BARNARD COLLEGE
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NEWS OF THE FACULTY & STAFF Prof. Sally Chapman is very pleased that Prof. Rojas is department chair! She has had a busy year, teaching General Chemistry I to about 110 students in the fall, and Thermodynamics and Kinetics to a much smaller group in the spring. She moved her office during the latter half of the spring term, to make room for the renovations. She is now located in 811 Altschul, a converted hallway and locker room, for those who remember Altschul from years ago. Come visit! Sally continues to work with a group from ACS, preparing papers reporting findings from their NSF-ADVANCE-funded chemistry department site visits. We hope that a brief report on the study will be published in the Journal of Chemical Education, with longer reports in the social science literature. She visited Lehigh University in the fall, giving two talks, one on her research and the other on the ADVANCE project. This spring, she visited chemistry departments at Iona and Swarthmore Colleges. Prof. Chapman was very pleased to be honored this May with a Barnard Teaching Award. Awardees are selected by Barnard’s faculty Committee on Appointments, Tenure, and Promotion based on nominations from department Chairs. Prof. Chapman was in fine company: Lisa Gordis (English) and Natalie Kampen (Art History/Women’s Studies) were also recognized.
Prof. Christian Rojas is completing his first year as chair of the department; it has been a real learning experience, with much good advice from assistant chair Sally Chapman. Besides growing into his new administrative role, Christian published an article, “Protecting Group and Solvent Control of Stereo- and Chemoselectivity in Glucal 3-Carbamate Amidoglycosylation,” in Organic Letters, a journal for rapid communication of results in organic chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society (Gupta, R.; Sogi, K. M.; Bernard, S. E.; Decatur, J. D.; Rojas, C. M. Org. Lett. 2009, 11, 1527–1530). Barnard co-authors were Ritu Gupta ’08, Kim Sogi ’07, and Sarah Bernard ’06. John Decatur, the NMR lab director from Columbia, contributed NMR spectroscopic analysis. Christian also wrote two chapters for the volume Name Reactions for Homologations Part II, edited by J. Jack Li with a foreword by chemistry Nobel Prize winner Elias J. Corey, published by Wiley in April 2009. The chapters were on the Brook Rearrangement, which involves migration of silicon from carbon to oxygen, and on the Curtius Rearrangement, a process that involves release of molecular nitrogen and 1,2-shift of a group from carbon to nitrogen. Christian gave invited lectures at SUNY Stony Brook, where he lunched with chemistry graduate student Alex Athan ’08, and at Indiana University. With Simran Buttar ’09, Shenjuti Chowdhury ’09, Jennifer Gillman ’10, Evelyne Goné ’09, and Reneé Harris ’10, he was co-author on a poster “Glycal Metallanitrenes for 2-Amino Sugar Synthesis,” that Simran, Evelyne, and Reneé presented at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City in March. Christian and his wife, Christine, send greetings to former students, as do Sidney (just turned 10), Alice (newly 8), and Lewis (4 ¾). We look forward to continuing to receive news from our alumnae.
Academic year 2008-09 proved to be a momentous one for Prof. Dina Merrer and her group. She taught Modern Techniques lab in the fall and Organic I in the spring. Her group continued strongly, with 4 students last summer and fall, and 3 this spring. Also in the fall, we finished the computational portion of the cyclooctyne project, due in large part to the efforts of Xiao Yu Mo ’09: Mo, X. Y.; Bernard, S. E.; Khrapunovich, M.; Merrer, D. C. “A Computational Study of Chlorocarbene Additions to Cyclooctyne”, J. Org. Chem. 2008, 73, 8537-8544. Additionally, the group’s funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) was renewed for three more years, welcome news that came even before President Obama’s economic stimulus package was announced. Last September, Dina was invited to give talks at the NSF-sponsored Workshop on Physical Organic Chemistry at Lake Tahoe and at the University of Nevada, Reno. Senior thesis students Xiao Yu Mo and Jennifer Schloss presented the group’s research on dynamic control of intermolecular carbene reactions with a poster co-authored by Linda Suen ’10 and Stephanie Zaleski ’11 at the Salt Lake City ACS meeting in March. We will miss Xiao’s and Jenn’s contributions to the group and the Department. Many thanks to them for their efforts and dedication, hearty congratulations on their graduation, and best wishes in the future. For the upcoming summer, Linda Suen and Stephanie Zaleski return to work on dihalocarbene additions to trans-bicyclo[6.1.0]nonanes and cyclooctyne, respectively. Linda and Stephanie will be joined by new Merrer group members Julia Tolentino ’10, Marlena Sheridan ’11, and Ul Weena ’12, who will work on a combination of new experimental and computational projects. Congratulations to Julia for receiving a 2009-10 Howard Hughes internship. Hopes are high for a fun and productive summer and year ahead. Finally, Dina wishes to thank all past and current members of the Merrer group and chemistry and biochemistry majors for their support in helping to make her tenure case successful. She expresses her deepest gratitude to you all.
