We have very exciting news today – the Cornell ACS has a Youtube channel! One of the major things the Cornell local section of the ACS does is help to sponsor scientific lectures, particularly the Debye lecture series held at the Cornell University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. We are pleased to announce that, moving forward, we’re going to try and record all of our sponsored content, and release it to the public for later viewing. The first two videos in our new collection are lectures by Teresa Head-Gordon, discussing the impact of interface chemistry on reactions and machine learning approaches to predicting chemical reactivity. We hope that you all enjoy having access to these videos, and that we manage to make this a really useful resource for the chemistry community moving forward.

The Cornell local section of the ACS tries to support our community in a variety of ways. One new thing we’re trying is a small grants program. If you have a need for funding to do chemistry in your community, we’d like to try to help. Maybe you want to buy some donuts to entice people to come to your new seminar series about cutting edge technologies. Maybe you need to restock a chemical to run a demonstration for your class, but your budget got cut recently. Maybe you’ve thought of something else entirely, and think we can help. Fill out our new request form, and let us know what you need. We can’t do everything, but we’ll try the best we can to support our community as we are able. This form will remain available under the “Get Involved” menu for as long as we are able to support the program.

One of the biggest events sponsored by the Cornell local section of the ACS is the Debye lecture series, which is also one of the most prestigious lecture series offered by the Cornell Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. We are happy to welcome Teresa Head-Gordon, Chancellor’s Professor of Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UC Berkeley. She specializes in computation and theory in the areas of chemistry, materials, and biophysics. She is coming to give TWO lectures, one tonight (March 14) and the other tomorrow (March 15). These lectures will take place in Baker lab, room 119, on the Cornell Campus, but will ALSO be available to local section members via Zoom. You should receive an email with the relevant links. If you do not, and would like to watch the lectures, please email the secretary, wpk8@cornell.edu. We apologize for the very short notice here, but on the bright side we ALSO hope to make the lectures available after the fact, and will make those available as widely as possible if we are able.

“Role of Interfaces and Electrostatics for Chemical Transformation”

March 14, 2024, 4:00 PM

Chemical transformations rarely occur in a single homogeneous aqueous phase, but instead occur in niches, crevices, and impurity sites at confining interfaces between two or more phases of gases, liquids or solids. The effects of interfaces on molecular properties are ubiquitously present across diverse fields spanning nanochemistry and chemical (bio)catalysis, environmental and energy sciences, geosciences, and functional materials. Fundamentally, interfaces can alter solvent and solution compositions and phases to reformulate the transition states and pathways of chemical reactions and underlying transport mechanisms. I will introduce new theoretical models and methods, and applications to examine interfacial problems for reactive chemistry, to characterize proton hopping mechanisms in anionic reverse micelles and recent hypotheses around microdroplet chemistry.

“Physics-Inspired Machine Learning Methods: A Status Report on Predictive Chemistry”

March 15, 2024, 4:00 PM

The size of chemical space is vast. This makes application of first principles quantum mechanical and advanced statistical mechanics sampling methods to identify binding motifs, conformational equilibria, and reaction pathways extremely challenging, even when considering better physical models, algorithms, or future exascale computing paradigms. If we could develop new and robust machine learning approaches, ideally grounded in physical principles, we would be able to better tackle many fascinating but quite difficult chemical, biological, and materials systems. At present, the application of machine learning to (bio)chemistry is still in its infancy, and I will describe applications ranging from to potential energy surfaces and property predictions to chemical to biophysical systems to see where machine learning is having impact.

It’s that time of year again! The annual Cornell X Ithaca College undergraduate symposium is set to happen on April 13 this year, and will be held on the Ithaca College campus, on the first floor of the Center for Natural Sciences. Dr. Jonathan Lunine, from Cornell University’s Department of Astronomy, will be giving the keynote lecture this year. If you are an undergraduate in the area doing research in any area of chemistry, we strongly encourage you to submit an abstract and come present a poster. And if you’re anyone else at all, we’d love to see you stop by and walk through, and interact with the students and see all the great work they are doing. See the embedded flyer to register, or head to the registration website directly.

