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Elect (8/05-06) Barbara Garrison Chair-Elect (8/05-06) Bruce D. Kay Secretary/Treasurer (8/01-06) Kenneth D. Jordan |
Vice-Chair (8/05-06) Gregory A. Voth Vice-Chair Elect (8/05-06) Laurie J. Butler Past Chair (8/05-06) David Nesbitt |
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EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE |
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Mark A. Johnson (06-09) Yale University Branka M. Ladanyi (05-08), Colorado State University Robert J. Levis (03-06) Temple University |
William F. Polik (06-09) Hope College William F. Schneider (05-08) Notre Dame University Gustavo E. Scuseria (06-09) Rice University |
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COUNCILORS |
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John E. Adams (06-08) University of Missouri, Columbia John T. Yates (05-07) University of Pittsburgh |
Michael R. Berman (06-08) AFOSR Ellen Stechel (04-06) Ford Motor Company |
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ALTERNATE COUNCILORS |
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Patricia Thiel (04-06) Iowa State University Peter B. Armentrout (05-07) University of Utah |
Anne Meyers Kelley (05-07) University of California, Merced Edwin J. Heilweil (06-08) NIST |
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BIOPHYSICAL SUBDIVISION |
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Chair (8/05-06) Jay R. Winkler Chair Elect (8/05-06) Jeffrey Saven |
Vice-Chair (8/05-06) Cecilia Clementi Past Chair (8/05-06) Benoit Roux |
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THEORETICAL SUBDIVISION |
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Chair (8/05-06) Krishnan Raghavachari Chair-Elect (8/05-06) Angel Garcia |
Vice-Chair (8/05-06) Todd G. Martinez Secretary (8/05-06) Jan Steckel Past Chair (8/05-06) Sharon Hammes-Schiffer |
The Fall National ACS Meeting in San Francisco is coming up September 10-14, and I hope that all of you will participate in the excellent program that Bruce Kay has put together. The list of symposia is given later in this newsletter. The full technical program will be available later at the ACS web site.
Award winners from Spring 2006 in Atlanta. Each Spring meeting we honor the winners of the ACS awards related to Physical Chemistry with a symposium in their honor. Special congratulations to Hans Anderson, Fleming Crim, Ken Eisenthal, Don Levy and Don Truhlar. In addition, we give awards for the best student posters. The awardees for the Spring 2006 meeting in Atlanta are given later in this newsletter. Their pictures can be found on the web (http://hackberry.chem.trinity.edu/PHYS/PosterAwardWinnersS06.htm).
Volunteers needed: The PHYS Division functions because of the excellent volunteers within the division. I would like to invite all Physical Division members to become more active in the Division, as officers or executive committee members or as symposium organizers. If you are interested in being an officer or being on the Executive Committee, please contact me (bjg@psu.edu), and I will forward your name to the Nominating Committee. If you would like to organize a symposium, Laurie Butler (L-Butler@uchicago.edu) is Program Chair for the year 2008. Greg Voth already has symposia organized for the year 2007.
Finally, I would like to thank the officers and staff of the Physical Division for their dedication and hard work. In particular, the past two Chairs, David Nesbitt and Jim Skinner, have provided the sort of sage advice and emotional support that has made my job as Program Chair and now Chair much easier. Our Secretary/Treasurer, Ken Jordan, and his assistant, Elaine Springel, continue to work tirelessly on behalf of the Division. This year is their fifth and final year in this capacity, and I would especially like to give them thanks from all of us in the Division. Their efforts have been essential to the smooth running of the PHYS Division. I am delighted to announce that Anne McCoy from Ohio State, a former member of the Executive Committee, has agreed to take on the responsibilities of Secretary-Treasurer of the Physical Division for the next five years.
In summary, we can all take great pride in the health and vitality of physical chemistry. Let's keep up the good work!
