CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT

The Chemistry Department welcomed a new faculty member in 2009-2010. Dr. Oyinda Oyelaran from the National Institutes of Health was hired as our new bioorganic chemist. She taught Organic Chemistry: Intermediate Level (CHEM 251) in her first semester, and in the spring she taught her newly created non-majors course, Chemistry of Tropical Diseases: Charting the Course from Traditional to Modern Medicines (CHEM 112). She has gotten settled in the Department having supervised her first thesis student, and presented a Science Lunch talk in the spring semester. We’re happy to have her with us.

We are particularly proud of our students and their accomplishments. Each year, individual students are recognized with departmental awards. In the class of 2010, the John Sabin Adriance prize went to Karen Chiu for her outstanding work throughout her chemistry career and Kathleen Palmer was awarded the American Institute of Chemists Student Award for outstanding scholastic achievement. The James F. Skinner prize was awarded to Alexander Beecher for his distinguished achievement in chemistry and his future promise as a researcher, and the Leverett Mears prize went to Desire Gijima in recognition of both his abilities in chemistry and future in medicine. Michael Drzyzga was awarded the American Chemical Society Connecticut Valley Section Award for his sustained scholastic excellence, and the recipient of the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Inorganic Chemistry for demonstrating excellence in inorganic chemistry was Alexander Beecher.

Over the course of the academic year, a number of awards were presented to chemistry students for outstanding scholarship. Brian Li ’12, Peter Christman ’13, and Michael Girouard ’12 received the CRC Awards as the outstanding students in CHEM 151, CHEM 153, and CHEM 155, respectively. Christopher Valle ’12 and Tarjinder Singh ’12 were recognized for their achievements in organic chemistry with the Polymer Chemistry Award and the Harold H. Warren Prize respectively, and Jimmy Gonzalez ’10 was awarded the American Chemistry Society Analytical Division Award.

This year we continued to participate in the Class of 1960 Scholars Program. Two distinguished scientists were invited to campus to meet with our students and present a seminar. Professor Vy Dong from the University of Toronto and Professor Justin DuBois from Stanford University were the 1960 Scholar speakers this year. Nine students were selected by the faculty to be Class of 1960 Scholars during 2010 and to participate in the seminar program which includes: a preliminary meeting of the Scholars with a Chemistry Department faculty member to discuss some of the papers of the seminar speaker, attendance at the seminar/discussion, and an opportunity for further discussion with the seminar speaker at an informal reception or dinner. The students selected for 2010 are:

Class of 1960 Scholars in Chemistry

During the summer of 2010, approximately 40 Williams College chemistry students were awarded research assistantships to work in the laboratories of departmental faculty. We gratefully acknowledge support from the American Chemical Society, the College Divisional Research Funding Committee, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the J. Hodge Markgraf ’52 summer research fund, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, Research Corporation, Summer Science Program funds, and the Wege-Markgraf fund.

In 2009-2010 Dieter Bingemann enjoyed a very productive sabbatical year. After presenting recent single molecule results at the Gordon Conference “Chemistry and Physics of Liquids” in July 2009, he spent a year at the University in Darmstadt, Germany, a center of polymer and materials research. There, Bingemann developed and tested a new analysis method for his single molecule research. The results show that in glasses regions of fast and slow molecular movements coexist and quickly exchange their dynamic character. He also investigated the dynamics of polymer glasses using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations on high-speed computers, leading to exciting new insights into the reasons for the dramatic slow-down of the dynamics at the glass transition.

Associate Professor Amy Gehring was on sabbatical during the spring semester and enjoyed a research-filled year working with several undergraduate students. The Gehring lab studies the molecular details of the life cycle of the important antibiotic-producing soil bacterium, Streptomyces coelicolor. During summer 2009, Gehring was joined in the lab by Lisa Cucolo ’10, Zach McClendon ’10, Moyukh Ghosh ’11, Ariel White ’11, Hetal Ray ’12, and Jennifer Rodriguez ’12. Lisa and Zach continued on during the academic year as thesis students, studying genetic conditions that cause overproduction of antibiotics and a potential membrane-bound protease involved in transcriptional regulation, respectively. Moyukh also continued research for the year as an independent study student, examining the involvement of several genes in the sporulation of S. coelicolor. Participating in research at various times during the year also were Nancy Dong ’11, Zeb Levine ’11, Hetal Ray ’12 and Max Tejeda-Albrecht ’13. In May 2010, Gehring was awarded an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded grant from the National Institutes of Health to support her research for the next three years.

