The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society, recently announced the election of 76 chemists to be Fellows of the Society. These fellows, who are recognized by their peers for their “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications” that “are scientifically or socially distinguished,” include University of Washington chemistry professor, Dan Gamelin ’90 and Reed College chemistry professor Alan Shusterman, 1989-present. (A complete list of the 2011 Fellows can be found in the “AAAS News & Notes” section of Science, Dec. 23, 2011.)
Dan’s thesis at Reed was titled, “I’m picking up good vibrations, they’re giving me excitations: resonance raman spectroscopic studies of group 6 transition metal carbonyls.” That early interest in the spectroscopy of metal-containing compounds has stuck. Dan currently leads a research team that employs an assortment of spectroscopic methods to investigate “new multifunctional inorganic materials” such as magnetic semiconductor quantum dots.
The AAAS elected Alan for his efforts at “introducing computational chemistry into undergraduate organic chemistry courses and for the use of quantum chemical calculations for quantitative structure activity relationships.” These activities, particularly the use of molecular modeling tools in teaching, have been a consistent theme throughout Alan’s teaching career. He is currently working on the design and development of computational chemistry apps for the iPad in conjunction with his long-time collaborator, Prof. Warren Hehre, founder and president of Wavefunction (Irvine, CA).