We just ran across this article from a very old issue of Science, volume 17, number 423, back in 1903. We all sure have come a long way! The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has generously given us permission to reproduce the text of the article below, or you can click the thumbnail of the issue’s cover to be taken to the full article at science.com.

The full text of the article is reproduced below.

CORNELL SECTION OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY.

The Cornell Section of the American Chemical Society was organized in December last, and has now received its charter from the national organization. The territory embraced by the section is that lying within a radius of ten miles from Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., with headquarters at the university. At the time of organization there were twenty-four members of teh American Chemical Society who became charter mambers of the Cornell section. Since then the membership has increased to forty-four.

The officers for the current year are:
President – Professor L. M. Dennis.
Vice-President – Professor W. D. Bancroft.
Secretary-Treasurer – Mr. W. C. Geer
Executive Committee – Messrs. Dennis, Bancrof and Geer, ex officio, Professor W. R. Orndorff, Mr. J. E. Temple and Mr. J. G. O’Neill.
Councilor from the Cornell Section – L. M. Dennis.
Councilor ex officio – G. C. Caldwell.

The meetings of the section are to be held monthly in Morse Hall, Cornell University. The evenings will be occupied largely with original papers read by members of the society, but it is planned to vary the meetings with occasional lectures or addresses by men well known for work in special fields. Thus in the course of the year there will be interspersed with the original papers, addresses on subjects of technical importance and on the more chemical phases of allied sciences. By this means the society will conserve all the fundamental aims of the American Chemical Society, as well as aid in broadening the horizon of the members of the section by keeping them in touch with the progress of those sciences which so frequently extend into the fields of chemical research.

The first meeting was held on the evening of December 15. Papers which presented the results of original work done in the chemical department were read and discussed. Mr. E. S. Shepherd read a paper on the ‘Allots of Lead, Tin and Bismuth’; Mr. G. H. Burrows, on ‘Reduction with Soluble Anodes’; and Mr. J. G. O’Neill on ‘The Determination of the Benzene in Illuminating Gas.’

At the second meeting, which was held on the evening of January 12, the section was addressed by Professor W. D. Bancroft, on the ‘Theory of Indicators.’ The lecturer illustrated his remarks by many experiments which were explained on the basis of the theory of electrolytic dissociation.

The favorable auspices under which the Cornell Section begins existence seems to augur for it a highly successful future.

W. C. Greer,
Secretary

Greer, W.C. “Cornell Section of the American Chemical Society” Science 17(423). p. 232-233, 1903.

First, let me thank everybody for taking the time to vote! I know it wasn’t the most exciting election, with only one candidate per position, but it’s still really good to have people participate in the process. And we had a pretty good response honestly: nearly 30% of our members took the time to fill out a ballot, though some didn’t actually get cast – I’ll have to try to figure out what the problem with that was for next year! Still, we had 40 total ballots collected, which is a good sign that our section is really being revitalized.

So with all that out of the way, please join me in welcoming Mikail Abbasov as our new Chair Elect! And thank you of course for re-electing me (William Katt) as the Secretary of the section. For those who didn’t vote, we encourage you to do so next year. For those who’d like to get more involved with the local section, we’ll be electing a new Chair Elect next year, and will also have the Treasurer and Councilor on the ballot as well. Since we did not succeed in selecting an Alternate Councilor this year, we will probably search for someone to fill that role as well. And, as a reminder, you don’t have to be on the executive committee to get involved. We’ve got numerous committees we’d be delighted to create and fill, and are happy to work with folks in a more ad hoc fashion as well if they’ve got ideas for outreach, improvements to chemical understanding in the area, or other projects that would meet our goals.

With that, keep an eye on this space for upcoming events and announcements. Happy holidays to those who celebrate, and may the new year bring great fortune to all.