Prof. John Magyar had great fun this year teaching Inorganic Chemistry in the fall and General Chemistry II in the spring, both for the second time. In the fall, Harry Gray (in town to receive Columbia’s Pupin Medal) visited the inorganic class for a lively discussion of his work, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Research in the Magyar lab is going well, thanks to the enthusiastic students who have worked in the group this year. The group is studying microbial metal uptake mechanisms and has been working to overexpress proteins from Prochlorococcus marinus (a marine cyanobacterium), Methanocorpusculum labreanum (an archaeon from the La Brea Tar Pits), and Colwellia psychrerythraea (a cold-loving bacterium from Arctic sediments). Nicole Mizrahi ’10, Jenna Bass ’11, and Sara Sasson ’11 comprise the group this summer. Elizabeth Edwards ’10 and Brisa Hurlocker ’10 worked in the lab with Jenna and Nicole during the academic year. Elizabeth is spending the summer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and will rejoin the group in the fall; Brisa has moved upstairs to the Rojas group to try her hand at organic synthesis this summer. The students have all been working very hard and have made tremendous progress this year! In December, John presented a departmental seminar at Brooklyn College on “Metals, Microbes, and Global Biogeochemical Cycles.” John has also presented his group’s work at several conferences in the past year, including an invited talk at the Fall ACS meeting in Philadelphia and posters at Gordon Research Conferences on Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry, Electron Donor-Acceptor Interactions, and Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms. (He enjoyed spending a week in Galveston in March with Jackie Barton ’74 and Karen Goldberg ’83, who both gave talks at the inorganic mechanisms GRC.) John also co-organized two symposia at the Philadelphia ACS meeting: one in memory of Fred Basolo, the other in honor of Elizabeth Theil, the winner of the ACS Garvan-Olin Medal for women in chemistry.
Prof. Marisa Buzzeo ’01 is thrilled to be back on campus (albeit from a short distance this past year) and is enjoying her time as a research scientist in Columbia’s nanocenter, learning new techniques and establishing collaborations with members of the chemistry, physics and engineering departments. She is currently developing a number of projects involving nanofabrication, DNA electrochemistry, and membrane surface chemistry, which she will continue to pursue as she builds her research program at Barnard. Marisa had great fun getting to know some of this year’s seniors through the thesis seminar course and wishes them all the best of luck in their exciting adventures that lie ahead. She also helped coordinate the latest installment of the NSEC Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program and looks forward to hearing about these students’ progress over the summer. The start of the 8th floor construction has been particularly exciting, and Marisa is extremely grateful for how supportive and understanding the entire department has been about the preparations and impositions that have accompanied this project! She is anxious to set up her new lab space and is delighted to have three students working with her this fall: Nanette Jarenwattananon ’11, Bianca Lahiji ’10, and Michelle Sykes ’11. Marisa is also very much looking forward to co-teaching the Integrated Lab with Alison Williams and SuQing Liu come September. It has been wonderful to return to the friendly and familiar halls of Altschul and Marisa can’t wait to join the department officially this August!
Dr. Alison Williams taught Structure, Bonding and Spectroscopy (BC3253x) and the Integrated Lab I (BC3365x) in the fall and Intermediate General Chemistry (BC3232y) and Integrated Lab II (BC3368y) in the spring. Getting to know Barnard and four new (for her) courses made this a very busy year! She gave two talks about her research: “Time-Resolved UV Resonance Raman Studies of Polyriboadenylic Acid” at the 5th International SPEC 2008, an international meeting on novel applications of vibrational spectroscopy in biology and medicine, in São José de Campos in Brazil, and “Physical Studies of DNA Behavior”, an invited talk at St. John’s University.
