tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69801780093302230882024-03-05T02:39:00.947-05:00EveryWhereChemistryRigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-1293426223225879172019-08-26T13:00:00.000-04:002019-09-13T12:59:35.774-04:00Vote Hernandez for ACS District IV Director<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The election for the District IV Director of the American Chemical Society will take place in October, and I'm privileged to be a candidate to for my third and final term. District IV roughly covers the Southeastern United States interpreted broadly, starting from just west of Texas through Georgia and South Carolina to the East. It also includes Oklahoma, and parts of Tennessee and Arkansas all the way to Florida and Puerto Rico to the South. If you are an ACS member, please vote! And if you are in the District IV, I would be honored to have your vote. My platform is available online at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/rigoberto4acs">http://tinyurl.com/rigoberto4acs</a>. I include below the transcript of the recording that will soon be available on line at the ACS 2019 election website: <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/elections/2019-acs-national-election-information.html">https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/elections/2019-acs-national-election-information.html</a>.<br />
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If you want to see the evolution of my election videos, check out the previous ones at:<br />
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<a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/nKkRYS3hDAojN5wy8">https://images.app.goo.gl/nKkRYS3hDAojN5wy8</a> (2016)</div>
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<a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/1eUHt8MVPnPNjQaCA">https://images.app.goo.gl/1eUHt8MVPnPNjQaCA</a> (2013)</div>
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As for the 2019 election video, here's the transcript:<br />
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<i>"Thank you for being a member, and being engaged in our Society. I can barely believe that I started on this journey as your District Director six years ago. Our world was a very different place then, but one thing remains constant. And that is the need for the ACS to advance chemical science and technology in the service of our society, our members and you. I have been privileged to represent your voice on the Board. As a researcher, educator and innovator, I have also brought new perspectives to the Board representing the needs of our diverse mid-career members using our products and services.</i><br />
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<i>I have focused on three of ACS’s core values: The value proposition of ACS membership, science advocacy, and education of the chemical workforce. My efforts in these areas are visible through committee service roles, oral presentations, written articles, and frequent communications with your Council representatives.</i><br />
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<i>The power of the ACS lies in part in a single fact: 150,000 members. Some of us are no longer practicing chemistry in the sense of what we learned directly in school. Yet we continue to be “chemists” —that is, ACS members— because we retain a logic and approach to solving problems that is rooted in our discipline.</i><br />
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<i>Our size helps us in our science advocacy in Congress promoting the support of basic research and development, and scientific literacy in our nation. But it has not stopped me from promoting</i><br />
<i>the need for private philanthropy of the high-risk, high-reward projects that are essential for future advances.</i><br />
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<i>Of course, all of our work is for naught if we don’t maintain our educational mission. We must support K-12, Project Seed and ACS Scholars as they help train the next generation of chemists. I have also worked to add additional offerings for our life-long members on subjects ranging from managing diversity through my OXIDE program, to mid-career Academic Leadership Training (ALT) workshops.</i><br />
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<i>Finally, in my role on the Board, I have had the opportunity to visit several local sections, including my very own Georgia —23 years and counting!—, Greater Houston, South Florida, Nashville, Puerto Rico and the hosting sections of our regional meetings. So I'm asking for your ideas to help me reimagine our society. I'm asking for your vote so that I can continue to work with you to advance our ACS.</i><br />
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<i>Please find me on twitter, @EveryWhereChemistry, or e-mail me at r.hernandez@acs.org</i><br />
<i>Remember… Your vote has power only if you use it... "</i></div>
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-3580784928784664152019-03-24T19:00:00.000-04:002019-03-24T19:00:05.194-04:00Using dice, fuzzy or not, to move molecules<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This post has been a long tine coming... I wrote it back in May 2015, and somehow in the middle of things, I forgot to hit "publish." While we have done quite a bit of work with this model since then, maybe you'll still enjoy our crazy analogy to playing dice with particles at the mesoscale...<br />
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Some time ago, I published what might seem as yet another paper describing the properties of our model for (coarse-grained) large-scale macromolecules. A critical part of the model is that we roll dice every time these particles collide so as to decide whether they bounce or go through each other. They can overlap, because at intermediate length scales, they don't behave like rocks even if they occupy space. Despite our simple (and dicey) model, in our earlier papers, we showed that our particles give rise to the same structure as the corresponding particles that would interact through typical (so-called soft) interactions. But Einstein's famous quote about God not playing dice with the universe (albeit in a different context) serves as a warning that our particles might not move in analogous ways to those driven by Newton's deterministic laws. In our most recent paper, we confirmed that our particles (if they live in one dimension) do recover deterministic dynamics at sufficiently long (that is, coarse-grained) length scales. That's a baby step towards using our model in human-scale (three) dimensions. So there are more papers to come!<br />
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The work was performed (and the paper was written) with my recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Galen Craven, and a Research Scientist, Dr. Alex Popov. It's basic research and I'm happy to say that It was supported by the National Science Foundation. The title of the article is "Stochastic dynamics of penetrable rods in one dimension: Entangled dynamics and transport properties," and it was recently published at <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4918370"><i>J. Chem. Phys</i>. <b>142</b>, 154906 (2015)</a>.Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-1211028124769117522019-03-17T19:00:00.000-04:002019-03-17T20:42:26.499-04:00Engineered gold nanoparticles can be like ice cream scoops covered in chocolate sprinkles <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are many ways to interrogate molecular phenomenon. You might think that this is restricted to physical measurements such as direct observation with a microscope, a laser, or more seemingly arcane observation with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). But I’m happy to report that observation of computer simulations is yet another, as long as our models are sufficiently accurate that they mimic reality perfectly. In today’s age when it’s hard to see the difference between CGI and real humans, this may not sound surprising. Nevertheless, the question is what can we learn from observation of real and simulated systems in tandem?<br />
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I’m happy to report that my student Gene Chong and Cathy Murphy’s student Meng Wu did precisely this parallel study. Gene made simulations of a simpler system, involving nanoparticles covered by lipids called MUTABs. Meng made NMR measurements of nanoparticles covered by a similar but somewhat longer lipids called MTABs. (Note that if you are worried about the term nuclear in NMR, as in nuclear energy, don’t be. We are just looking at the positions of the nuclei, not spitting them apart. It was the concern over this misunderstanding that led to the use of such a device to look at your body in detail to be called MRI instead of NMR!) The happy result was that the two observations agreed. But only together did Meng’s and Gene’s observations show clearly that the lipids didn’t always cover the nanoparticle smoothly like melted chocolate on ice cream, but rather assembled like sprinkles all pointing out in the same direction packed together in different islands on the surface. This structure means that lipid-decorated nanoparticles will have shape and response to other systems that you might not otherwise anticipate. And this opens the question to our next set of investigations as we chart a course to understand the interactions between nanoparticles and biological components such as membranes.<br />
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If you want more detail, check out our <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/jacs.8b11445">article</a> in JACS, just recently published! That is, <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/jacs.8b11445"><i>JACS</i> <b>141</b>, 4316 (2019)</a>, and I'm happy to report that it was funded by the NSF CCI program for our <a href="http://susnano.wisc.edu/">Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology</a>.<br />
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-81536980480767535102019-03-05T09:00:00.000-05:002019-03-05T09:17:30.114-05:00Deleted edits from my Comment on diversity and inclusion<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLitYCUXNo9tqHrcttAsMadAKttFNUElYC7m-fqq6xv7ul24Qr5W7fD6gQpwOWV7dPzrCkc90s3KyplDlis3-ucUvnitcGGmXWDTvg-tbqZR4bEBudC78_hNX4QSd9zVbh9g-oJbMd6S4/s1600/IMG_4114.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLitYCUXNo9tqHrcttAsMadAKttFNUElYC7m-fqq6xv7ul24Qr5W7fD6gQpwOWV7dPzrCkc90s3KyplDlis3-ucUvnitcGGmXWDTvg-tbqZR4bEBudC78_hNX4QSd9zVbh9g-oJbMd6S4/s200/IMG_4114.jpeg" width="200" /></a><br />
When writing a Comment in any magazine, you invariably have a word limit. It's also important to stay on message so that readers won't get lost in the weeds. Thankfully, C&EN has great editors, and it was a pleasure to work with them to write my recent Comment (details at bottom) to help me stay on message. Indeed, while I appreciate the power of blogging and writing unfettered, there is great value in a strong editor. I am thankful that we still have them in the publishing world. In case, though, you want to see some of the weeds that got cut out, here's your sneak peak:<br />
