community to take on leadership roles. And regardless of your position, we’d really love for you to join us in guiding the local section. To run for Alternate Councilor, however, you do have to be a full, regular member of the ACS – the national society bylaws govern who can be in that position, so you do have to be a full member (i.e. part of the Premium or Regular membership plan, I think), and not a student/graduate student member.

We do not currently have a nominations committee (if you’d like to head one though, let us know!) so are soliciting nominations directly. You can nominate yourself for any position, so long as you meet the membership criteria, and you can nominate a colleague who both meets the criteria and is happy to be nominated by you. Please email us at cornell_acs@cornell.edu to nominate. The secretary will then get in contact with the nominee to solicit a photo, a brief campaign statement, and a brief description of the candidate’s research, teaching, or other connection to chemistry in the area.

All nominations are due by October 15. The nominees will then be listed on this website, and in early November ballots will go out.

We are delighted to announce that the second Debye Lecture speaker for 2024 has been chosen: Dr. T. Don Tilley, from the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry. The Debye lecture series is one of the most prestigious seminars offered by the Cornell University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and is also one of the most important events sponsored by the Cornell local section of the ACS. The first lecture was offered by Dr. R.B. Woodward in 1963, and top chemists in all chemical disciplines have been offered the chance to lecture in the years since. Although the lecture series is historically offered only once a year, this second lecture is making up for lost time, as lectures were not held during the Covid 19 epidemic.

Dr. Tilley specializes in organometallic chemistry, with a particular focus on catalysis. He will give two lectures, as is standard for the Debye. The first, to be given on Thursday September 5 at 3:30 PM in Physical Sciences Building room 120, is titled “Oxo Metal Cubane Clusters in Water Splitting and Bond Activations”. The second, to be given on Friday September 6 at 4:00 PM in the same location, is titled “Metal-Mediated Ring Fusions for Scalable Syntheses of Conjugated Nanocarbons”.

“Oxo Metal Cubane Clusters in Water Splitting and Bond Activations”

September 5, 3:30 PM

The conversion of solar energy into a useful chemical fuel represents a major goal in the drive towards a society fully powered by renewable energy. Several potential fuels are of interest, including hydrogen from proton reduction, and various hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide reduction. To achieve meaningful rates of fuel production, the potential reduction reactions must be coupled to an oxidative reaction that generates electrons and protons. The most reasonable candidate to provide these electrons and protons is water, which can be chemically decomposed to 4 protons, 4 electrons, and oxygen (the oxygen evolution reaction, OER). For solar fuel applications, this water-splitting half reaction must be catalyzed to make it energetically efficient, as accomplished in nature’s photosynthesis by a tetra-manganese oxo cluster (the oxygen-evolving complex, OEC). Indeed, related transition-metal oxo cubane clusters represent intriguing model systems and catalyst design motifs for development of new water-splitting catalysts based on the most abundant metals. Molecularly derived catalysts of this type offer potential advantages, including the synthetic tunability of structure-activity relationships and chemical properties. Also, the study of model, high-valent molecular species can provide key insights into the mechanism of water oxidation, and thereby help bridge the gap between solid-state and molecular systems to allow for more rational design of catalysts. This presentation will describe high-valent tetracobalt oxo cubane clusters, and the experimental determination of a well-defined mechanism for cubane-catalyzed oxygen evolution via water oxidation. The systematic variation of electronic properties for these clusters, and strategies for their stabilization, will be described. The synthesis and study of clusters doped by another transition metal, and linked bis-cubane complexes, are further topics to be discussed.

• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5b08396
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.7b13052
• https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1815013116
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.1c11445 (key review)
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.1c04069
• https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c05367

“Metal-Mediated Ring Fusions for Scalable Syntheses of Conjugated Nanocarbon”

September 6, 4:00 PM

The discovery of graphene and its extraordinary properties have motivated research on large polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are basic building blocks of graphene and other carbon-rich nanostructures. Various PAHs are of interest as molecular models, synthetic precursors, and components in electronic devices, due to unique properties that result from their extended conjugation and rigidity. Thus, a central goal in this area is the synthetic manipulation of electronic properties for nanocarbon materials, by generation of well-defined dimensionalities and functionalizations. This is particularly challenging since it requires high-yielding, efficient synthetic methods for multiple ring fusions within the same molecule. Importantly, near-quantitative yields are necessary for each ring-fusion event to avoid difficult separations and/or defects. Although the development of organometallic methods for difficult ring-fusion steps has received considerable attention, few are high-yielding enough for applications to very large PAHs.

The research group has employed selective metal-mediated cycloadditions for extension of π systems and introduction of multiple fused rings in the synthesis of π-conjugated oligomers, polymers, and macrocycles,

mainly via the reductive coupling of alkynes with a low-valent zirconocene reagent. In addition to the zirconocene coupling of alkynes, high-yielding and chemoselective [2+2+2] cycloadditions of alkynes (with an iridium catalyst) and/or [2+2+n] cycloadditions of nitriles (with titanocene) have been developed as complimentary synthetic tools for access to and elaboration of nanocarbon structures. Promising features of this approach are: 1) generation of a PAH directly from the precursor and 2) divergent introduction of functionality using metal-transfer reactions. This chemistry will be described, along with applications to scalable syntheses of large PAHs and carbon nanostructures such as expanded helicenes and carbon nanobelts. An additional aspect to zirconocene alkyne coupling chemistry involves reversible processes that allow “Dynamic Covalent Chemistry” assembly of large structures including macrocycles and cages. Application to multi-topic alkyne monomers leads to topologically complex, knotted structures.

• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c04037
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202012213
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.0c09941
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.2c02581
• https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.2c09555

We recognize that these lectures may be of interest to those unable to attend in person, and this year we began providing the lectures via Zoom link, as well as recording them. While our Zoom license is limited, and thus we can only distribute links to local section membership (check your email for the links, and reach out if you didn’t get them for some reason!), we will also upload the recordings to our Youtube channel, so that anyone can watch the lectures at a time of their choosing. The links will be posted to this website once the videos are available.

Hey all, the Ithaca Sciencenter is a local spot that has lots of neat science demonstrations and exhibits. It’s especially geared toward kids, but adults can have a great time looking around to. And the Sciencenter is looking for help.

The Sciencenter’s Chemstations Program is their signature public chemistry program and invites meaningful, hands-on experimentation with wet chemistry activities and experiments. The program is led by local high-school students and runs during the school year (October-June), with recruitment occurring in September and students participating for the full annual cycle. Additionally, and this is where Cornell University in particular has historically played a key role, the high school students are mentored by a current chemistry grad student (or pair of students) who help them learn the content and program, prep materials, and provide ongoing support and guidance as they build their chemistry interest and self-efficacy. There are critically three intended audiences for Chemsations: High school students, grad student mentors, and the visiting public. 

In the past, grand students themselves have been able to help match the Sciencenter up with another interested and committed grad student (often from the same lab group!) to keep the program running but unfortunately, this chain of recommendations has failed this year. As such, the Sciencenter is looking for volunteers. If you’re interested in volunteering for this, please reach out to us, or reach out to Sierra Coathup of the Sciencenter (scoathup AT sciencenter DOT org) to get things moving!

First, we’d like to thank everybody who turned out for our yearly picnic/meet-and-greet event. We’re always happy to see new faces. Second, we’ve been trying to increase our own visibility at this event, and make sure it’s more than just a fun afternoon, and I think we’ve succeeded pretty admirably this year. In particular, we brought some posters (see below!) to talk about ourselves a little bit, and had a space for comments and suggestions – and we even got a few really good ones! We do intend to keep holding this social event, so people can meet us in a relaxed atmosphere and learn what we’re all about, so if you weren’t able to make it this year, we would encourage you to keep an eye open for next year’s event!

Remember, our annual summer picnic is coming up on July 26 at Stewart Park! There’ll be food and games and plenty of chemistry-oriented people to chat with, and we’d love to see you there!

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our annual business meeting in person. Below, please find the slides that Chair Justin Wilson presented, showing what we’ve been up to this year, and what we’re hoping to accomplish moving forward. The biggest agenda items were that we expect to be recruiting both a Chair AND a Chair Elect in the November election, and that we’re still very interested in hosting a regional ACS meeting, but would require a critical mass of people to step forward and help organize it (particularly someone willing to take on the role of conference chair!) Beyond that, as is typically true, our major goals have been focused around community engagement, and helping to sponsor programs that are particularly beneficial to various student groups.

If you have any questions, or suggestions for future activities, don’t hesitate to reach out!

We are happy to announce that Expanding Your Horizons 2024 (EYH), an event held at Cornell University which seeks to provide underrepresented youths with hands-on experience in modern scientific techniques, has been a great success! This year’s EYH included 31 different workshops across the Cornell campus, covering topics including plant science, ecology, astronomy, engineering, and of course chemistry. There were 400 participants, with about half having been sponsored for participation and/or travel costs, and about 30% being students of color. These students were able to complete various activities, including hands-on work, larger demonstrations, and 15 lab tours taking them through Cornell’s world-class facilities.

This year, the local section helped to sponsor EYH by paying for an entire busload of students from a less wealthy school district to travel to and attend the workshop. Without sponsorship like this, students in similar situations would be unable to afford to attend, as for some school districts even just recruiting a school bus for a day is outside of their very tight budgets. We hope to extend an even greater level of support in the coming years, and to help continue making this incredible program a success.

If you’d like to help out, we strongly encourage you to get in contact with the EYH organizers. They’re always eager to find new volunteers and expand what their program is able to do.

Thank you to everyone who presented at the poster symposium this year, and to those who came out to interact with the students! A lot of really great work was on display, and as has become customary, it was an almost impossible choice to determine winners for the poster awards. At the end of the day however, we were delighted to present awards to Lilian Johnson, of Ithaca College, for her work “”; to Jaidyn Duhon of Cornell University who presented a poster titled “”, to Jake Perkins of Ithaca College following his work “”; and to Ethan Amoh of Cornell University who discussed “”. Our congratulations to these four, and to all the students who presented their work and helped to inform us of some of the great chemistry research being conducted at these two campuses. Please enjoy the photo gallery below, and we look forward to seeing you all, and even more, next year!

Hi all, barring unexpected complications (which of course never happen), the annual local section business meeting will be on May 9, 2024, at 12:30 PM. This will be a hybrid in-person/virtual event via Zoom. For the in-person event, we currently plan to provide lunch to attendees. We very much hope to see lots of people there. We’ll send around an email reminder when the date gets closer, including a probable agenda.