Our annual election for the ACS Cornell Section executive committee will begin on November 1, and conclude on November 14. All voted must be received by the end of the day November 14, and will be tabulated on November 15. We have chosen Qualtrics as our e-ballot platform. We’ll be sending out emails at the beginning of November with unique voting links – please remember that if you would like a paper ballot, that we must receive the request by November 1 so we can get it to you in a timely fashion. Per the ACS best practices for elections, digital ballots will be completely anonymous – there will be no way for us to link a ballot to the person who cast it. For mail-in ballots, or ballots delivered to an officer by hand, we will anonymize to the best of our ability by providing pre-addressed return envelopes for the ballot, such that no personally identifying information will need to be added in e.g. a return address.

As of this writing, we have one candidate for Chair-elect, and one candidate for Secretary. We still have an open seat for alternate councilor, and if you’d like to run for *any* of these positions, please let us know at cornell_acs@cornell.edu by the end of October, and we’ll get you on the ballot! Also, even if we don’t get more candidates, please do vote when you receive your ballot, and help us demonstrate the engagement of the section’s membership!

Candidate info can be viewed HERE. Candidates for each position are listed in alphabetical order, and this page will be updated should more candidates step forward to run.

Ithaca College will be hosting two lectures by M. Stanley Whittingham in mid-October. Dr. Whittingham is a Professor at Binghamton University, in the State University of New York System. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019, alongside John B. Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, for his pioneering work on the development of lithium-ion batteries. Dr. Whittingham will be presenting two lectures at Ithaca College. The first, on October 19, 4:30 PM, will be a technical talk titled “50 Years Old: What are the Ultimate Limits of Lithium Batteries and How Do We Get There”. The second, on October 21 at 10:30 PM, is titled “Renewable Energy, Energy Storage, and Global Climate Change”, and is meant for a general audience. These lectures are both open to the public. For those in need of assistance, or with any questions, please contact Paula Larsen, Ithaca College Department of Chemistry Administrative Assistant.

Hi everybody! It’s that time of year – with our local section firmly reestablished, and new bylaws in place, it’s time to think about elections! We’ll be holding elections to fill the following positions this year:

1. Chair-elect. The chair-elect assists the chair in the direction and management of the section. In practice, the chair and the chair-elect are the biggest voices in determining our agenda for the year, contacting the membership of the section to alert them to opportunities for outreach, scientific interactions, or social engagements, and otherwise do leadership stuff. The chair-elect automatically becomes chair the following year, so this is functionally a 2-year elected position, although historically the current chair becomes past-chair and spends a year helping to guide the executive committee. The chair and chair elect are also responsible for filing end-of-year reports with the ACS.
2. Secretary. The secretary keeps minutes at our meetings, and has a variety of official reporting duties, such as reporting the results of our annual elections, sending out ballots, etc. Currently, our secretary also maintains this website, manages the executive committee email address cornell_acs@cornell.edu, keeping information on our events reasonable current in the ACS Community Connection website, and schedules our zoom-based meetings.
3. Alternate Councilor. The alternate councilor fills in for the councilor when they are unable to perform their duties. Those duties primarily involve going to councilor sessions at ACS meetings and having a vote in the governance of the society. While not officially part of the executive committee, we currently ask the councilor to attend meetings, and the councilor (and future alternate councilor) have an equal vote in how we conduct section business.

Of note, the duties for these positions are not terribly onerous – we’ve got a great schedule of events right now that pretty closely matches our yearly income from the national society, so if you just want to help guide us through a typical year, that’s fine! A lot of what we’re doing right now is just trying to smooth out some of our procedures, get some best practices in place, and figure out ways to connect with a greater portion of the community we serve. But we also have funds to do exciting new activities too, if you’d be interested in that. In particular, we’re seriously considering hosting the Northeast Regional Meeting of the ACS (NERM), with a tentative date of summer 2027. If that’s something of interest to you, this would be a great time to get involved, either by running for the executive committee, or in some other way. We’ll certainly need lots of volunteers to make a successful regional meeting happen!