In July 2010, Gehring will attend the Gordon Research Conference on Microbial Stress Response and present a poster that includes work of former thesis student Adrianna San Roman ’09 on the function of a certain sigma factor in S. coelicolor. In other professional activities, Gehring served as a reviewer for the journals Applied and Environmental Microbiology, BMC Microbiology, Chemistry & Biology, FEBS Letters, and Microbiology. She also reviewed two grant applications for the National Science Foundation.

Assistant Professor Christopher Goh’s research on the discovery and development of homogeneous metal catalysts continues to make progress thanks to the efforts of a number of students. Thesis student Desire Gijima ’10, Sara Turner ’11, Zac Remillard ’12 and Michael Girouard ’13 have made significant contributions towards completing the first stage of the work on combinatorial approaches to the discovery and systematic study of Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) catalysts using copper complexes. In November, the Goh lab was awarded a Cottrell College Science grant through the Research Corporation to support this work, and in April, Zac presented some of the findings at the ACS CVS Undergraduate Research Symposium at Amherst College. In another project, Matt Everhart ’11, Roop Dutta ’12 and Mika Nakashike ’13 explored the use of plant-based fatty acids as a renewable source of materials for the polymer industry. Matt continued his study of the application of homogeneous iron catalysts for the epoxidation of fatty acids and their derivatives, and Roop and Mika explored the use of these modified fatty acids to make polymers.

Professor Goh taught Current Topics in Chemistry (CHEM 155) in the fall semester, and Instrumental Methods of Analysis (CHEM 364) in the spring. For the latter course, Emily Gao ’13 helped develop experiments during Winter Study involving the analyses of fuels and citrus fruit. The class was also able to study silk fibers from a 12^th century Mongolian deel thanks to a collaboration with a conservator at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

Assistant Professor Sarah Goh spent the summer of 2009 working with Iris Lee ’09, Karen Chiu ’10, Laura Ting ’11, and Matt Zhou ’12 on a variety of polymer synthesis projects. Iris continued working on her thesis project of polymer-functionalized GFP, and Karen began her thesis work of PEG-functionalized trypsin. Karen and Matt continued their work throughout the year and presented their research at the national American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, CA in March 2010. The ACS meeting was a great reunion locale as well, with Professor Goh meeting up with former group members William Parsons ’07, Mary Beth Anzovino ’06, and Surekha Gajria ’06, all currently in graduate school at Stanford, Wisconsin, and Berkeley, respectively.

The lab was quite full this year, with Lauren Agoubi ’13, Elizabeth Hwang ’13, and Menghan Zhao ’13 engaging in research as part of their Winter Study course Introductory Research in Organic Chemistry (CHEM 23). Charles Seipp ’11 started an independent study project in the spring of 2010. Lauren and Karen presented their research as well at the ACS local Connecticut Valley Section’s undergraduate symposium in April.

In the fall semester, Professor Goh taught Physical Organic Chemistry (CHEM 344), and Organic Chemistry: Introductory Level (CHEM 156) in the spring semester. Professor Goh served as an NSF grant reviewer this year for the Division of Materials Research and is also a member of the Proposal Study Panel for the Molecular Foundry, a Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Professor Lawrence J. Kaplan continues to administer the Center for Workshops in the Chemical Sciences with his colleagues Professors Jerry Smith of Georgia State University and David Collard of Georgia Institute of Technology. This year, a new colleague joined the administrative group of the CWCS – Professor Patricia Hill in the Chemistry Department of Millersville University. Since its founding nine years ago, the CWCS has received three major grants from the National Science Foundation. It sponsors many workshops related to the chemical disciplines including Food Chemistry, Chemistry and Art, Environmental Chemistry, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Fundamentals of Proteomics, Biomolecular Crystallography, and Forensic Science. In addition to offering workshops, the CWCS continues to develop a series of Communities of Scholars. With the workshops and their alumni serving as the nucleus, the Communities will continue to develop high-quality course content and pedagogy, propagate the use of successful teaching strategies and provide discussion venues such as online discussion boards and video conferencing.

Kaplan continued as chair of the Legal Studies Program and sponsored a Winter Study course: United States Environmental Law: Its Historic Roots, Its Uncertain Future (LGST 13) taught by Philip R. McKnight ’65. Kaplan taught Biochemistry I-Structure and Function of Biological Molecules (CHEM 321) in the fall and Biophysical Chemistry (CHEM 367) in the spring.