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"An evocative triple or triad for managing diversity and advancing inclusive excellence is Support. Compliance, and Adjudication."<br />
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"Compliance is necessary in today’s world because we have seen that without it, systems tend to move out of whack, but it tends to be seen to be about protecting an administration from legal attacks."<br />
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"Adjudication provides a mechanism to resolve conflicts between aggrieved parties, but who decides which party is in the right or wrong, and how can we be sure that they are fully supporting the individuals fairly."<br />
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"Does a member trust us an authoritative source of information? Does a member trust us to prepare them throughout their professional career progression? Does a member trust us even when we tell them that they are wrong? If we are to foster a healthy diversity culture within our Society, we need to be able to do all of this while still being a single organization."<br />
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"This [a workshop held at Barnard] included 1-point gains on a 5-point scale on four of the six objectives: (1) the difference and importance of transactional solutions vs. policy solutions as it pertains to managing diversity equity and inclusion, (2) factors for administering recruitment, mentoring, tenure and promotion processes that advance inclusive excellence, (3) evidence-based strategies for addressing known barriers within a department so as to reduce existing diversity inequities, and (4) supporting and communicating inclusive excellence. Our targeted learning outcomes clearly resonate with the three legs of our managing diversity table and our approach to managing them. "<br />
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"The perhaps surprising outcome is that the practices necessary to manage diversity are simply the applications of good management to achieve a targeted outcome, which in this case is inclusive excellence."<br />
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"The courses offered by the ACS through the Leadership Advisory Board (LAB) where essential to me as I have developed as a leader, and I’m happy to recommend then to you so as to learn the underlying principles of management."<br />
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I also hope that you have a chance to read my recent Comment in C&EN on "Bringing diversity and inclusion to the ACS table." (<a href="https://cen.acs.org/acs-news/comment/Bringing-diversity-inclusion-ACS-table/97/i9">Volume 97, Issue 9, March 2, 2019</a>) If not, please check it out. Access is free if you are an ACS member. Otherwise, you can use one of your 5 free monthly views... And if you are a chemist, <a href="https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i10/ACS-brickmortar-virtual-network-one.html">please consider joining.</a><br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-54986968204849900982016-09-30T06:00:00.000-04:002016-09-30T07:13:26.018-04:00On celebrating my 11th and last Herty Medal Dinner as Host<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The <a href="http://georgia.sites.acs.org/">Georgia Local Section</a> of the <a href="http://acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> has a deep history in recognizing research and service toward the advancement of chemistry in the nation’s service. The first of the Herty Medals was awarded in 1933 to Fred Allison. Charles Herty was honored with the award in the following year. As of September 16th of this year, we have now awarded 82 gold medals to deserving chemists in the southeastern United States. The most recent Medalist was Prof. Brooks Pate from the University of Virginia who was recognized for "his work in revolutionizing molecular rotational spectroscopy and its applications in astrochemistry and analytical chemistry and for his service in mentoring diverse students through a summer undergraduate research program.” His seminar illustrated how his key insight of spectral theory allowed him to develop an approach for capturing the spectra in a single experiment rather than using a series of single frequency measurements. The speed and accuracy of this technique has played a key role in reimagining the field of astrochemistry.<br />
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On a personal level, I was pleased to see Brooks again after we had been lab mates in Kevin Lehmann’s laboratory at Princeton. I was an undergraduate while I saw him sail through his candidacy exams. On a different personal level, this most recent Herty Medal dinner also marked the eleventh and last dinner for which I chaired the corresponding selection committee. The list of nominees is outstanding and this made settling on a finalist all the more difficult each and every year. Nevertheless, with the able help of my committee colleagues, we developed a process that allowed us to sort through the nominees carefullly and thoughtfully. We pre-screened all of them electronically prior to our in-person meeting. The two- to three- hour discussion led to a deeper understanding of the candidates, and often resulted in a final choice which our individual assessments had rarely predicted. During my term as Chair of the Herty Medal Selection Committee, we also had the opportunity to do up the 75th Herty Medal celebration. For the fist and only time, we have nearly 15 Herty Medalists return to Atlanta to commemorate them and chemistry in the Southeastern United States. We staged several one-time activities reaching out to students and professionals of all ages. We founded the <a href="https://www.morehouse.edu/academics/chem/blawrenc/hmurs/index.html">Herty Medal Undergraduate Research Symposium (HMURS)</a>, and it continues to support our <a href="http://georgia.sites.acs.org/">Section’s</a> diverse undergraduates. I am thus very proud of what our <a href="http://georgia.sites.acs.org/">Section</a> has accomplished, and thankful to the section for letting me be a part of it. I also look forward to celebrating the 100th Herty Medalist in 2034. Mark your calendars now!Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-89862714074346435322016-09-29T06:00:00.000-04:002016-09-29T06:00:08.290-04:00The talking head video for my District IV Director campaign<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You may recall my <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2016/08/video-segment-on-my-candidacy-for.html">recent post on the making of a video segment</a> for my <a href="http://tinyurl.com/hernandez4acs">District IV Director election campaign</a>. Well now you can see it...<br />
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<a href="https://vimeo.com/181994545">Check it out here</a>!<br />
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And the election window is coming up... It runs from October 1 to October 30! So if you are an ACS Member living in the SouthEast please vote. Whether you vote for me or not, I will be happy to represent you, if elected. I also welcome your thoughts on how to mate the <a href="http://acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> a better society for all of us!Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-34453853912421410362016-09-12T06:00:00.000-04:002016-09-12T06:00:01.914-04:00District IV Director's Candidate Statement in CEN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As some of you may know,<a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2016/08/video-segment-on-my-candidacy-for.html"> I am running to continue into my second term on the Board of Directors of the American Chemical Society (ACS)</a>. The candidate statements have just appeared in the <a href="http://cen.acs.org/magazine/94/09436.html">September 12th issue</a> of <a href="http://cen.acs.org/">C&EN,</a> and I reproduce mine below. The text is also available on my <a href="http://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/rig/ACS/4/Board_Statement_2016.html">website</a>. If you are a member of the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">ACS</a> and a member of District IV (roughly in the SouthEast of the US), I would very much appreciate your vote!<br />
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Some of you may wonder why I volunteer for the ACS. After all, it takes roughly 160 hours of my time each year to serve the ACS as a Director. That's time that I could be devoting to my research, my students, or (most importantly) my family. Yes, like you, I multi-task and make it work. But the question is why? And the answer is simply that it gives me the opportunity to shape our ACS into a society that works for all of us. My roles as an active research professor, who engages in grants and contracts from government agencies, foundations and industry, gives me currency in the use of many of our offerings. I see directly (through my undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral) students the impact of our career services. As a computational chemist and journal author, I am directly familiar with our journals and electronic platforms for communication. Unfortunately, the Board has traditionally been under-represented by members who are still active in their careers and could provide a balancing perspective for the emerging challenges to our members and our society. For this reason I have felt compelled to serve you on the Board, and I ask that you vote for me so that I may continue doing so.<br />
