Group News

Updated 18 August 2000

• The well-known Public Broadcasting Company show Nova made use of the PML group's 3-D pictures of carbon allotropes on its fascinating show "The Diamond Deception", which talked about the making of diamonds from graphite under high pressure and temperature. Go to the Nova archive site for this show, and scroll down to the section that asks you to "View a Diamond Crystal" or "View Graphite" or "View a Buckyball" to see the fruits of the groups work on Nova! Thanks, PBS, for using our pictures in such a great story.
• CONGRATULATIONS!! to Chunping Xie, who defended his Ph.D. thesis on 8 June 2000. He now is doing a postdoc at University of California at Berkeley.
• CONGRATULATIONS!! to Ron Gurge, who recently got married. A representation of the group was there, including Richard Walton and Masaki Minato. Ron says things are going well at Gillette Research. All the best, Ron.
• CONGRATULATIONS!! to Jason Tresback and Jong Choi. These members of the PML Group Undergraduate Research Corps received Pfizer PREPARE fellowships in support of undergraduate research in organic synthesis, continuing a group tradition from last year (see the news like below for 1999). Jason is working on conjugated polymer synthesis, and Jong is working on synthesis of heterocyclic molecules.
• CONGRATULATIONS!! to Rob Albert (B.S. '00), who received a Fessenden Award at the Awards night this past semester, and has his name on a plaque now. Rob is now working with Wyeth in New Jersey.
• PML was an invited speaker at the Conference on Delocalized Electronic Systems with Unique Structure and Function, Kyoto, Japan, 25 January 2000. His most excellent host was Prof. Hideo Tomioka of Mie University in Tsu. He gave a talk entitled "Exchange Effects in Conjugated Systems Based on Aryl Nitrenes", and was invited to speak on behalf of the US delegation to that meeting (3 out of about 50 attendees). He also gave seminars at Osaka City University, Osaka University, and Mie University during a seminar trip around the Osaka-Kyoto part of Honshu.
• PML was an invited speaker at a mini-symposium of the 219th American Chemical Society Meeting in San Francisco, CA, 26 March 2000. The mini-symposium was organized by Prof. Art Epstein in honor of Prof. Joel Miller's A.C.S. prize for creative work in inorganic chemistry. PML's talk was entitled "Organic Radicals in Molecular Magnetic Materials".
• The group welcomed Prof. Fernando Palacio for a two-day visit on 29-30 April 2000. Prof. Palacio came here from the University of Zaragoza in Spain to talk about magnetic susceptibility studies done by his group on molecules from group. He also gave a great, special seminar about prospects for raising the ordering temperature in pure organic solids. Thanks for visiting us, Fernando!
• The Lahti and Palacio group's have received a Fullbright grant in support of exchange visits for collaborative science between the USA and Spain. This will give some members of the group the chance to visit Spain and meet with other scientists engaged in studies of molecular magnetism.
• The group welcomed Prof. Michio Sorai and his wife Noriko for a one-day visit on 2 August 2000. Prof. Sorai came here from Osaka University to talk about 0.2-300 K heat capacity studies done by his group on molecules from Jacqueline Ferrer. The findings will be very interesting in terms of understanding the magnetic susceptibility of hydrogen-bonded organic radicals. Keep checking the page for final results!
• PML's new book, Magnetic Properties of Organic Materials (Marcel Dekker) is selling well! Please buy it! Help advance his retirement fund!