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H o m e c o m i n g Ev e n t Left Photo CHEMillennium alums Simona and Orion Jankowski, both B.S. ’98, ChemE, at the annual alumni luncheon during Homecoming Weekend. Right Photo Mark Wegner (Ph.D. ’77, Chem), Carlo Alesandrini (Ph.D. ’71, ChemE) and Rebecca Zuckerman (Ph.D. ’00, Chem) enjoyed the “Free Radiccals” and “CHEMillennium Alumni Era” luncheon.
Anna K. Mapp (Ph.D. Chem), associate professor in chemistry and medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan, has recently received several notable awards. In July, she was honored at a White House ceremony for her receipt of a 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). She and 55 others received this award, considered one of the nation’s highest honors for a professional at the outset of an independent research career. Recipients include engineers, computer and information scientists, and educators and researchers in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. Mapp has also received a 2006 Amgen Young Investigator Award and has been selected for the American Chemical Society’s 2007 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry. This past March she delivered the Inaugural Clayton H. Heathcock Lecture in organic chemistry, “Small Molecule Control of Gene Up-Regulation,” to the college. Heathcock was her research director. She and her husband, Adam Matzger, live in Ann Arbor, MI.
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Christina Galitsky (M.S. ChemE), See page 26.
David Gracias (Ph.D. Chem), assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University, has received two prestigious awards in chemistry this year — a 2006 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, designed to support the teaching and research careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences, and a 2006 Beckman Young Investigator Award, intended to provide research support to exceptionally promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences. His research director at Berkeley was Gabor Somorjai (Ph.D. ’60, Chem). Janet Duanping Chuang (B.S. Chem) obtained her master’s degree in environmental engineering in 2005 from MIT and now lives in Cambridge, MA.
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Alán Aspuru-Guzik (Ph.D. Chem), who received his B.Sc. in chemistry from UNAM in Mexico and who worked with William Lester Jr. while at Berkeley, is now an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at
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Harvard University. His research focuses on the theoretical study of renewable energy materials, electronic structure, and quantum computation. He and his wife, Dori Aspuru-Takata, make their home in Cambridge. Tanguy My Chau (B.S. ChemE), after working in China for two years, has returned to the U.S. to pursue a dual M.B.A. / Engineering Ph.D. at MIT. While an undergrad, Eric B. Haas (B.S. ChemE) gave tours of the ChemE labs on Cal Day as a member of Alpha Chi Sigma. Following graduation, he joined AmeriCorps and helped to build twelve homes in West Oakland through the nonprofit organization, Habitat for Humanity. He recently joined Hess Corporation and is working at its oil refinery in Port Reading, NJ, as a process engineer. Mark John Perri (Ph.D. Chem) completed a one-year postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with Nora Berrah. He and Jessica L. DeFreese (see 2005) were married on March 3, 2006. Perri is currently looking for academic positions in the New Jersey area, where he and Jessica now live.
Fall 2006 Catalyst
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