Dear PHYS Division Member:
The Bylaws of the Division of Physical Chemistry, approved in 1999, call for the Division Chair to appoint a three-person, Nominating Committee before the spring meeting. A complete slate of candidates prepared by this committee will consist of one candidate for Vice-Chair-Elect, one candidate for each vacancy on the Executive Committee, and one candidate for each vacancy that may have developed in the ranks of the division Councilors, Alternate Councilors, and Secretary/Treasurer position. The Vice-Chair-Elect automatically becomes the Vice-Chair, Chair-Elect, Chair, and Immediate past-Chair in each succeeding year. Thus, this person makes a commitment to serve five years on the Executive Committee. In the year this person serves as Chair-Elect, the duties of Program Chair are also his or hers. The term of office for other Executive Committee members, Councilors, and Alternate Councilors is three years. The Secretary/Treasurer serves five years.
The Secretary/Treasurer is required to announce the slate of candidates in the fall newsletter.
To increase the input of the members in this nominating process and to broaden the pool of candidates, the Executive Committee seeks input directly from members for use by the Nominating Committee. Any member may suggest nominees to any of the officers of the PHYS division in writing. The nominee must agree to serve.
Additional nominations can come from the membership in the following fashion: A petition candidate must be supported by the signatures of not fewer than 4% of the members of the PHYS division in good standing (presently approximately 4,000). No signature shall be valid if it appears on more than one nominating petition for the same vacancy during the same calendar year. A letter shall be submitted from each petition nominee stating willingness to be a candidate for election and to serve the Division for a full term if elected. No nominee may be a candidate for more than one vacancy. If nominated for more than one vacancy, the nominee must choose which nomination to accept.
Four weeks from the date of the mailing of the fall newsletter shall be allowed for additional nominations to be received by the Secretary/Treasurer. All valid nominations received within that period shall be accepted and no others. If no valid nominations are forthcoming from the membership, the nominees submitted by the Nominating Committee for Vice-Chair-Elect, Secretary/Treasurer, and membership on the Executive Committee are declared elected. Regardless of whether petition nominees are validated or not, the Bylaws require the Secretary/Treasurer to mail to every PHYS division member a ballot that bears at a minimum the names and biographical sketches of the single candidates for each Councilor and Alternate Councilor vacancy submitted by the Nominating Committee.
New Officers for the PHYS division follow. The first seven physical chemistry officers assumed their respective offices at the close of the national meeting in Philadelphia, PA. The Councilors and vice-councilors begin their terms of service on January 1, 2006.
The Physical Chemistry Division thanks outgoing officers David Nesbitt (Chair), Barbara Garrison (Chair-Elect), Bruce D. Kay (Vice-Chair), Gregory A. Voth (Vice-Chair-Elect), Stephen Bradforth (Executive Committee), John Hellgeth (Executive Committee), Jeanne Robinson (Executive Committee), Alvin L. Kwiram (Councilor), John E. Adams (Councilor), and Gil Nathanson (Alternate Councilor) for their service to the Division.
This newsletter contains information about the ACS national meetings and any other items of interest to significant numbers of PHYS Division members. All members of the PHYS Division are welcome to submit items to the Secretary for inclusion in this newsletter. The deadlines are generally around December 1 and May 1 for the newsletters appearing before the Spring and Fall ACS meetings, respectively. Submissions may be made via mail, FAX, or e-mail.
The current ACS Bylaws & Regulations may be viewed at:
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/Chemistry?PID=acsdisplay.html&DOC=committees%5Ccnb%5Cindex.html.
Click on the link to Documents of the Committee and then on the link to Charter, Constitution, Bylaws, and Regulations of the American Chemical Society (Bulletin 5). A copy of the bylaws and regulations is also included on the Division's web page (http://hackberry.chem.trinity.edu/PHYS.)
I appreciate this opportunity to update members of PHYS on several ACS governance issues that were discussed at the national meeting in Atlanta.
Governance Review Task Force
Most of the behind-the-scenes discussions in Atlanta stemmed from the report
of the Governance Review Task Force, which was established to brainstorm ways
to improve the governance structure and operations of the ACS. Discussion
points that have emerged from the Task Force to date include items such as
liberalizing the requirements for membership in the Society, bringing the
current Student Affiliates in as Student Members, regionalizing some of the
governance, centralizing the National Meeting program planning, expanding the
participation of non-Councilors in governance, reducing the number of
Councilors, and others. Inasmuch as these discussion points do not necessarily
represent the consensus of the Task Force, some of them are contradictory,
some surely would have unintended consequences, and others address problems
that could be addressed without any change in the governance structure. I have
no doubt that we will be hearing more about these issues in the future, but
how much of the heat generated will turn into useful work is yet to be
determined.