Kaplan taught two weeklong CWCS workshops in forensic science during the summer of 2009 at Williams. The introductory workshop provided an understanding of the application of forensic science to all aspects of undergraduate chemistry instruction. Sixteen participants from colleges and universities as well as community colleges became criminalists for the week. They processed crime scenes and analyzed evidence such as glass and soil, fibers and fingerprints, drugs and alcohol, blood and bullets, and, of course, DNA. In addition to conducting the introductory workshop, he taught an advanced workshop for alumni of the CWCS-sponsored forensic science workshops who have gained experience using forensics as a foundation for teaching science. Each participant contributed to the design and development of this workshop. As a reunion of sorts, each participant brought an aspect of their previous involvement with forensic science to the workshop to share with the other participants. Activities such as experiments, demonstrations, case studies, etc. were presented that broaden the scope of forensic science for all. Ms. Deborah Morandi, Administrative Assistant and Dr. Tony Truran, Lecturer/Technical Assistant, both in the Chemistry Department, assisted Kaplan in the organization and instruction of the workshop.

Kaplan organized and taught a daylong forensic workshop sponsored by CWCS at the 187^th spring meeting of the Two Year College Chemistry Consortium (2YC3) held in conjunction with the 239^th American Chemical Society in March 2009. He also helped organize a CWCS symposium at the ACS meeting that provided an opportunity for workshop alumni to present their accomplishments based upon their participation in previous workshops.

Professor Charles Lovett continued to serve as Director of the Science Center, Chair of the Science Executive Committee, Chair of the Divisional Research Funding Committee, Chair of the Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Proteomics Program, and Director of the Summer Science Program for students from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.

Professor Lovett continued his research on the Bacillus subtilis SOS response to DNA damage, which comprises a set of DNA damage-inducible genes (i.e., SOS genes) that code for DNA repair and cellular survival functions. During the past 25 years Lovett and Williams’ students working in his lab have discovered more than 30 SOS genes and characterized their genetic regulation in response to DNA damage. In the fall of 2009, Lovett was awarded a $214,050 grant from the NIH to further characterize the regulation of SOS genes in a project entitled “The binding of the LexA protein to the RecA protein nucleoprotein filament.” Preliminary work on this project began in 2008 and students worked on various aspects of this project during the summer of 2009, Winter Study, and during the academic year. The summer students, working as full time research assistants, included Elizabeth Kalb ’11, Alyson Hoffman ’10, Christina Meade ’11, Asvelt Nduwumwami ’12, Jason Yeoun ’10, and John Vu ’09. Professor Lovett also supervised independent research student Amlak Bantikassegn ’12 during the spring semester of 2010, Winter Study research students Jonathan Wosen ’13, Caleb Kim ’13, Bryn Falahee ’13, and Pacifique Irankunda ’13, and work study students Asvelt Nduwumwami ’12, Pedro Rogue ’13, and Pacifique Irankunda ’13. Katherine Palmer ’10 worked in the Lovett lab during the summer of 2009 on a neuroscience project in collaboration with Professor Zimmerberg of the Psychology department. This project was continued as an honors thesis project during the academic year co-directed by Professors Lovett and Zimmerberg.

Last summer, Professor Lovett taught the Chemistry lecture component of the Williams College Summer Science Program. Together with Professor David Richardson, he also taught in the eighth year of the Summer Science Camp for elementary school students and teachers. He served as a reviewer for the Journal of Bacteriology, Molecular Microbiology, and PLoS One, and as a consultant for the Sherman Fairchild Foundation’s Scientific Equipment Grant Program.

Park’s work on her new project involving the design of new materials for use in organic photovoltaic cells continued this year with Alex Beecher ’10, Dan Gross ’12, Cameron Rogers ’12, and Janneke Ravensbergen, an exchange student from the University of Leiden working in the Park lab during the summer of 2009. With the exception of Janneke, who returned to the Netherlands, these students continued their work during the academic year and were joined by Nabil Revan ’13, Heather Burrell ’11, Sora Kim ’12, Katrina Tulla ’11, Gordon Bauer ’13 and Michelle McRae ’12. Alex completed his senior thesis in the spring, and, based on his results together with the combined efforts of all the students mentioned above, he and Dan Gross accompanied Park to the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco in April 2010, where they presented a poster titled “Self-assembly in Polymer Blend Films for Photovoltaic Applications.” The year also saw the arrival of two new atomic force microscopes (AFMs) on campus, the result of an NSF grant written with several colleagues at Williams: Ward Lopes, Claire Ting, Sarah Goh, Lois Banta, and Morgan McGuire. Work in the Park lab will continue in the summer of 2010 with the assistance of Cameron Rogers ’12, Emma Pelegri-O’Day ’12, Mindy Lee ’12, Grace Babula ’12, Seth Tobolsky ’13 and Nai-Chien Yeat ’13. With the new AFMs and a newly refurbished evaporator, the Park lab hopes to begin measuring photovoltaic efficiencies of their new materials in the coming year.

