Several of our professors and students were honored with awards from the Northeast Georgia ACS affiliate this year. Of the eleven people honored, seven were from UGA. Professor Geoffrey Smith was given the George Philbrook Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, while Professor Gregory Robinson was recognized as the Chemist of the Year for Research. Two of our graduate students, Jay Agarwal and Sean Marrache, were recognized as Outstanding Graduate Students of the Year, while three of the five Outstanding Undergraduate Students of the Year were from UGA: Lydia Babcock-Adams, Kasey Leigh Darley, and Richard Weimar. Professor Smith teaches one of the most feared classes for chemistry undergraduates: physical chemistry. But he has worked hard over the past few years to make the course relevant and exciting. He’s prepared graphics and plots to make abstract ideas and equations tangible; created his own set of “clicker” questions, which the students answer anonymously, to gauge class involvement and get real-time feedback; and also gets a rise from the students by dressing up in a Red Sox apron while explaining phase equilibrium and phase change through real life examples like cooking. His passion for teaching was rewarded by the George Philbrook Award. Professor Robinson’s research focuses on fundamental properties of structure and bonding in organometallic compounds. Much of his work involves stabilization of inorganic compounds with carbene ligands, with publications in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Inorganic Chemistry, and Organometallics, to name a few. Most recently, he has teamed up with Professor Schaefer and Professor Schleyer to study the oxidation of carbene-stabilized diarsenic; the results of which were published in JACS this year. During his graduate stay, Jay has been extremely prolific, publishing eight papers in three years. Much of his research involves computational studies into elementary combustion processes, but he is also known to get his hands dirty and try experimental chemistry from time to time. Following his successful defense this semester, Jay, now Dr. Agarwal, will continue his work with Professor Schaeffer as a staff scientist at the CCQC. Sean is a fourth year graduate student working in the lab of Professor Shanta Dhar. There he synthesizes and determines the biological activity of mitochondria targeted nanoparticles for the treatment of a variety of diseases. He plans to graduate next May and pursue a post-doctorate opportunity in the southeast. Two of the outstanding undergraduate students, Kasey and Richard, graduated this semester with a B.S. in Chemistry. In the fall Kasey will return to UGA to earn her doctorate in chemistry. Richard is moving to Portland, OR to support his wife’s education plans. The third student, Lydia, has just completed her sophomore year at UGA. While working towards a B.S. in Chemistry, she plans to simultaneously earn a master’s degree in marine science. All three students have been involved with the CURO program; Kasey and Richard presenting at this year’s conference and Lydia is a 2013 CURO Summer Fellow under Professor William Miller.
