Kevin Smith Steps down as Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate studies
and assumes faculty position in Chemistry

Kevin Smith, Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies, has announced that he is stepping down from his position and will assume a faculty position as professor in the Department of Chemistry. The change was effective November 1, 2004.

Dr. Smith came to LSU in 2001 to serve as Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies. Prior to that, he had been Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Davis, since 1997.

"I very much appreciate Kevin's service to the university in this key position and know he will be an asset to our chemistry department," said Risa Palm, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost.

A native of Birmingham, England, Smith earned B.Sc., Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees in chemistry from the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom in 1964, 1967 and 1977, respectively.  He served as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 1967-1969 and as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool from 1969-1977.  He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 1977 as a chemistry professor and was chair of the chemistry department from 1990-1994.  He then served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research in 1996-1997 before being appointed Vice Chancellor on August 1, 1997.

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The Choppin conference rooms are now complete. Thank you to Dr. William Pryor for spearheading and funding the renovation of these two rooms. The Choppin 212 meeting room has been updated with new chairs, a white board, bulletin board and a new screen. The 210 conference room, now called The Pryor Conference Room has been fully renovated with new chairs, tables, a wireless network, a computer, a new screen and a display cabinet hand crafted by Dr. Choppin's grandson.

Thanks to Dr. Pryor for bringing us into the 21st century.

Dr. Robert Strongin has been included in "Who's Who in Fluorescence", 2005 volume.

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Dr. Doug Gilman has been named Program Chair Elect for The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS). Doug will be the Program Chair for the FACSS 2006 meeting in Orlando, FL.

HONORS & AWARDS

Karen Hammer was the recipient of  an LSU Ten Year Service Award and Zofia Maskos was the recipient of an LSU Fifteen Year Service Award.  Congratulations to Karen Hammer and Zofia Maskos.

GRANTS

Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, "Studies of Long Time Scale Processes of Environmental Importance", 2004-2005, 75,000 SU of  computer time. Awarded to Randall Hall (PI), Bin Chen, Les Butler, Barry Dellinger, Peter Wolynes (UCSD), and Ilja Siepmann (Univ. Minnesota).

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Dr. Britt Thomas will be giving a talk entitled "Tubules, Cones, Tubelets and Combs" on November 12, 2004.  The seminar will be held in the Life Science Annex Auditorium at 3:40 p.m .

Dr. Patrick Sullivan, from the University of Wyoming, will be giving an inorganic photochemistry talk on November 19, 2004.  The talk will take place in the Life Science Annex Auditorium at 3:40 p.m.

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TALKS 

Dr. Paul Russo gave the following talks:

"Macromolecules for the Demented", Univ. of Wisconsin--River Falls, Sept. 17, 2004. 

"Is Graduate School Worth It?", 2nd INSPIRE Conference, University of Southern Mississippi, Oct. 16, 2004. 

"Matrix Fluorescence Photobleaching Recovery for MacromolecularCharacterization", Analytical Sciences Discussion Group, Dow Chemical, Division of Analytical Chemistry, Midland, Michigan, Oct. 28, 2004.

Dr. Robert Strongin gave the following talks:

"Detection Of Colorless Biomolecules with Novel Sensing Agents," presented at the International Conference on Supramolecular Science & Technology, Plenary Lecture, Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 7, 2004.

"Calix[4]resorcarenes as Chromogenic Substrates for the Visual Detection of Biomolecules," presented at the 60th Southwest American Chemical Society Meeting, Fort Worth, TX, Sept 29, 2004.

"Highly Selective Detection of Cysteine, Homocysteine and Related Biomolecules," presented at the 60th Birthday Symposium Honoring Professor Amos B. Smith, III, University of Pennsylvania Museum, October 15, 2004.

Dr. Julia Chan, gave a talk entitled "A Chemist's Perspective to Heavy Fermion Intermetallics: Interplay of Magnetism and Superconductivity" Northwestern University, Department of Chemistry, Evanston, IL, October 15, 2004.

PUBLICATIONS

Wilson, Z. S.; Macaluso, R. T.;Smith, J. L.; Fisk, Z.; Stanley, G. G.; Chan, J. Y., "Rare beryllium icosahedra in the mixed-valence compound CeBe13", J. Am. Chem. Soc. In Press, 2004. Click here for the complete abstract.

Petia Bobadova-Parvanova, Yuko Oku, Anura Wickramasinghe, Randall W. Hall, and Graça Vicente, "Ab initio and NMR study of the Zn(II) complexes of a nido- and a closo-carboranylporphyrin", J. Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines, web-released Sept 3, 2004.