Park also continued her service as vice-chair of the Committee on Professional Training for the American Chemical Society, a committee that oversees curricular development at all approved chemistry programs in the country. In addition, she continued her service reviewing proposals for various funding agencies as well as manuscripts for various journals, and was an invited participant at two NSF sponsored workshops, one focusing on future directions in macromolecular, supramolecular and nanoscale chemistry and another focusing on issues in career development for women in chemistry and physics. Closer to home she began service on the Committee for Appointments and Promotions.

During the fall 2009 semester, Professor Enrique Peacock-López taught Physical Chemistry: Structure and Dynamics (CHEM 361) and, after three years serving as chair of the chemistry department, he spent part of his sabbatical leave at the University of Cape Town as a visiting professor. While continuing with his research, Professor Peacock-López, Ms. Gisela Demant, and instructors Mr. Kevin M. Hartmann (Drury High School; 28 students) and Ms. Cheryl Ryan (Hoosac Valley High School: 28 students) organized and taught chemistry labs at Williams. As in previous years, Professors Sarah Goh and Christopher Goh, as well as Dr. Tony Truran helped with running the experiments. These honors chemistry students came five times during the year to perform some of the labs from the Williams Introductory Chemistry Lab Program and a newly developed organic synthesis experiment. The latter experiment was implemented and adapted by Ms. Gisela Demant to include the synthesis of aspirin from salicylic acid and include the characterization of the purity of the product by TLC and melting point determination. This chemistry outreach effort has now been supported entirely by the National Science Foundation through an RUI grant to professor Peacock-Lopez.

Professor Peacock-López extended his research in complex dynamical chemical and biochemical mechanisms to include transcriptional networks. In collaboration with Professor Amy Gehring, he has considered relatively simple synthetic transcriptional network in E. Coli. The so-called repressilator plasmid was designed originally by M. B. Elowitz and S. Leibler to include three particular genes, and a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene (gfp). In this network, the LacI protein, from E. Coli, represses the transcription of a second gene, tetR, from the tetracycline-resistant transposon, Tn10. The protein product TetR inhibits a third gene cI, from Lambda phage. Closing the loop, protein product CI represses the lacI gene. The system also includes a compatible reporter plasmid containing the tet-repressible promoter PLtetO1 fused to an intermediate variant of gfp. Up to date, the repressilator is the smallest oscillatory transcriptional network known. During the year, Steve A. Mendoza ’13 has been working on discrete representation of genetic networks to determine the possibility of designing a two-gene activator-repressor artificial network.

In 2009-2010, Professor David Richardson pursued another full year of teaching and research and began a two-year stint as department chair. On the research front, he supervised the work of several students throughout the year. In collaboration with Professor Jay Thoman he supervised the senior honors thesis research of Tina Motazedi ’10 directed at the development of new methods for the synthesis of deuterofluorocarbons. He also supervised the senior honors thesis research of Andrew Yoo ’10 and Jacob Kravetz ’10 who were working a new project in the Richardson lab involving a collaboration with Dr. Andria Agusta of the Indonesian Institute of Biological Sciences. This project is directed at the isolation of new antibiotics from medicinally active South East Asian plants.

He continued his supervision and maintenance of the Department’s 500 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, and he supervised the purchase and installation of a new departmental Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer. He also served as a reviewer for Steroids, The Journal of Natural Products, Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry and Natural Products Communications.

Professor Richardson’s teaching responsibilities for the year included a laboratory section of Organic Chemistry: Intermediate Level (CHEM 251) and Organic Chemistry: Intermediate Level-Special Laboratory Section (CHEM 255), in the fall semester, and Toxicology and Cancer (CHEM 341) and a laboratory section of Organic Chemistry: Introductory Level (CHEM 156) in the spring semester. In the month of July he taught the chemistry laboratory portion of the Williams College Summer Science Program for traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences and, together with Professor Chip Lovett, he hosted the Department’s Summer Science Camp program for local 4^th and 5^th graders. Professor Richardson also served as chair of the Olmsted Committee and served on the Faculty Interview Panel. He also served on the Board of the New England Tropical Conservatory and as the Tutor Coordinator for the Williamstown ABC Program.

