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Free
Radicals Era (1963-1979)
1963
Ph.D. John H. Birely (Chem) has recently assumed the position of
associate vice president for laboratory programs of the UC-managed laboratories
in the UC Office of the President. According to UCOP’s press release,
Birely “has held numerous senior leadership positions with the Department
of Defense and advising the U.S. Strategic Command and Defense Intelligence
Agency,” in addition to having served at Los Alamos National Lab. He was
appointed in November as part of UC’s efforts to strengthen its management
of the national laboratories.
In October 2003, President Bush named John I. Brauman (Chem), the
J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, as one
of eight pioneering researchers to receive the 2002 National Medal of
Science. The award recognizes his contributions in “advancing scientific
knowledge by demonstrating differences in chemical reactivity in the presence
or absence of solvent, making it possible to infer the role solvent plays
in chemical stability and reactivity.” He was also cited for “developing
techniques for exploring and enhancing understanding of energy transfer
and its effect on chemical dynamics.” John was a member of the College
of Chemistry’s Advisory Board from 2000 to 2003.
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1965
Ph.D. Darsh Wasan (ChemE) was elected to the National Academy of
Engineering this year, cited for “pioneering research, inspirational teaching,
and the development of novel technology in colloidal
processing and interfacial rheology.” He is Motorola Chair Professor of
Chemical Engineering and Vice President of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
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1966
M.S. Ramachandran Krishnamurthy (ChemE) retired from Rayonier in
2003 after almost 30 years’ service in finance, marketing, strategic planning,
operations, and international business development, including eight years
of overseas assignments. He plans to do some consulting in international
business development for corporations and other organizations.
Ph.D. Ohio Dominican University celebrated the 45th Jubilee of
Sister Mary Andrew Matesich (Chem) this past February, honoring
her long and distinguished career. As president of ODU from 1978 until
2001, her visionary leadership brought about many innovations and advances
in the university, its community, and beyond (also see Class Notes Spring
2002 regarding her induction into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame and her
establishment of many programs to help disadvantaged students). She has
been a strong national advocate for higher education and for private colleges
and universities.
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1967
B.S. Richard “Dick” G. Luthy (ChemE) was appointed chair of the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University.
His research includes cleanup of contaminated sediments in San Francisco
Bay.
Ph.D. Victor H. Edwards (ChemE) and his wife, Mary, celebrated
their 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to Alaska with friends last
year. They now have five delightful grandchildren. As process director
for Aker Kvaerner in Houston, he is increasingly involved with process
safety. He was honored last year with a service award from the Process
Safety Center at Texas A&M University.
The Glenn T. Seaborg Award for Nuclear Chemistry this year went to Donald
G. Fleming (Chem) for his groundbreaking inquiries into basic chemistry
with his pioneering uses of subatomic muons in probing complex chemical
problems. He is professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
and his research using their TRIUMF cyclotron has produced valuable data
on the chemical reaction rates of the muonium atom, which has a direct
impact on theoretical understanding of quantum mass effects in chemical
reactivity, and provides rigorous tests of chemical reaction rate theories.
Postdoc. Mario G. Buzzolini (Chem), who was the assistant to the
president of Sandoz Prodotti Farmaceutici in Milan, recently retired,
and is doing private consulting. He makes his home in Viaganello, Switzerland.
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1968
M.S. Nirmal Chatterjee (See 1971 Ph.D. ChemE)
1969
Ph.D. Christopher A. Lipinski (Chem) is the winner of the 2004
Division of Medicinal Chemistry Award of the ACS Division of Medicinal
Chemistry. The award recognizes his work on the “rule of 5,” a tool for
drug discovery chemists that helps to predict which compounds will have
poor oral absorption. He is adjunct senior research fellow at Pfizer Global
Research and Development Groton Labs in Connecticut.
1971
Ph.D. This summer, Nirmal “Chat” Chatterjee (ChemE, also
1968 M.S.) will retire as Air Products and Chemicals’ vice president of
EH&S and corporate engineering. He joined Air Products in 1971 and
in 1985 became a manager of engineering technology, where he was an expert
in LNG (liquefied natural gas). He also pioneered new methods in storage
safety and advanced controls, and initiated major efforts in plant productivity
and process innovations that are used in plants today. He received APCI’s
Chairman’s Award and was named vice president of technology in 1992. His
current position came in 2000, when the company combined all of its environmental,
health, and safety functions into one global organization. Last year,
APCI also added its quality efforts to Chat’s EH&S domain to accomplish
similar standards of consistency and excellence. Chat is working hard
during these final months to ensure a smooth transition. He and his wife,
Ellen, will leave Pennsylvania for sunny Sparks, Nevada, where they will
pursue their interests of reading, history, and travel. He writes that
when not traveling, he plans on doing “not a damn thing, and most days
I won’t start that till 11:00 in the morning.”