We do not yet have a nominations committee established, so we are soliciting self-nominations for these three positions. It is particularly important that we have somebody run for chair-elect, as we need to keep that position filled to keep the session active! If you’d like to nominate someone, or self-nominate, please email either cornell_acs@cornell.edu or the secretary at wkp8@cornell.edu with the nominee’s name and the position they’d be interested in. The nominee will then be asked to provide a brief description of themself, and why they would like to run for the office/what they plan to do. We will post everything we’ve got on this website on October 15, and ballots will be distributed on November 1 (if you’d like a paper ballot, please contact us at either email address to let us know. We’ll remind you of that when the candidates are announced). Voting will end on November 15th, and the election winners will be announced shortly after that date.

To be eligible to serve in these positions, you do need to be a current member of the ACS. To be councilor, you need to be a “regular member”, but the chair-elect and secretary positions are also available to people with “graduate student” memberships, so this is a great way to get involved with community service, maybe pad your CV a little bit, and certainly have a bit of fun guiding chemistry across the region. We’d also encourage chemists at Ithaca College and local industry to run for office – it might be called the “Cornell” section of the ACS, but our membership is diverse and we seek to serve more than just Cornell University!

If you’re not a member of the ACS, we’d certainly encourage you to join. But as a reminder, you don’t have to be a member to engage with us! We can’t offer you membership on the executive committee, but we’d be happy to have you head up other committees, or plan events with us, or just join us at some of our sponsored events. We’re really here to serve the community, so if you’ve got some ideas for ways the ACS could help you, please let us know.

After a two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Western NY Inorganic Symposium (WNYIS) was held this year at the University of Rochester on August 4th. This meeting brought together inorganic chemistry faculty, students, and postdocs from the University of Buffalo, the University of Rochester, and Cornell University to present and discuss their research. The meeting was comprised primarily by students and postdoc oral presentations, thus providing a valuable training opportunity. The meeting also had two poster sessions, thus providing a low-barrier opportunity for students to participate in a regional scientific meeting. The Cornell local section was delighted to help to sponsor this symposium by providing prizes for student and postdoc presentations. Faculty judges selected eight poster prize winners, and one oral presentation winner. 8 students (shown below) earned a $50 award, while Melissa Bollmeyer received $100 for her talk, “Elucidating the Mechanisms of Cofactor Maturation and Hydroxylamine Oxidation by Cytochrome P460”. We would like to congratulate the winners on their selection, and thank all of the presenters for taking the time to talk about the hard work they’ve put into their science. 

We are delighted to report that our summer picnic, held July 28th, was very successful. We had great attendance (~120 people!), lovely if somewhat hot and humid weather, and lots of delicious food from Luna. This was all complemented with plenty of cold beverages, games to play, and good company. We hope those of you who joined us enjoyed your afternoon, and for those of you who didn’t, we look forward to seeing you next year!

Many thanks to everyone who was able to attend our annual business meeting on May 12. We had some really great discussions, particularly around the annual Debye lecture at Cornell University. This is a lecture that the local section traditionally funds, and one of the most prestigious lectures offered by the Cornell University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The local section will continue to fund this lecture series, but is going to start having the lectures recorded, so they can be posted online for the entire community to enjoy.

There was also general interest around the idea of hosting a NERM (Northeast regional meeting of the ACS) in 3-4 years. The executive committee will continue to investigate how to proceed with this, and if anyone is interested in helping, we encourage you to contact us!

Importantly, we have new bylaws! Our previous bylaws were last updated in 1981. There have been some major innovations since then (not least the internet), and our newly updated bylaws allow us to make use of this technology to enable greater input from the community for e.g. officer elections. These bylaws will soon be updated at the ACS website, and will also be kept available at our own site.

Finally, we will proceed with our annual picnic/meet & greet event on July 28th. We will send out an RSVP survey when the time gets closer so we can estimate how many people will attend, and how much vegetarian food to get. Be on the lookout, it was great fun last year, and we hope to see even more people this time around!