Olympia Jebejian co-directs the General Chemistry Laboratories with Dr. Jacob Alexander. She teaches in the laboratory, grades reports and supervises the overall preparations for the laboratory experiments. Additionally she also taught the problem-solving class help class for the General Chemistry course. In the spring, Ms. Jebejian taught in the Quantitative and Instrumental Techniques course. Having as new colleagues in this course the capable collaboration of Prof. Christian Rojas and Dr. Jacob Alexander along with, as in previous years, the assistance of Mrs. Suqing Liu was quite enjoyable, and yet she missed the absence of one of the mainstay instructors of so many years, Prof. Les Lessinger. The grading of the elaborate lab reports and the long office hours kept Olympia rather busy. Olympia and her husband feel blessed to see their son and his family and daughter and her family continue doing well and being happy. Their four grandchildren, two from each couple, are growing up fast and are a source of pride and joy for them.
Dr. Jacob Alexander continues to serve as co-director of the General Chemistry laboratory program. A smaller enrollment gave us some breathing room, but the addition of a new experiment meant a lot of preparation and evaluation. In the spring, Dr. Alexander enjoyed a record enrollment in our Fundamentals of Chemistry course to help students with a weaker background prepare for General Chemistry in the fall. In addition, he was thrilled to teach Quantitative Analysis. This summer will be busy as he and Ms. Jebejian dodge construction teams on the 8th floor while preparing the lab for the onslaught of eager General Chemistry students. In addition, preparations are underway for the fall “NanoDay in New York”, a science education project Dr. J helps lead in collaboration with the Columbia Nanoscience and Engineering Center. A paper is slated for publication: “When VSEPR fails: Continuing synthetic and computational investigations of the behavior of alkaline earth metal acetylides” Guino-o, M., Alexander, J.S., McKee, M., Hope, H. and Ruhlandt-Senge, K. in Chemistry: A European Journal. On the home front, Jacob’s wife, Joanna, loves her new position as Cantor at Congregation Rodeph Torah in Marlboro, NJ, and they enjoy being Rahway, NJ residents.
Dr. Toby Berger Holtz ’67 continues to teach in the General Chemistry and Introductory Organic Chemistry laboratories. In addition, she is the Chemistry Department’s Safety Officer, and she does the lab prep for the organic labs and general chemistry lecture demonstrations. It has been a banner year for the Holtz family: the wedding of Toby’s younger daughter, Miriam Malka, to Shalom Craimer at a kibbutz outside Jerusalem in December, and three new grandchildren: a granddaughter, Avigayil Sara, born September 4, 2008 to Shalom and his wife, Leebie Mallin; and two grandsons: Azaria Tzvi, born February 12, 2009 to Mordecai and his wife, Sari, and Saadia Yitzchak, born May 2, 2009 to Razelle ’01 and her husband Dov Weinstein.
SuQing Liu and Jean Vadakkan work very hard in our lab courses, SuQing primarily on the 6th floor (biochemistry and integrated labs) and Jean on the 7th (organic). Meena Rao coordinates the Organic I lab in the spring and works along with other faculty in the fall organic lab.
Part-time faculty this year included veterans Frances Feerst, Craig Allen, and Grace Lee, and returnee Mandy Bennett. We are very grateful for all they do for us and our students. NEWS OF FORMER FACULTY Linda Doerrer is finishing up her third year at Boston University and has recently published a paper with BingNa Zheng ’07 as first author in Inorganic Chemistry. The Doerrer group is reaching a steady-state of three undergraduates at a time, with five PhD students at the moment. Linda taught Advanced General Chemistry II this spring to 49 students, which was challenging and stimulating. The final oral presentation projects included a rap about Seaborgium (Z=106). She sees Annie Jiang ’05 and Montana Childress ’05 regularly at MIT seminars. Outside work, Linda continues to enjoy biking and running as weather permits, and she has recently been reading more about geology. Her role as Aunt Linda continues to expand as her niece and nephew use her for everything that their parents are worn out by. She and Alexandra will spend a holiday in Sweden at a self-catering cabin, where one apparently cannot avoid catching fish at least 2¢ long. Shelley Weinstock enjoys working for a start-up company in NJ with a childhood friend. She wrote last summer “My kids and Paul are great. Paul has a book coming out in August and working on a documentary about a Newark Principal. Max will be applying to college in the fall and Kate will be starting high school!” We subsequently learned that Max is an incoming freshman at Columbia. click here to continue on to the "Alumnae News" section |