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<a href="http://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/rig/ACS/4/Board_Statement_2016.html">My Candidate Statement:</a><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">T</span></i><i style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;">he most important element in ACS membership is you. Every one of us, </i><i style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;">cross-linked together through ACS, makes up a personal and professional chemistry network that we can leverage to advance our careers, each other, and chemistry as a whole. Through ACS, we can celebrate that chemistry has a human side, and it must be diverse. The challenge lies in continuing to adapt our structure and our offerings to best serve the broad needs of our fellowship. This is a challenge that cannot be solved once and for all because we, and the world around us, are constantly changing. The opportunity for advancing the interaction and support of chemical scientists like you is what drove me to volunteer to serve as district director, and it is why I would like to continue for another term. </i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I</span></i><i style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', sans-serif;">have focused on three of ACS’s core values: the value proposition of ACS membership, education of the chemical workforce, and science advocacy. The diversity in age, experience, background, worldwide location, race, ethnicity, gender identity and orientation, and ability that makes our fellowship stronger must be addressed through these values and everything we do. My championing of diversity equity on task forces and boards and as the director of OXIDE (Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity) demonstrates my strong commitment to advancing these critical issues within the chemical workforce. As a director, I have spoken with many of you at regional and national meetings, and I wrote two comments inI have focused on three of ACS’s core values: the value proposition of ACS membership, education of the chemical workforce, and science advocacy. The diversity in age, experience, background, worldwide location, race, ethnicity, gender identity and orientation, and ability that makes our fellowship stronger must be addressed through these values and everything we do. My championing of diversity equity on task forces and boards and as the director of OXIDE (Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity) demonstrates my strong commitment to advancing these critical issues within the chemical workforce. As a director, I have spoken with many of you at regional and national meetings, and I wrote two comments in C&EN—<a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i28/Advancing-Chemical-Sciences-Through-">July 14, 2014, pg. 45</a> and <a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i33/Diversity-Academia-Solutions.html">August 24, 2015, pg. 40</a>,—promoting diversity equity and inclusive excellence.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>ACS remains as relevant and necessary today as when it was founded, despite the flattening in accessing information through the internet. As members, you and I are voting affirmatively with our wallets, declaring that chemistry and our network are important. Through this collective action, we are empowering ourselves as a force for change in areas such as energy, sustainability and human health. Nevertheless, our Society, like many others, is facing the challenge of decreasing membership. This is a tide that we must stem. Our size gives us the diversity we need to advance our science. It also signifies a vote of confidence for all of our advocacy and outreach activities. As an ACS Director, I will remain a strong proponent for providing clarity to the value proposition of our membership to each of our present and future members.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Diversity of the emerging chemical workforce translates into a need for using multiple mechanisms in and out of the classroom to engage students in the educational process. As a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer, I have had the opportunity to engage, motivate, and mentor undergraduates though campus visits that provide small-group interactions going well beyond my classroom. (Check out undergraduate <a href="http://www.keyreporter.org/PbkNews/PbkNews/Details/1713.html">Linsey Liles’ recap of my visit</a> to the University of the South in the Key Reporter.) If elected, I hope to continue such visits by engaging local chapters as hosts. I am also keenly aware for the need to continue professional education. I have been involved as a facilitator in the Cottrell Scholars Collaborative New Faculty Workshop (<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cen-09212-comment">C&EN, March 24, 2014, pg. 36</a>). I am also leading a team organizing the Academic Leadership Workshop aimed at supporting midcareer faculty to become university administrators or research directors (<a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i10/Academic-leadership-skills-101.html">C&EN, March 7, 2016, pg. 47</a>). These programs illustrate the power of ACS to catalyze educational opportunities for chemical scientists throughout our lives.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Advances in chemical science and innovation depend critically on public and private support. Advocacy for such efforts can succeed only if we make our science understandable to the public. It is particularly critical for advancing high-risk, high-potential science that tends to receive less funding when budgets are tight (<a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i37/Private-Sectors-Role-Chemistrys-Future.html">C&EN, September 21, 2015, pg. 33</a>). Again, ACS as a professional society is uniquely positioned to provide current understanding of science and to advocate for the chemical challenges that still remain to be understood. I have enjoyed working with ACS staff in advocating for chemical science and the people who do that work.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Through these priorities, I will aim to help our society become a better home for ts members and a more effective partner to the world. The resonating thread that we must advance through these and other initiatives is you. ACS programs can be effective only if they serve your needs and advance your goals. To this end, I look forward to hearing from you through links at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/hernandez4acs">http://tinyurl.com/hernandez4acs</a> to learn more about how to make our ACS fellowship even stronger. I also ask for your vote so that I may continue to work with you and our fellow ACS members to improve your ACS. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-18816652192329060762016-08-22T12:00:00.000-04:002016-08-22T13:54:26.186-04:00Video Segment on my Candidacy for District IV Director<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This Fall, I am running to continue into my second term on the Board of Directors of the American Chemical Society (ACS). As part of our effort to communicate with members, a 2-3 minute video segment of me discussing my vision for the ACS was just recorded today. I'm including the transcript of that statement below so as to give you a spoiler for the video! Feel free to send me your thoughts and suggestions for increasing the value of the ACS to you and chemistry broadly. If you are a member of the ACS and a member of District IV (roughly in the SouthEast of the US), I would also very much appreciate your vote!<br>
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Here's the transcript:<br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The most important element in ACS membership is you. Together we form a personal and professional chemistry network that we all leverage to advance our careers, each other, and chemistry as a whole. Through ACS we celebrate the technical and human sides of chemistry, and both must be diverse. </i></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><br></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The challenge lies in continuing to adapt our structure and our offerings to best serve the broad needs of hour fellowship. This is a challenge that cannot be solved once and for all because we and the world around us are constantly changing. The opportunity for advancing the interaction and support of chemical scientists like you is what drove me to volunteer to serve as District Director, and it is why I would like to continue for another term.</i></span><br>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i><br></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>I have focused on three of ACS’s core values: The value proposition of ACS membership, Education of the chemical workforce, and Science advocacy. The diversity in age, experience, backgrounds, world-wide location, race, ethnicity, gender identity and orientation, and special abilities that makes our fellowship stronger must be addressed through everything we do. My championing of diversity equity on task forces, boards and as the OXIDE Director demonstrates my strong commitment to advancing these critical issues within the chemical workforce. As a Director, I have spoken with many of you at regional and national meetings. I have written several comments in C&EN, promoting diversity equity and inclusive excellence, the integration of teaching and research, and advocacy for public understanding and financial support of the chemical sciences. </i></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>The ACS promotes and advances chemical science and innovation through its on-line platforms, journals, abstract services, conferences, and more. The ACS is also here to help you and all of its members grow professionally through our myriad of educational offerings. All of these programs and offerings are critical in establishing a marketplace of ideas to which you as a member have a privileged entrée while benefiting from the broad scope or our large membership. As a member-driven society, none of these things can happen without you. So I ask that you join me in advancing our society. Contact me electronically or personally through the links at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/hernandez4acs">tinyurl.com/hernandez4acs</a> follow me on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/EveryWhereChem">EveryWhereChem</a>, or read my posts at <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/">EveryWhereChemistry.blogspot.com</a>. VOTE for me, Rigoberto Hernandez, so that I may work with you and our fellow members to advance your ACS.</i></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>Remember… Every Vote Counts!</i></span><br>
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<br>Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-70420185539003373152016-08-18T11:30:00.000-04:002016-08-18T14:13:46.641-04:00Diversity in the Marketplace of Ideas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px;">During my <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2016/03/wandering-through-campus-as.html">Phi Beta Kappa visit</a> to University of Oklahoma back in late March of this year, my host Ron Halterman added a somewhat unusual meeting to my visit. Namely, he arranged for me to go to a recording studio at the local NPR station, <a href="http://kgou.org/">KGOU</a>. While there, I had a conversation with Paige Willett Lough and Merleyn Bell on the work that I’ve been doing to promote diversity equity in chemistry through </span><a href="http://oxide.jhu.edu/" style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px;">OXIDE</a><span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px;">.</span><span style="font-family: -apple-system-font; font-size: 12px;"> In much less than an hour, they recorded enough material to produce a 30-minute show as part of their <a href="http://kgou.org/programs/race-matters">Race Matters</a> series. At first, it wasn’t clear to me who was more nervous, Merleyn or me. I’m pretty sure that it was me, and Merleyn pretended to be so just to make me adjust to the fact that I was staring at a very large microphone. In any event, it was fun to have a conversation about diversity equity and science advocacy, and I thank Ron, Merleyn and Paige for making that happen!</span><br>