Anne Skinner attended the 75^th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in St. Louis, where she delivered a paper on “ESR Dating at Roc de Marsal.” At the Paleoanthropological Society meeting, held at the same time, Clarissa Andre ’12, presented a paper on “Further Exploration of Fire at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa.” In June 2010 she was invited to the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the Institut de Palèontologie Humaine in Paris. Dr. Skinner also organized a Winter Study course, Archaeology in Ethiopia (CHEM/ANTH 25), in January 2010 that took 6 students to Ethiopia for an archaeological dig. One of the students, Natalia Loewen ’12, will be in her lab this summer working on material collected at that time. During this year Dr. Skinner has also served as Associate Editor for Health Physics, preparing the proceedings from the 2008 ESR/Biodose conference. In the fall of 2009, Dr. Skinner was one of the lecturers in the annual Osher Lifelong Learning Institute lecture series.

Professor Tom Smith spent his twelfth year at Williams pursuing his research in organic synthesis and methods development under an NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) grant (Asymmetric Methods for the Synthesis of Pyran-Based Anticancer Natural Products) and a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Senior honors student Kera McClelland ’10 made significant progress toward synthesis of the complex marine natural product, tedanolide C, Amanda Huey ’10 developed methods for the synthesis of α,β-unsaturated lactones including the natural product, goniothalamin, and Eddie Layng ’10 completed a formal synthesis of another marine natural product, acutiphycin.

In the classroom this fall, Professor Smith mounted a new upper level elective course, Medicinal Chemistry (CHEM 343), which was populated by 40 chemistry and biology majors. In the spring semester, Professor Smith taught Synthetic Organic Chemistry (CHEM 342) to a group of 7 overworked chemistry majors. The final project, an analysis of a recent total synthesis published in the chemical literature was, again, the high point of the course.

Jay Thoman taught Concepts of Chemistry (CHEM 153) in the fall and Physical Chemistry: Thermodynamics (CHEM 366) in the spring. During January, Thoman taught Glass and Glassblowing (CHEM/ARTS 16). A highlight this year was the class visit to the studio of glass artist Josh Simpson led by James Allison ’11, who had interned with Simpson during summer 2009. In service outside of the college, Thoman reviewed the Environmental Studies Program at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He continues to serve on the Review Committee for the Chemistry GRE. He joined Professors Lovett and Richardson in leading AP chemistry labs for local high school students.

Thoman continued research with Dave Richardson, Shuai Ma ’12, Mike Drzyzga ’10, and Tina Motazedi ’10 on the synthesis and analysis of deuterofluorocarbon molecules from iodofluorocarbon precursors. The team optimized the synthesis and produced gram quantities of deuterononafluorobutane, which enabled study of the weak intramolecular CD^...FC interaction using vibrational overtone spectroscopy.

CHEMISTRY COLLOQUIA

OFF-CAMPUS COLLOQUIA

POSTGRADUATE PLANS OF CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT MAJORS

Caleb Balderston	Teach for America, Austin Business & Entrepreneurship Academy, Chicago
Kristen Baldiga	Ed.M. in Secondary Chemistry Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Alexander Beecher	Ph.D. in Chemistry, Columbia University
Kimberly Cheng	Clinical Research Coordinator, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
Karen Chiu	Volunteer in Guatemala with USC Somos Hermanos, then medical school
Lisa Chu	Unknown
John Comforto	Unknown
Lisa Cucolo	Research Technician, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, then graduate school
Michael Drzyzga	Ph.D. in Chemistry, Brandeis University
Sarah Franklin	Unknown
Desire Gijima	M.D., Mayo Medical School
Jimmy Gonzalez	D.Pharm. Program, Rutgers University Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Alyson Hoffman	Unknown
Amanda Huey	Medical School
Tahsin Khan	Research Assistant, Koch Institute for Cancer Research at MIT
Jacob Kravetz	Starting own business, Purple Cow Pastures, then Ph.D. in Chemistry
Edwin Layng	Medical School
Jonathan Levinsohn	Research, IRTA Program, The National Institute for Allergy & Infectious Diseases
Makisha Maier	Unknown
Kerani McClelland	Unknown
Zacharias McClendon	Medical School
Tina Motazedi	Research Technician, then medical school
Kathleen Palmer	M.A. in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting, New York University
Charles Shafer	High School Chemistry Teacher, Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh
Maria Tucker	M.T.S. in Comparative Religion, Harvard University
Jeremy Weinberger	Lab Research in Cardiology, Montefiore Medical Center, then medical school
Lauren Yeiser	Medical School
Jason Yeoun	Unknown
Andrew Yoo	Research Technician, then medical school

Heather Burrell	Ang Li
Mary Beth Daub	Tina Meade
Marian Deuker	Mara Shapero
Matthew Everhart	Sara Turner
Zeb Levine