Meeting of the ACS Council, March 29, 2006
One of the duties of the Council is to select two candidates for
President-Elect of the Society from a list of four nominees. The four nominees
were Bruce Bursten (U. of Tennesse, Knoxville), Richard Eisenberg (U. of
Rochester), Bassam Shakhashiri (U. of Wisconsin, Madison), and Matthew Tirrell
(UC Santa Barbara). Chosen for this fall's ballot were Profs. Bursten and
Shakhashiri, who will be joined by any petition candidates who might qualify
for inclusion.
The Council also received reports from the elected officers of the Society and
from various committees. I will not bore you here with a recounting of those
reports, but I will pick out a few items in which you might have an interest.
The Board of Directors has established a committee, the Program Review
Advisory Group (PRAG), that will conduct a systematic review of ACS programs
and make recommendations to the Society Committee on Budget and Finance
regarding the "value, performance, efficiency, and cost effectiveness" of
these programs. A quarter of the ACS programs will be evaluated each year,
with the review this year focusing on programs that fall under the general
headings of Science Literacy and Public Communication. I have been appointed
to this committee for 2006. We plan to have this year's review done by the
middle of August, in time for the San Francisco national meeting.
Last year was a good year financially for the ACS due to strong performances from the business units of the Society (Chemical Abstracts and Publications) and higher-than-expected returns on Society investments. At this point, we are have nearly recouped the losses experienced in the economic downturn of 2001 and 2002, although the inflation-adjusted figures still trail what we saw in 1999. The dues increase of $5 approved for 2007 will keep the support for programs coming from dues (and that includes the allotments going directly to the Divisions) ahead of inflation, but just barely.
Recent Council meetings have featured an open discussion session on a particular topic. In Atlanta, the discussion centered on qualifications for membership in the ACS. We heard both extremes of opinion, from granting full membership to anyone with an interest in chemistry to retaining or tightening the current requirements, which are tied to education and/or job experience. There seemed to be a preference, though, for loosening the admission requirements somewhat, and I know that the Committee on Membership Affairs is seriously entertaining proposals to drop the Associate Member category - you may not even know that there is such a category of membership - and to bring the current Student Affiliates into the Society as Student Members, perhaps with only a subset of the privileges of full membership. Such changes could not be implemented overnight, though, because they would involve changes in the Constitution and Bylaws of the ACS. The safe money is on these issues being with us for several years.
Subdivision membership is free to dues-paying members or affiliates of the Division of Physical Chemistry. To join the Biophysical Subdivision, notify the Chair, Jay Winkler, at the address in the table of officers. Indicate that you wish to join and mention that you belong to the PHYS Division. If you do not belong to the Division, you may join both the Division and the Biophysical Subdivision by completing the application form at the end of this newsletter.
Subdivision membership is free to dues-paying members or affiliates of the Division of Physical Chemistry. To join the Theoretical Subdivision, notify the Chair, Krishnan Raghavachari, at the address in the table of officers. Indicate that you wish to join and mention that you belong to the PHYS Division. If you do not belong to the Division, you may join both the Division and the Theoretical Subdivision by completing the application form at the end of this newsletter.
The winners of the Physical Chemistry Student Poster Award Competition at the Spring 2006 ACS meeting in Atlanta, GA, were:
Congratulations to the presenters of these excellent posters! Each winner received $300 and a signed award certificate. The Physical Chemistry Division thanks the many other people who entered the competition and also the anonymous and impartial judges.
