Chemistry News

The Class Notes section of the Reed magazine Spring 2009 reports on some Reed chemists:

• Arlene Blum ’66 was one of six individuals selected for a Purpose Prize in 2008. The prize recognized the extraordinary contribution she has made during her “encore career” as an advocate for policies and regulations that protect human and environmental health, and carried a cash award of $100,000. Arlene’s organization, the Green Science Policy Institute (greensciencepolicy.org), promotes decision-making about the use of chemicals in consumer products based on scientific data, with a goal of creating informed, engaged, and healthy communities worldwide. A video of Arlene discussing her work is at the prize website, www.purposeprize.org.
• Laurel Wilkening ’66 reports that her spouse of 33 years, Godfrey T. Sill, died in December 2007, in Tucson, Arizona.
• A symposium at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in January fortuitously brought together four Reed alumni. The symposium, “Civil Liberties, National Security, and the Legacies of the Japanese Removal and Incarceration: A Multidisciplinary Exploration,” was organized by Jeff Kovac ’70 and others from the University of Tennessee and the Knoxville community. Jeff and Michael Bess ’79, Chancellor’s Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, were among the speakers. The event also included a production of a new play, Dawn’s Light: The Journey of Gordon Hirabayashi, by Jeanne Sakata. The team that produced the play included Jed Diamond ’79, associate professor of performance in the theatre department at UTK, who participated in the symposium, as did Susan Davis Kovac ’71. To learn more about the symposium, visit www.artsci.utk.edu/symposium.
• Ken Jacobson ’75 has received two awards for his work in pharmacology and medicinal chemistry. The 2008 Sato Award, names for Yoshio Sato ’36, was awarded to Ken as an outstanding U.S. scientist, and was presented in March, in Kyoto, Japan, by the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan. The 2009 Pharmacia-American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Award for Experimental Therapeutics was presented to Ken in April, in New Orleans, at the ASPET and Experimental Biology business meeting and awards reception. Ken was recognized for his creativity and his ability to combine the field of chemistry with those of pharmacology and molecular biology. His research has led to agents in clinical trials for cystic fibrosis, cancer, cardioischemia, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and asthma. He also was recently included in a listing of the 10 most cited researchers in the field of pharmacology, and is acting chief at the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, and chief of the Molecular Recognition Section, at the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, in B3ethesda, Maryland.
• Robert Hamatake ’76 is director of virology at GlaxoSmithKline and has relocated his family to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
• Kevan Shokat ’86 still lives in San Francisco with his family — including children Kasra, 16, Mitra 12, and Leila, 10 — and two cats. He is trying to persuade Kasra to become a member of O.R.G.Y.
• Kevin Day ’97 has happily returned to the church after long (and ongoing) sojourn among varied religions and philosophies. As a recent addition to the Benedictine Community of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, he is looking forward to new insights and relationships, while continuing to live and work in downtown Portland.
• Zach Pegram ’05 popped up in a Reed magazine article (“Lawyer Trades Briefcase for Dogsled”) about the experiences of (non-chemist) alum, Chad Lindner ’03, in the Iditarod. Zach was part of a much larger crew in Alaska that was following the progress of the Lindners during the race.

The Spring 2009 issue of the Reed magazine contained an article about the launch of Reed’s Centennial Campaign, “The Quest for the Future.” A companion to the article, “Profiles in Generosity” (p. 15 print, p. 5 online), features Josh Kurzman ’07. Among other things, he contrasts his Reed educational experience with an experience he once had as a chemistry student at a “big state university.” According to Josh, the latter was, “the worst educational experience of my life.”

I recently discovered a stack of Reed magazines in my office that go all the way back to Spring 2009. Even though they sport titles like, “How the Humanities Saved Reed,” they also contain a wealth of information about Reed chemists, new and old. Upcoming posts will guide you to stories about these chemists (at least those chemists that I recognized) from the magazine. And I’ll try to “keep up” with the magazine a bit better in the future.

By the way, if you had a stack of Reed magazines under your desk and tossed them out without reading every page, you can find all of them online. Click here.

I’ve been running into Casey again and again these last few months. First, there was the announcement card that I received last summer informing me that she had successfully defended her doctoral dissertation (her advisor was the noted Princeton organometallic chemist, Jeffrey Schwartz; Casey with the Schwartz group). Then, Casey herself popped right through my office door a few weeks ago. She had just moved back to Portland to begin a new research position at OHSU. So I was only mildly surprised when I ran into Casey again on Saturday shopping for vegetables and dodging rain drops at the Portland Farmer’s Market.If you would like to contact her, send an email to caseymariejones(at)gmail.com.

About two years ago Kristen Grauer-Gray ’07 journeyed to Tanzania to work as a Peace Corps volunteer. A few days ago she wrote to a large number of friends to inform them that she’s counting the days until her return. In “Letters from Tanzania #12” (Aug 21), Kristen writes:

“Habari zenu? As you’ll see from this e-mail, I’ll be leaving Tanzania
soon. I’d love to travel on my way home, and visit as many friends as
possible on the way. So the question is….where in the world will you
be between the beginning of November and the end of December? In case
of delayed travels, where will you be at the beginning of 2011? Do you
have a extra bed, couch, or soft floor for a very dazed Peace Corps
volunteer? You provide the floor, I’ll provide the harmonica songs
and crazy stories, and we’ll catch up on the last three years of life.
Let me know where you’ll be and I’ll start marking the map of the world on my wall. I’m thinking of a long bus trip across the U.S.,
with many many stops on the way.”
–Kristen, 21 August 2010, Karatu district, Tanzania

I suspect that Kristen didn’t expect her emails to wind up on our news page, but I think her “crazy story” is so wonderful, it deserves to be reported in full, so here is the rest of her email on life in Tanzania (and if you would like to communicate with her, write to her at grauergk@gmail.com) … (Aug 31 update: Three more letters from Kristen have arrived in the last couple of days and I’ve added them unedited to this post. They cover the joys and hardships of teaching chemistry, the Peace Corps, and dealing with AIDS in Africa.)

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Matt recently wrote to his thesis adviser, Pat McDougal:

“I wanted to let you know that I recently became Chris Vanderwal’s
first PhD at UC Irvine, and I am starting a new position at Pfizer, Groton
next week.  I had a JACS communication about a year ago, and a full JOC
article is coming soon…”.

A little detective work turned up these extra links:

• Matt’s profile and photo on the Vanderwal group’s graduate student page
• Matt’s JACS communication – [19] Dowling, M. S.; Vanderwal, C. D. “Ring-Closing
  Metathesis of Allylsilanes/Electrophilic Desilylation to Prepare exo-Methylidenecycloalkanes. Short Syntheses of
  Teucladiol and Poitediol” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131,
  15090-15091.
• Matt’s JOC article? – [23] Dowling, M. S.; Vanderwal, C. D. “Ring-Closing Metathesis of Allylsilanes as a
  Flexible Strategy Toward Cyclic Terpenes. Short Syntheses of Teucladiol,
  Isoteucladiol, Poitediol and Dactylol, and an Attempted Synthesis of
  Caryophyllene” submitted for publication.