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A 30-minute conversation includes a very long narrative that is too long to reproduce here, but I can highlight a few of the points to hopefully peak your interest. (Or you can just use this as your “cliff notes” so as to avoid going further!) The notion that we as scientists are competing in a marketplace, not of physical products, but of ideas is one that intrigues me. We develop and disseminate ideas but it’s hard to own or sell them. Yet it costs money to produce and maintain them. That money comes from the federal government or student tuition, for example. It leads to solutions and products that we all use and pay for. So it’s definitely a marketplace which has real value. For us to remain competitive in this marketplace of ideas, we need to have a diverse cohort of scientists, and this notion frames several of the segments of my discussion. Indeed, it is the need for us to remain competitive in science that drives <a href="http://oxide.jhu.edu/">OXIDE</a> in its work to diversity the faculties in chemistry departments across the US. As a community, we have made significant advances in changing our policies and procedures to advance our climate, and I provided several specific examples. Meanwhile, Merleyn also asked me about how I encourage young people to be scientists. I hope that I do this by example, and by actively engaging and mentoring students when I visit colleges and universities. But scientists need help from the media to amplify our message. To this end, I mentioned that the theme in the “The Martian” —in which science was used frequently as the key to solve his challenges— is a great example of the media promoting science, and not just innovation. </div>
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<a href="http://kgou.org/post/chemist-rigoberto-hernandez-heads-organization-works-toward-diversity-science">Please check out the show by listening to the recording or reading the transcript here.</a></div>
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-8686227633379628382016-07-29T15:00:00.000-04:002016-07-30T06:13:04.156-04:00Bittersweet transitions: Thomas E. Gompf Chair in Chemistry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On July 14th, I received a phone call from my department Chair, Ken Karlin. He was excited to inform me that the Board of Trustees had just approved my appointment as the inaugural holder of the Thomas E. Gompf Chair in Chemistry. Elation! An endowed professorship is a promotion, and provides discretionary funds useful in pursuing new areas of investigation. It is also another sign of support from my department, my Chair, and my Dean showing that they want me to be part of the collective vision for advancing chemistry at Hopkins. But wait… who is Thomas E. Gompf? Will I have a chance to meet him, express my gratitude, share our passion for science, and generally be a good steward of his beneficence? No. He passed away on January 6th of this year. Sadness! Thus my transition into the Chair is bittersweet because the loss of Dr. Gompf is what made the Chair possible in the first place.<br />
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According to the obituary from the Jennings, Nulton, & Mattle Funeral Home in Penfield, NY, Thomas E. Gompf passed away at 90: "Predeceased by his loving wife of 63 years Elaine. He is survived by his son Robert E. (Leslie R.); 2 grandchildren, William "Liam"& Peter; sister, Betty Nordwall; special friend and caregiver Sarah Callahan and family. He retired from Eastman Kodak with over 10 patents to his name.” The titles and subjects of his patents suggest that he was an organic or formulations chemist having developed innovations to make better photographs. Not surprising as he worked at Eastman Kodak.<br />
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That is all I know. But that is enough to know that I have big shoes to fill. The fact that the professorship he endowed is not restricted to his area of chemistry and open to theoretical and computational chemists such as myself speaks to the broadness of his thinking. I look forward to learning more about him, and hopefully also about his connection to Johns Hopkins. I also look forward to hearing about what he did #OutsideTheLab! (Feel free to e-mail me or post anecdotes or information if you have them!)<br />
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<a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/democratandchronicle/obituary.aspx?pid=177196263"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Credit: The picture is taken from the obituary.</span></a><br />
<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-77040347593259798572016-07-01T00:00:00.000-04:002016-07-01T00:00:02.760-04:00Bittersweet Transitions (From Georgia Tech to Johns Hopkins!)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As I have been mulling over my move to Johns Hopkins, the word that keeps cropping up again and again is "bittersweet." I look back at the 20 years that I spent with my family, my colleagues, my friends, and my group in Atlanta, and I feel the moroseness of the loss. We built our home here, our son was born here, my research group thrived here, and I was part of the team that raised the visibility and profile of Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry.<br />
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The funny thing about that rise is that it included faculty like me who started our careers at Tech, but it has also included a significant number of colleagues who moved to Tech after having established their research groups elsewhere. The latter came to Tech with an opportunity to reinvent themselves and their research groups. They also had a mandate to add to the growth of their new department. This is the sweet side of a move. Likewise, I am looking forward to reimagining a more agile research group solving problems across our core areas of research. I am also excited by possible new collaborations, and what I will learn from them. The practice of chemical research has increasingly become multi-disciplinary and collaborative. It's exciting to be on a new team, but it is still a bittersweet feeling as I will undoubtedly lose some of my ties to Georgia Tech.<br />
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At the stroke of midnight on June 30th, the transition will be complete. I will start my adventure with my new colleagues at Hopkins! The size of our undergraduate student population makes it feel like a primarily undergraduate institution that happens to be collocated with a world-class graduate research program. I look forward to being able to engage with students in smaller classroom settings just as I experienced during my <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2016/03/wandering-through-campus-as.html">Phi Beta Kappa lectures</a>. I look forward to meeting with my new colleagues and collaborating on problems that I have not yet thought about. My research group is also moving quickly, and we will have the resources to advance the theory of chemical reaction rates and dynamical consistency in multiscale nonequilibrium approaches, while tackling challenges related to proteins, nanoparticles, colloidal suspensions and high-speed flows. Hopkins Chemistry has been moving up because of: many outstanding recent junior hires, many successes by mid-career and senior faculty, and emerging ties to other disciplines. It's an amazing opportunity to be a part of this growth!<br />
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So farewell to Georgia Tech and hello to Hopkins. This is an ending that has a beginning, and I am looking forward to what awaits.<br />
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-60004539710140071052016-06-03T12:00:00.000-04:002016-06-03T12:00:12.483-04:00Q&A on balancing activities in research and #OutsideTheLab<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was recently interviewed by Dr. Antara Dutta from Georgia State University for an on-line story by the ACS Georgia Local Section as part of their series to promote volunteer leaders in the American Chemical Society. The questions and answers are more about how I do what I do, and may be of use to you if you are thinking about balancing your professional and volunteer tasks...<br />
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<i>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What do you like most about your job? What are the most challenging parts of your job?</i><br />
What I like most about my job is that I can learn something new every day, and that I also can make an impact on the lives of students, colleagues, and beyond. In this sense, the day is never done as there is always something more that I could have done. Thus the challenging part is knowing when to stop.<br />
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<i>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What characteristic do you associate with a good chemist?</i><br />
Recalling that “chance favors the prepared mind,” it is clear that a good chemist must be both diligent and careful in their preparation, but imaginative in the construction and interpretation of everything they do.<br />
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<i>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How have you grown professionally through your career? How did you choose your professional career growth path?</i><br />
I have been fortunate to meet great chemists who mentored me and guided me not just on my chemistry, but also on how to manage my chemistry. For example, Bob Lichter has been an amazing mentor helping me to integrate my broadening participation efforts with my scientific program.<br />
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<i>4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How do you face and overcome your professional challenges?</i><br />
I ask for help and I work harder.<br />
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<i>5.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What are your habits have you adopted to ensure professional success? For example, do you have a daily routine or practice that helps you to be successful?</i><br />
I exercise every day to ensure that my mind and body stay healthy. I also reserve Monday’s and Wednesday’s for after school pickup of my son from his school and rarely schedule something else over them, unless I’m travelling. This ensures that I have quality time with my son.<br />