The Executive Committee solicits formal suggestions for symposia and speakers for the meetings to be held in future years. The Executive Committee will meet in San Francisco, CA in September, 2006, to plan the programs for 2008. Please send your suggestions to the 2008 Program Chair, Laurie J. Butler, at the address in the table of officers. The deadline for receipt of suggestions is November 1, 2006. These suggestions will be essential input for organizing the programs of the meetings. For greatest effectiveness, follow these guidelines:
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226th ACS National Meeting |
Combinatorial Biophysical Chemistry & Molecular Evolution |
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227th ACS National Meeting |
Emerging Ultrafast Spectroscopies: From
Chemistry to Biophysics |
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228th ACS National Meeting |
Advances in Quantum Chemistry: Theory, Algorithms, & Applications |
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229th ACS National Meeting |
Applications of Physical Chemistry to Environmental & Biogeochemical
Research |
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230th ACS National Meeting |
Charger Transfer Processes: Making Connections |
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231st ACS National Meeting |
Emerging Issues in Atmospheric Science: A Physical Chemistry Perspective |
The 232nd American Chemical Society National Meeting will take place insane Francisco, CA, during the week of September 10-14, 2006. Dr. Bruce D. Kay, 2006 Physical Chemistry Division Program Chair, has arranged a broad range of topics in modern physical chemistry to be featured in symposia and a general poster session at this meeting. The topical symposia and their organizers are:
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VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE A significant portion of the Division’s annual income is provided by the ACS, based in part on Division members’ attendance at the national meetings. On the advance meeting registration form, you will see a question such as that given below. If you list the Physical Division, you will contribute to our income and allow the Division to offer better symposia. “Please list ALL of the division(s) to which you belong:__________________________.” |
Program Chair: Program Chair: Gregory A. Voth, Department of Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112; voth@chem.utah.edu
Online abstract submission for this meeting begins in September, 2006. Please see http://oasys.acs.org/ for abstract submission access and guidelines. Only electronic abstracts via the ACS online submittal system, OASys, will be accepted, except by special arrangement with the ACS symposium organizers. You can check the Division's website for specific deadlines. The web page is http://hackberry.chem.trinity.edu/PHYS.
Submit your abstract online at the ACS website: http://oasys.acs.org/. Please see the following for more information regarding submission. As is now customary, Program Chair Voth has arranged for the presentation of contributed talks in each of the topical symposia. The contributed talks will be selected by the individual symposium organizers from among abstracts that explicitly request consideration for oral presentation. The criterion for selection will be close connection with the topics addressed in the symposia. Abstracts not selected for oral presentation will be assigned to the poster session(s), unless the authors request otherwise. Since the organizers will not be able to accommodate all requests, the poster sessions will be specifically organized to group posters by symposium topic. While the symposia do cover a wide range of topics, they cannot cover the full depth and breadth of physical chemistry. The Division, therefore, also welcomes general contributions to the poster sessions, which will be grouped by subject area.
The planned symposia and their organizers are:
A speaker may give, at most, one invited talk in the PHYS Division in any given meeting. Note that this rule does not apply to contributed talks and posters, so there is still plenty of opportunity for all physical chemists to present their research results in the PHYS Division.
Abstract Requirements: Submit a 150-word abstract via the ACS web-based submission system, OASys. Submission instructions and information on abstract requirements can be found at the ACS Web site, http://www.acs.org/meetings.
Request for Contributed Oral Presentations: Authors who submit a contributed paper to the program and wish their abstract to be considered for possible oral presentation in a topical symposium must indicate such preference. The abstract should be submitted to the symposium in which oral presentation is desired and is due one week prior to the deadline.
General Papers – Members are cordially invited to present papers at the poster sessions. Abstracts should be submitted as instructed on the ACS Meetings web page, http://www.acs.org/meetings. The deadline, as published in C&E News, on the OASys web site, and the call for papers must be observed to allow the ACS to compile the program and to print and to circulate the abstracts.
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San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006 Program Chair: Bruce D. Kay |
Chicago, IL, March 25-29, 2007 Program Chair: Gregory A. Voth |
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Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007 Program Chair: Gregory A. Voth |
New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008 Program Chair: Laurie J. Butler |
We invite you to encourage non-members to join the PHYS division. It is the professional organization devoted to physical chemistry and physical chemists and can be most successful with maximum participation by physical chemists. Some of the more practical advantages of membership are:
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