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1972
Ph.D. At the end of April this year, Thomas J. Dietsche
(Chem) “hung up his spurs” at Dow Chemical, where he had worked for over
30 years, most recently as a project manager. Tom is also a Six Sigma
Black Belt and Local Champion. Cost reductions at Dow led to his position
being eliminated, and Tom was happy to seize the opportunity to retire
slightly sooner than he had planned. He and his wife, Laura J. (Rains)
Dietsche (1993 Ph.D. ChemE), have two boys, and Tom looks forward
to
spending more time with them and being more involved with school and church
activities. He writes, “So I will not be bored. And I might even do a
round or two of golf now and then.”
1973
Ph.D. C. Grant Willson (Chem, also 1962, B.S.) received this year’s
ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science. According to C&EN, “Every advanced
microcircuit, microprocessor, dynamic random access memory, and Flash
memory produced today is made using chemically amplified resists that
he and his colleagues and students developed.” After graduation, he taught
at Cal State Long Beach and UC San Diego and, in 1978, joined IBM, where
he did groundbreaking work in resist performance—the key to improving
the resolution of the printing process that defines circuit elements.
While at IBM, he also spearheaded fundamental work in liquid-crystalline
polymers—materials for such areas as nonlinear optics and for magnetic
data storage, specialized ceramics, and electronics-grade dielectrics
In 1993, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas, Austin, where
he is Rashid Engineering Regent Chair and professor of chemistry and chemical
engineering.
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1974
Postdoc. 2003 was another outstanding year for Klaas Bergmann
(Chem): he received an honorary doctorate from the Latvian University,
Riga, and was named winner of the Max Planck Forschungspreis in Physics,
given for international collaboration in physics research.
1975
M.S. Mercury News Online reported that David Medeiros (ChemE)
became vice president of manufacturing at Questcor Pharmaceuticals in
Union City, CA, last August. His prior position was senior director of
manufacturing at Titan Pharmaceuticals, and before that he had served
for seven years as director of GMP manufacturing at SyStemix. He had also
worked at Collagen, Atlantic Richfield, and Cordis Dow.
Ph.D. Robin Clark (Chem) reports, “It’s been a good year for me,
with one drug approval (Aloxi for cancer chemotherapy induced nausea and
emesis) and another to go before the FDA next week (Ranex for angina).”
He notes that it is satisfying to see the drugs get to patients in need.
Yet another ACS award to report: Richard A. Houghten (Chem) is
this year’s recipient of the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry,
given “for his internationally recognized scientific and entrepreneurial
achievement in peptide and combinatorial chemistry—including his revolutionary
tea-bag synthetic technique, exploited worldwide for pharmaceutical discovery.”
(The tea-bag method for parallel synthesis of peptides uses solvent-permeable
packets to synthesize and separate unique homogeneous sequences.) In addition
to his many publications, patents, and awards, he founded the Journal
of Peptide Research and numerous businesses and non-profits to promote
the commercialization and development of the tea-bag method of solid-phase
synthesis, among other objectives. These include Multiple Peptide Systems,
San Diego, Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, and Houghten
Pharmaceuticals, later called Trega Biosciences. He is also founder and
CEO of Mixture Sciences in San Diego.
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1978
M.S. The San Francisco Chronicle featured Steven
A. Hill (ChemE) for his contributions to the creation of realistic-looking
stage dueling. He was highly praised by directors and actors for his recent
work as choreographer and fight director for the Role Players Ensemble
Theatre’s production of “The Three Musketeers.” He is adept in European
weaponry, such as swords, rapiers, and bullwhips, but he is also well
versed in Shaolin kung-fu and tae kwon do. With a law degree from Hastings,
he has worked for 23 years as a permit evaluation manager for the Bay
Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco. He and his wife,
Carolyn Cox, a Bay Area actress, have two daughters.
1979
B.S. After co-founding Wright Williams & Kelly in Pleasanton,
CA, a manufacturing optimization software and consulting company, in 1991
and selling it in 1995, David W. Jiminez (ChemE) was pleased to
have the opportunity to lead an employee buyout in August 2003. He is
now WWK’s president and looks forward to working this year on a special
SRC/Sematech project with Lee Schruben, UC Berkeley professor of Industrial
Engineering and Operations Research.
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