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<i>6.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How do you handle failures, either major or min, both professionally and in research?</i><br />
As an academic, failure is inevitable because noone wins every grant competition. So I look at such failures as an opportunity to grow. That is, I learn from the rejections (by leveraging the written comments from reviewers and discussions with program managers), and I try again.<br />
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<i>7.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Who has inspired you professionally or personally and why?</i><br />
My friends, Peter Stang and Dick Zare, are remarkable in their ability to balance their research programs and their activities to advance our profession. They are living existence proofs that you can both serve others and pursue research, and it helps me to not give up hope that I can do both as well.<br />
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<i>8.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What are your thoughts on your growth especially in this digital age? What transformation do you see in the field of chemistry from the way you have learned the subject and it is today in this digital age? </i><br />
The promise of computers in chemistry is multi-fold. On the one hand, it provides the ability to amass a lot of data for which analytics tools can find unexpected correlations and solutions. On the other hand, it provides a platform on which we can code ever more accurate models of complex chemistry for which calculations and simulations can reveal chemistries that we had not anticipated earlier. Across this range, the power of computers thus offers us an opportunity to do chemistry differently just as, for example, combinatorial chemistry tools have already transformed discovery. <br />
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<i>9.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What hobbies or activities do you participate in outside of your professional life?</i><br />
I have been running with my wife since just after I received tenure. In addition, since my son was four years-old, we have been training in Tae Kwon do together, taking all of our belt tests together, and we earned our Kukkiwon-certified 3rd degree black belts together. Running and Tae Kwon Do have been important for my health, but equally importantly they continue to provide me quality time with my family.<br />
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<i>10.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Do you have any closing thoughts you’d like to share?</i><br />
Much of what I have related involves the importance of interacting with people, both to help them and be helped by them. I have found many of my friends and colleagues through the American Chemical Society, and the value of my membership comes primarily from the fact that we are a society of like-minded chemical scientists and engineers. I encourage you to engage with other members at our local section meetings, our regional meetings, our national meetings, and on various on-line platforms. I am sure that you and I will both benefit from your greater engagement!<br />
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-54901634178584968162016-05-23T06:00:00.000-04:002016-05-24T13:33:06.048-04:00Balancing Signal and Noise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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How frequently to post is a perennial question for anyone with a footprint in social media. Too frequent and no one pays attention to all the noise. Too seldom and no one bothers to look. In either case, you also risk the possibility that Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook will deprioritize your post when serving it to your followers or friends. Of course, it all depends on how valuable a given post is. It can have value simply because you are popular in whatever sense, and the reader cares only about the fact that you are the one saying it. It can have value in some intrinsic sense because of the concept that is conveyed. Or it can have value somewhere in between. Regardless, readers are being bombarded by so many screaming pieces of content (that is, noise) that it's hard for any piece of truly valuable content (that is, signal) to be noticed.<br />
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Interestingly, this question also pertains to data. Is the signal from the device detectable and reproducible from the noise? It is also relevant to the articles that we publish in science. Is the advance incremental and hence within reach of a good guess from past work?! Or is it truly a new signal that advances our understanding? Ultimately, we scientists must find signals well above the noise, and be careful in reporting it so that it doesn't get lost in the noise. There is also the question of what is the noise and what is the signal. Consider the accompanying image with this post. Is the pretty red region the signal that is tainted by the noise of a few bright spots? Or are the bright spots the signals that shine over the noise of the red background?<br />
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<i>If you are interested in questions of observation, you may also want to check out some of my old posts on the role of perception and implicit bias: <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-do-you-see-part-i-oxidechem.html">Part I</a> and <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-do-you-see-part-ii-oxidechem.html">Part II</a>. (It's relatively timely again because Amy Herman appeared on an NPR broadcast just this week.)</i>Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-18025101604258272232016-03-28T07:00:00.000-04:002016-04-07T16:14:48.273-04:00Wandering through campus (as a @PhiBetaKappa Visiting Scholar)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I recently finished the last of my <a href="https://www.pbk.org/WEB/PBK_Member/PROGRAMS/Visiting_Scholars/2015-2016/Rigoberto_Hernandez.aspx">9 campus visits</a> courtesy of the <a href="https://www.pbk.org/">Phi Beta Kappa Society</a> during the 59th year of the <a href="https://www.pbk.org/WEB/PBK_Member/PROGRAMS/Visiting_Scholars/PBK_Member/Programs/Visiting_Scholars/Visiting_Scholars.aspx">Visiting Scholars Program</a>. Wow! These visits included 6 primarily undergraduate colleges, in order: the College of Wooster, University of the South (Sewanee), College of St. Benedict & St. John's University, Willamette University, Bucknell University, and Hamilton College. The last three were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_I_university">research intensive institutions</a>, in order: Johns Hopkins University, Kansas State University, and the University of Oklahoma. From the Society's marketing materials, the <a href="https://www.pbk.org/WEB/PBK_Member/PROGRAMS/Visiting_Scholars/PBK_Member/Programs/Visiting_Scholars/Visiting_Scholars.aspx">Visiting Scholars Program</a> "sends distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines to participate for two days in the life of colleges and universities with Phi Beta Kappa chapters. During each two-day visit, a scholar takes part in class discussions, meets informally with students and faculty, and gives a free lecture open to the public." The chapters were sent information about me, my available dates, and possible lectures on topics accessible to undergraduates or the public. After a matching process, I filled my schedule with the nine sites listed above. The only way to make seven two-day visits possible in the Spring was to obtain release from teaching. However the number of contact hours (with over 20 hours per visit) was much greater than the sixty-ish hours I would normally have spent on a single course. Though these numbers didn't make sense form a work load perspective, the experience was transformative and in a word, priceless!<br />
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I was routinely asked by the chapters if theirs was the best visit and/or what the other schools did to make the visit special. My answer to them and to you is that all of them were equally outstanding. No jokes about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon">Lake Wobegone</a>, please. Each of my visits included unique and different elements that were special about the individual institutions. My visits to primarily undergraduate institutions allowed me to walk in the shoes of their faculty. The level of interaction and attention to their undergraduate students is amazing and enriching for students and professors alike. My visits to the research intensive institutions differed remarkably from my usual visits. In those, I typically meet almost exclusively with faculty and a few graduate students. As a consequence of the PBK lens, my hosts made sure that I interacted almost exclusively with undergraduate students in classrooms, in small-group discussions, and in one-on-one mentoring events. It was remarkable to see the depth and breadth of the students and the potential we have as educators to reach them if only we stop to say hello.<br />
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All of that would be enough to have made it worthwhile. But just as in those cheesy late-night commercials we sometimes stay up too late not to miss, there is more… I had an opportunity to extend my network of friends and colleagues with remarkable faculty across the country. I knew some of my chemistry hosts and their colleagues from previous activities, but most I did not. My bonds with new and old colleagues were much more strongly cemented through the intensity of the programs that they prepared for me. Meanwhile, many members of the PBK chapter hosting teams were from departments outside of chemistry, giving me the opportunity to learn and discuss a broader set of ideas with experts who I would not have seen otherwise. With them and the broad set of students, staff and faculty that attended my talks and sessions, I was able to share my work in theoretical and computational chemistry, and my work to advance diversity in academia. The latter also appear to have sparked many conversations that I believe will have an impact in their efforts to improve campus climate and diversity equity.<br />
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All to say that my term as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar was as enriching, if not more so, then a sabbatical concentrated at a single site. If ever you have a chance to do the same, I hope that you will not hesitate in saying yes!<br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-79624655292296508202016-03-02T08:00:00.000-05:002016-03-08T11:04:27.324-05:00 Chemistry's Community Spaces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There was a time when book stores and libraries were the places where you met others. Like in today's universities, in which librarians can't get rid of books fast enough, students still go to libraries to study in their carrels. Unfortunately, the flattening of the printed word through electronic delivery is decreasing the need or motivation for you to physically visit bookstores or public libraries. Meanwhile, next-day (and next-hour!) deliveries de-motivate you from going to retail shops at your local mall. But we still need community spaces, like the Mexican zocalos, to see and meet other people. Coffee houses and fitness centers, necessarily serve products or services that you and others must experience physically, and are increasingly serving the need for community gathering spaces while proving that brick-and-mortar can still be profitable.<br />
