Chemistry Shorts Releases New Film About Water and Future Water Supply, Plans Additional Chemistry Productions
Chemistry Shorts today released its newest film “Untapped Potential”, which highlights both the critical challenges and chemistry-inspired innovations in water supply, re-use, and purification. The nine-minute film features environmental and chemical engineering experts David L. Sedlak, PhD, Professor, University of California Berkeley, Meagan Mauter, PhD, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and William Tarpeh, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University.
“Untapped Potential” is the fourth addition to the well-received Chemistry Shorts film series presented by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. The series spotlights the positive impact of chemistry on modern life as scientists work to solve important problems and create new opportunities that benefit humanity. Learn more about Chemistry Shorts and see all of the films and lesson plans in this series at chemistryshorts.org.
“Ensuring a safe water supply is one of the most compelling challenges humanity faces in the 21st century. With a clear narrative and stunning visuals, this film aims to enlighten and inspire by highlighting the game-changing solutions being developed in the chemical sciences. Targeting an audience of high school and college chemistry students, its appeal may be much broader,” says H. Scott Walter, President of the Dreyfus Foundation Board of Directors. The new film is available for immediate viewing and use in teaching free of charge on Chemistry Shorts YouTube channel. A full lesson plan to accompany the film is available on the Chemistry Shorts website.
Chemistry Shorts recently received a major grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This partnership will increase the reach of the film series, allowing for at least six additional films to be produced over the next three years. “We are excited about this opportunity to promote a broader understanding and appreciation of the chemical sciences and hope it inspires a new generation of scientists and path-breaking scientific discoveries,” says Gary Greenburg, Program Officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Learn more about the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation by visiting its website.
Additional support for this series has been provided by The Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Learn more about The Research Corporation for Science Advancement by visiting its website.
In “Untapped Potential” from Chemistry Shorts: “Now, with modern chemistry, desalination, and advanced oxidation processes, we’ve opened up a way to access sources of water that 50 years ago seemed undrinkable.”
Zhenan Bao and Milan Mrksich Elected to Board of Directors
Zhenan Bao and Milan Mrksich have been elected to the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Board of Directors effective April 2022.
Dr. Bao is a K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. Since 2018, she has been the Department Chair. She founded and has been directing the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR). Dr. Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She is known for her pioneering work on skin-inspired electronic materials and their applications to medical and energy devices. She has developed a wide range of novel molecular design concepts for organic electronic materials and fabrication methods. Dr. Bao received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from The University of Chicago in 1995.
Dr. Mrksich is Vice President for Research and the Henry Wade Rogers Professor with appointments in Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering and Cell & Developmental Biology, at Northwestern University. His discovery of the SAMDI technology has been commercialized by SAMDI Tech and is the leading label-free method in drug discovery. He was also the founding Director of Northwestern’s Center for Synthetic Biology and an Associate Director of Technology and Infrastructure in the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Mrksich received his Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1994.
Edward A. Reilly Retires from Board of Directors After 36 Years
Edward A. Reilly has retired from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Board of Directors, after 36 years of service. Mr. Reilly began his tenure at the Foundation in July 1985 and has held multiple leadership positions on the Board since that time, including Audit Committee Member, Secretary-Treasurer, Secretary, and Compensation Committee Member. Outside of the Foundation, Mr. Reilly has a long and distinguished career as an attorney and as a faculty member at Duke University Law School.
H. Scott Walter, Foundation President, commented: “On behalf of the Board of Directors and staff of the Dreyfus Foundation, we wish to express our sincerest appreciation to Mr. Reilly for his many years of service. We also extend our very best wishes to him in his future endeavors.”
Mr. Reilly said: “It has been a pleasure to work with the Foundation’s Board, staff, and advisors for over thirty years. I will always be grateful for the collaborative and good-spirited endeavors. I look forward to following the Foundation as it continues its important work to advance the chemical sciences.”
2022 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of 18 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2022. These faculty are within the first five years of their academic careers, have each created an outstanding independent body of scholarship, and are deeply committed to education. Each Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar receives an unrestricted research grant of $100,000.
Justin Caram, University of California, Los Angeles
Materials which Explore the Extremes of Excitonic Photophysics
Jefferson Chan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Light in, Sound out: Making Chemical Probes to Detect Invisible Disease States Using Photoacoustic Imaging
Sujit Datta, Princeton University
Dynamics of Soft and Living Matter in Complex Environments
Christopher Hendon, University of Oregon
Hydrogen Atom Transfer Catalysis in Earth-Abundant Metal-Organic Frameworks
Lilian Hsiao, North Carolina State University
Physico-Chemical Design of Bioinspired Soft Materials to Reproduce Touch
Mark Levin, University of Chicago
Single-Atom Logic for Molecular Skeletal Editing
Weiyang (Fiona) Li, Dartmouth College
Novel Functional Electrochemical Materials for Energy and Sustainability
Brian Liau, Harvard University
Unraveling Macromolecular Complexes and Gene Regulation with Chemical Genomics
Steven Lopez, Northeastern University
Sustainable Energy and Chemistry through Computations and Machine Learning
Maxwell Robb, California Institute of Technology
Molecular Design Strategies for Mechanochemically Responsive Polymers
Sandeep Sharma, University of Colorado, Boulder
Accurate Electronic Structure for Quantum Materials and Metalloenzymes
Daniel Suess, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Understanding and Exploiting Electronic Cooperation in Metalloclusters
William Tarpeh, Stanford University
Rendering “Wastewater” Obsolete: Designing Selective Electrochemical Separations to Valorize Water Pollutants
Ashleigh Theberge, University of Washington
Bioanalytical Chemistry for Medicine and the Environment
V. Sara Thoi, Johns Hopkins University
Molecular Approaches to Materials Design in Energy Conversion and Storage
Jesús Velázquez, University of California, Davis
Atomically Precise Active Sites for Catalytic Small-Molecule Conversion
Lauren Zarzar, The Pennsylvania State University
Dynamics of Active and Responsive Microscale Materials
Mingjiang Zhong, Yale University
Rapid Access to Diversified Polymer Properties through Microstructure Engineering
Dreyfus Foundation 2021 Year in Review
We invite you to view the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation 2021 Year in Review, which is now available online. This brief report includes details about the Dreyfus/ACS Symposium on Environmental Chemistry (to be held on March 22 at the ACS meeting), the latest Chemistry Shorts film Untapped Potential and, 2022 award program and deadlines.