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So where do chemists gather? Increasingly academic buildings are being created with coffee houses in mind. Sure, it's cheaper for me to make an espresso with the machine in my office. But if I walk down to the coffee shop, I have the extra benefit of running into students and colleagues. The upcoming <a href="http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/spring-2016.html">National Meeting of the ACS in San Diego</a> also serves this need. Going there, I get to hang out with over 15,000 of my closest friends. I can't, obviously, see them all, but I don't have to make many, if any, appointments. The chemists with whom I have common interests naturally attend the same receptions, governance meetings and scientific sessions. These chance run-ins are devilishly short and sweet. The follow-up often occupies my activities and seeds my next innovations over the next six months and beyond.<br />
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Of course, old and new gathering mechanisms can overlap. In San Diego, the <a href="http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/committees/divisional/mppg.html">Multidisciplinary Program Planning Group (MPPG)</a> selected Computers in Chemistry as the theme. Working with my colleagues on the associated symposia, we introduced a special break from 10:00 AM to 10:30AM on mornings from Sunday to Wednesday called "Café con Ordenadores." We hope to leverage your need for coffee to discuss how computers can enable your chemistry. I look forward to my chance meeting(s) with you in San Diego starting on March 13th!<br />
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<i>Check out my <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2013/09/acs-national-meetings-large-is-new.html">old post on some tips for making a large conference</a>, like the ACS meeting, feel exactly like the small conference you want to attend.</i><br />
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<i>T</i><i>his post was reprinted on the <a href="http://sustainable-nano.com/">Sustainable Nano Blog</a> on <a href="http://sustainable-nano.com/2016/03/08/chemistrys-community-spaces/">March 8, 2016</a>. </i><br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-69273135842878544022016-02-23T13:00:00.000-05:002016-02-24T22:27:39.325-05:00Juggling Communication Into My Calendar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It’s about time that I wrote my next Blog Post. As you may recall from one of my old posts on <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-academic-juggle-hallows-or-horcruxes.html">Hallows or Horcruxes</a>, as a researcher, my daily question is whether to spend time on grants or papers. What I neglected to mention is that as a Professor, I also have a long list of other items that I must address in order to keep up my research (and teaching) enterprise moving forward. The fact that I enjoy many of these tasks doesn’t detract from the fact that they take time. Alas my blogging has suffered.<br />
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So where's the "chemistry" in the fact that I have been a slacker in not writing on my everywherechemistry blog? Sadly, it partially lies in the fact that all of my chemistry colleagues are equally overburdened. E-mail has become a daily chore with hundreds of messages that must be deleted, responded to immediately, or which require significant deliverables that require even more time. I know that this is no different than what other professionals experience. It is a sign of the times. Electronic communication has increased our ability to share our chemistry with each other, but it has also increased our volume of work. The ease in travel also tempts us to move our bodies, not just electrons, to distant places. It allows me to interact with chemists (and other scientists) directly, and mentor students whom I would not meet otherwise. That human touch provides more substance to the methods and approaches that we are developing and teaching each other.<br />
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Thus communication in all its forms is critical to learning and advancing chemistry. This is a fact that may have been lost on you as you learned how to balance chemical reactions, how to name molecules or how to calculate the wave functions associated with chemical bonds. Nevertheless, it's a critical part of doing chemistry... And I'm happy to be back on my blog! Please stay tuned.<br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-50901436753260905052015-09-30T14:00:00.000-04:002015-10-01T21:50:30.847-04:00Reimagining the geometry of transition states (in PRL!)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm excited to report that my former graduate student, Dr. Galen Craven, and I just published an article in Physical Review Letters (PRL). The critical question in determining the rate between chemical reactants and products relies on knowing when exactly the reactants become products. This is like asking yourself when did you get sick? You might remember when you were healthy and you know when you definitely have a cold, but do you know when you transitioned from being healthy to sick? Presumably, if you could know when this transition happens, then you would know when to take medicine or when not to. For example, if you start feeling a little off but you haven't hit the transition to being sick, you might still not get sick at all and so there would be no need to take a pre-emptive medication. In the same way, chemists need to know when molecular reactions really take place and when exactly they did so. Transition state theory then provides a way to use that transition to obtain the rate of a reaction. And that's also useful because then we know if it will take place in the same time scale as other events such as being fast enough to finish while you are on a quick break or so slow that it won't happen before the universe has ended.<br />
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Specifically, we discovered a new way for obtaining the structure of the transition state between reactants and products when the reaction is in a complex solvent. All of the previous methods had obtained this surface by optimization (using variational transition state theory) or through successive approximations (using perturbation theory).The key is a mathematical tool, called the Lagrangian descriptor, that had been developed earlier by Wiggins and his colleagues in the area of fluid mechanics.We were able to use the Lagrangian descriptor to obtain the transition state geometry directly without either optimizing the rate or employing perturbation theory. And this means that we now have a new tool for obtaining reaction rates in nonequilibrium systems.<br />
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As with most articles in PRL, it was a tortuous path through the reviewing process. We were pleased that nearly all of the reviewers (and we had 6 in the end!) saw the work as novel and potentially game-changing. The full reference of the article is: G. T. Craven and R. Hernandez, "Lagrangian descriptors of thermalized transition states on time-varying energy surfaces," <i>Phys. Rev. Lett. </i><b>115</b>, 148301 (2015). (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.148301">doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.148301</a>) I'm happy to acknowledge the support from the <a href="http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/afosr/">Air Force Office of Scientific Research</a> (AFOSR).Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-91318895139911615492015-08-31T11:00:00.000-04:002015-08-31T15:56:06.064-04:00Sustainable Nanotechnology - Designing green materials in the nanoparticle age<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The birth control pill turned 50 recently, and it was a reminder of the great power of a chemical compound, estrogen, to affect social and political change. A little less attention was given to the role that estrogen levels in our water streams have had on fish in water streams. (See for example, a <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/estrogen-in-waterways/">Scientific American article from 2009</a> on the possible implications of estrogen in waterways. ) There’s some debate as to where the leading sources of estrogen come from. While most studies indicate that the birth control pill is not the major contributor to its presence in the waterways, there is no doubt that estrogen pollution exists. Regardless, when the birth control pill was introduced, I suspect that few even considered the possibility that estrogen would be a factor in the health of fish in waterways such as the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.<br />
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In this century, there is little doubt that nanoparticles comprise a class of chemical compounds that are revolutionizing nearly everything that we touch, see or smell. Indeed, I am tempted to argue that this century might be called the “nanoparticle age” in the same way that history named the last century as the “industrial age.” The challenge to chemists (and material scientists) is not just designing nanoparticles to solve particular problems, but to do so with materials that have no unintended consequences. Anticipating such unknown unknowns is a grand challenge, and the solution requires a team of scientists with expertise in making, measuring, and modeling the nanoparticles in the upstream design side and in biology and ecology on the downstream side. The <a href="http://susnano.chem.wisc.edu/">Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology</a> (CSN) is taking this challenge head-on. I’m happy and exited to say that I have joined the CSN as part of the modeling team!<br />
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Please also check out the <a href="http://sustainable-nano.com/2015/08/31/phase-ii-announcement/">announcement</a> of the start of the 5-year effort of the CSN through an NSF CCI Phase II grant CHE-1503408. </div>
Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-34332943423460081782015-08-27T06:00:00.000-04:002015-08-27T08:21:52.493-04:00May the ducks quack for you (A Tip for Conference Organizers)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every two years since 2001, I have been co-organizing a workshop in Telluride on “<a href="http://ww2.chemistry.gatech.edu/rig/symp/tsrc-2015w.html">Chemical Dynamics in Complex Environments</a>” (Chem-DiCE). It's a great venue that attracts scientists (and their families) to attend and return. In our particular workshop, we focus on challenges to address molecular behavior (such as reactions) occurring in solvents that are heterogeneous and far from equilibrium. It turns out that this problem is common to many different chemical phenomenon. We therefore invite researchers that are are facing this challenge in different milieu, such as colloidal dispersions, renewable energy generation, proteins, and confined liquids. We also aim to split the participants equally across theory/computing and experiment. For many of our participants, this meeting is the only time they see each other, let alone be exposed deeply to the research in their respective fields. The net effect is that our workshop gives rise to a cross-pollination of ideas and solutions across broad areas of research. I'd like to think that this is the main reason for the success of our workshop.<br />
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However, perhaps the real reason for our success is the organization structure: Everyone who speaks gets an hour. That is, exactly an hour. At that point the <b>ducks quack</b> (on our timer), and the speaker is finished. It’s not uncommon for speakers to go through only one-quarter to one-third of the material they prepared. That’s because the audience is so interactive that many questions come to the surface, allowing us all to probe the material that is covered much more deeply. It also allows for consideration of questions or issues that someone from outside of a field might naively ask but which, in running counter to the established dogma, requires a profound new direction or solution to address. No speaker ever gets to the end, and they are invariably unhappy that they were unable to do so. But everyone is happy that all the other speakers are stopped at exactly an hour. In the eight workshops that we have run so far, only once was someone allowed to speak beyond that hour. In that case, the speaker wanted to answer a question that had been raised as the ducks were quacking. He pleaded to continue, and I concurred only after the entire group voted unanimously in favor. Thus the structure of talks is very egalitarian, and provides an opportunity for all to learn something new. That’s why I think that my colleagues keep coming back!<br />
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-48841346438833060802015-06-16T09:00:00.000-04:002015-06-17T18:19:54.646-04:00Sustainable Nano on Open Access Sustainably<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(This article is a cross-post between EveryWhereChemistry and <a href="http://sustainable-nano.com/2015/06/16/sustainable-nano-central-science/">Sustainable-Nano</a>!)<br>
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Sustainability’s future is now. Our recent article was just published in an all-electronic journal, <i>ACS Central Science</i>, which is among the first of the American Chemical Society (ACS) journals offered without a print option. It therefore embodies sustainability as it requires no paper resources, thereby limiting the journal’s carbon footprint to only what is required for maintaining the information electronically in perpetuity. It is also completely <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/search/label/OpenAccess">Open Access</a>, which means our article is available for all to read. Does this equal accessibility (called “flat” because there is no hierarchy in levels of access) amount to yet another layer of sustainability? More on that question in a moment. Meanwhile as the article itself is about sustainability, it embodies the repetitive word play in the title of this post.<br>
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But there is another double meaning in the publishing of this work: The flatness underlying the vision of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b00381">Open Access</a> is also at play in how the work was done. ELEVEN different research groups were involved in formulating the ideas and writing the paper. This lot provided tremendous breadth of expertise, but the flatness in the organizational effort allowed us to merge it all together. Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without significant leadership, and Cathy Murphy, the paper’s first author, orchestrated us all magnificently. While flatness in organizational behavior isn’t typically considered part of sustainability, in this case it provided for the efficient utilization of resources (that is, ideas) across a broader cohort.<br>
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So what is our article about? Fifteen years into the 21st century, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to develop new materials to solve the grand challenges that confront us in the areas of health, energy, and the environment. Nanoparticles are playing a significant role in new material development because they can provide human-scale effects with relatively small amounts of materials. The danger is that because of their special properties, the use of nanoparticles may have unintended consequences. Thus, many in the scientific community, including those of us involved in writing this article, are concerned with identifying rules for the design and fabrication of nanoparticles that will limit such negative effects, and hence make the particles sustainable by design. In our article, we propose that the solution of this grand challenge hinges on four critical needs:<br>
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1. Chemically Driven Understanding of the Molecular Nature of Engineered Nanoparticles in Complex, Realistic Environments<br>
2. Real-Time Measurements of Nanomaterial Interaction with Living Cells and Organisms That Provide Chemical Information at Nanometer Length Scales To Yield Invaluable Mechanistic Insight and Improve Predictive Understanding of the Nano−Bio Interface. <br>
3. Delineation of Molecular Modes of Action for Nanomaterial Effects on Living Systems as Functions of Nanomaterial Properties<br>
4. Computation and Simulation of the Nano−Bio Interface.<br>
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In more accessible terms, this translates to: (1) It’s not enough to know how the nanoparticles behave in a test tube under clean conditions as we need to know how they might behave at the molecular scale in different solutions. (2) We also need to better understand and measure the effects of nanoparticles at contact points between inorganic materials and biological matter. (3) Not only do we need to observe how nanoparticles behave in relation to living systems, but to understand what drives that behavior at a molecular level. (4) In order to accelerate design and discovery as well as to avoid the use of materials whenever possible, we also need to design validated computational models for all of these processes.<br>
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Take a look at the article for the details as we collectively offer a blueprint for what research problems need to be solved in the short term (a decade or so), and how our team of nanoscientists, with broad experience in making, measuring, and simulating nanoparticles in complex environments, can make a difference.<br>
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The title of the article is "Biological Responses to Engineered Nanomaterials: Needs for the Next Decade.” The work was funded by the NSF as part of the Phase I Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN, CHE-124051). It was just released at <i>ACS Central Science</i>, XXXX (2015) as an ASAP Article. The author list is C. Murphy, A. Vartanian, F. Geiger, R. Hamers, J. Pedersen, Q. Cui, C. Haynes, E. Carlson, R. Hernandez, R. Klaper, G. Orr, and Z. Rosenzweig,<br>
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It’s available as Open Access right now at <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.5b00182">http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.5b00182</a><br>
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Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-22606156160332259852015-06-12T15:00:00.000-04:002015-06-12T15:00:00.977-04:00The Analytics of FaceBook and what it says about you (and others)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsb0VGSYLSFSqIn8A-bxFUg9OJ8CthZPE_gXFbPkxU_mmwQH1-rA__1QQ1BoWWIEShpYyAljlRxHgdOU727v1TZet-K8eBEjMD8T1BQivMYcOS_h8QcVVaQrGnmcHCZ_osoNzzUFAKXnk/s1600/MultipleFaces2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsb0VGSYLSFSqIn8A-bxFUg9OJ8CthZPE_gXFbPkxU_mmwQH1-rA__1QQ1BoWWIEShpYyAljlRxHgdOU727v1TZet-K8eBEjMD8T1BQivMYcOS_h8QcVVaQrGnmcHCZ_osoNzzUFAKXnk/s200/MultipleFaces2015.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
There’s no way that I could possibly go into all that FaceBook (and Google) knows about me from the amalgamation of all the sites I have visited and the content that I have produced, not to mention what they gather from the data of all of my friends and acquaintances about me through their own links and hits to my material. But I do want to hit on one crazy connection that intrigues and scares me at the same time.<br />
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FaceBook presumably tracks the degree to which each of my posts has been clicked in any way by my friends, whether they simply read it, clicked on the forwarding link, liked it, commented on it, shared it, etc. (Note that while I may not know who lurked it, FaceBook does!) That means that there is a way for FaceBook to tell me what aspect of my on-line personality is of interest to each of my friends. Presumably each of these faces is different and is somehow a reflection not just of myself but also that of my fB friend. There’s clearly some statistical error and noise among these faces because each is contingent on the overall activity of a given fB friend and their strategy for digesting fB content. Nevertheless, it seems nearly unfathomable that fB has a way to access the degree of my multiple personalities by way of running statistics on these faces. In turn, such data would presumably be possible for me to obtain a better understanding of what I really have in common with a given friend. Chances are that knowing this would make the relationship weaker rather than stronger as I might be tempted to zero in on only the known overlaps rather than the discovery of new commonalities. But how will I or you actually respond to this type of information when fB eventually gives us this (new) feature (whether free or charged)? Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-89234516596912508832015-05-25T07:00:00.000-04:002015-05-25T07:00:08.143-04:00Stretching proteins and myself into open access (OA) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm not sure where to side on the Open Access (OA) publishing business. On the one hand, paying for an article to be published is a regression to the days of page charges albeit without the double-bind that readers are also required to pay. On the other hand, it does flatten access to the article, and often panders to enlightened self-interest by way of increased exposure and citations. Indeed, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b00285">a strong argument</a> in favor of OA for articles, data and code was just published in the Journal of Chemical Physics by my friend, <a href="http://chemistry.nd.edu/people/j-daniel-gezelter/">Dan Gezelter</a>. (Fortunately <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b00285">his Viewpoint is OA</a> and readily available.) Regardless, publishers need to cover their costs, and here lies the challenge to the scientific community. The various agencies supporting science do not appear to be increasing funding to subsidize the fees even while they are making policy decisions to require OA. Libraries love OA because it might potentially lower their skyrocketing journal costs, though no substantial lowering appears to have yet occurred. Long story short, my group is now doing the experiment: We recently submitted and just published our work in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/">PLoS</a> (Public Library of Science.) Props to them for being consistent as they also required us to deposit our <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1853/53162">data in a public site</a>. I was also impressed by the reviewing process which did not appear to be lowered in any way by the presumed conflict-of-interest that a publisher might have to accept papers (and associated cash) from all submissions. The experiment continues as I'll watch to see how our OA article fares compared to our earlier articles on ASMD in more traditional journals.<br />
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Meanwhile, we are excited about the work itself. My students, led by outstanding graduate student, Hailey Bureau, validated our staged approach (called adaptive steered molecular dynamics, ASMD) to characterize the energies for pulling a protein apart. The extra wrinkle lies in the fact that the protein is sitting in a pool of water. That increases the size of the calculation significantly as you have to include the thousands (or more) of extra atoms in the pool. The first piece of good news—that we had also seen earlier—is that ASMD can be run for this system using a reasonable amount of computer time. Even better, we found that we could use a simple (mean-field) model for the water molecules to obtain nearly the same energies and pathways. This was a happy surprise because, for the most part, the atoms (particularly the hydrogens) on the protein appear to orient towards the effective solvent as if the water molecules were actually there.<br />
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Fortunately, because of OA, you can easily read <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127034">the details online</a>. The full reference to the article is: H. R. Bureau, D. Merz Jr., E. Hershkovits, S. Quirk and Rigoberto Hernandez, "Constrained unfolding of a helical peptide: Implicit versus Explicit Solvents," <i>PLoS ONE</i> <b>10</b>, e0127034 (2015). (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127034">doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127034</a>) I'm also happy to say that It was supported by the National Science Foundation.<br />
<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-21866058697701213962015-05-04T11:00:00.000-04:002015-05-05T04:22:45.597-04:00 Monthly Status Reports (A random walk through how I run my lab, Item 4)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the business world, or in "Office Space," everyone has seemingly heard of the TPS that must be submitted to your boss at arbitrary (but far too often) frequency. More annoyingly, the TPS often appears to remain unread serving only to occupy one's time with busy work. So it is with ironic amusement that I rediscovered this tool so as to improve the efficiency of my lab. After all, theorists are out-of-the-box thinkers who don't want to be constrained by the mundane, right? And yet this monthly task is exactly the extra structure my students needed to maximize their progress, liberating them to not even see the "box."<br />
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For nearly two years, I have asked my students to submit a Monthly Status Report (MSR). It includes only four components: accomplishments, accountability, goals, and pain-points. The goals include not just what is to be done in the next month, but also their overarching plans. In accountability, they summarize what was performed with regards to the previous month's goals. If they succeeded with all of their goals, then that serves to calibrate a more ambitious plan for the following month! The pain-points provide a quick summary of which items I might need to help them with or which I am overdue on. (Yes, I also need help keeping all the balls in the air!) The MSR needs to include items regarding their educational plan, and not just their research projects. To this end, I ask them to include a running clock of the time spent as a graduate student or postdoc. The clock increments by one month each time, of course. The total number, though, reminds us to track professional development activities appropriate to the student's educational timeline. The key to insuring that this is not a totally pointless exercise is that the MSR is followed by a 1:1 thirty-minute meeting discussing progress and charting out meetings and tasks for both student and me to follow up on. I've found that this "meta" meeting is critical to ensuring that both the student AND her or his projects succeed. When I had a smaller group, the MSR wasn't necessary, but now it's critical. I have found it to be more effective than the annual Individual Development Plan (IDP), if the latter is done exclusively, because the IDP is yearly and that feedback isn't often enough. Indeed, the MSR makes the IDP easy for students to complete and increases the effectiveness of the IDP.<br />
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Again, the MSR is a simple tool from business school 101, but don't scoff it if you want to help your students increase their productivity and maximize what they learn in graduate school. The key is to use it as a vehicle to hold a frequent and periodic conversation between you and every one of your students!<br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-58879152202797190832015-04-04T11:00:00.000-04:002015-04-04T11:00:05.659-04:00Balls of ice cream<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When you go to your local ice cream shop, you likely ponder the question of how many scoops you wish to order. I, on the other hand, prefer to order balls of ice cream. The scoop corresponds to the void that is to be filled, but a ball corresponds to the filling. It seems to me that I'd rather order balls of ice cream rather than empty space. My wife suggests that this is just a matter of my literal mistranslation of "bolas de helado" rather than any deeper significance over the ontology of balls verses scoops. As an optimist, I certainly prefer for them to be more than half-filled, and hence naturally prefer balls of ice cream to voids, that is scoops.<br />
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This argument extends to the nanoscale. Are the properties of a particle driven by itself or by the space which it occupies? If the latter, then its properties are independent of the nanoparticle aside from its shape. As a chemist, this is a disappointing possibility because I would like to tailor the properties of the particles, such as how they assemble, by changing the atoms or molecules at the surface (and the interior). The good news is that such control can be exercised. That is why we have been studying so-called Janus particles and other patchy particles. In our rendering, they look like ice cream balls made of blueberry and strawberry ice cream halves or layers. The blueberry faces like to face the strawberry faces (because they correspond to charges and opposites attract), and this gives rise to their interesting patterns and response to changes from the outside.<br />
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Check out our some of our recent papers on Janus and striped particles and stay tuned for the next ones!<br />
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M. C. Hagy and R. Hernandez, "Dynamical simulation of electrostatic striped colloidal particles," J. Chem. Phys. 140, 034701 (2014). (d<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4859855">oi:10.1063/1.4859855</a>)<br />
M. C. Hagy and R. Hernandez, "Dynamical simulation of dipolar Janus colloids: Dynamical properties," J. Chem. Phys. 138, 184903 (2013). (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4803864">doi:10.1063/1.4803864</a>)<br />
M. C. Hagy and R. Hernandez, "Dynamical Simulation of Dipolar Janus Colloids: Equilibrium Structure and Thermodynamics," J. Chem. Phys. 137, 044505 (2012). (<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4737432">doi:10.1063/1.4737432</a>)Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6980178009330223088.post-14656288045858297502015-03-31T06:00:00.000-04:002015-03-31T06:00:06.431-04:00Controlling chemical reactions by kicking their environs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Chemists dream of controlling molecular reactions with ever finer precision. At the shortest chemical length scales, the stumbling block is that atoms don’t follow directions. Instead, we “control” chemical reactions by way of putting the right molecules together in a sequence of steps that ultimately produce the desired product. As this ultimate time scale must be sufficiently short that we will live to see the product, the rate of a chemical reaction is also important. If the atoms don’t quite move in the right directions quickly enough, then we are tempted to direct them in the right way through some external force, such as from a laser or electric field. But even this extra control might not be enough to overcome the fact that the atoms forget the external control because they are distracted by the many molecules around them.<br />
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In order to control chemical reactions at the atom scale, we are therefore working to determine the extent to which chemical reaction rates can be affected by driven periodic force. Building on our <a href="http://everywherechemistry.blogspot.com/2014/07/getting-to-shore-when-riding-wave-from.html">recent work using non-recrossing dividing surfaces within transition state theory</a>, we succeeded in obtaining the rates of an albeit relative simple model reaction driven by a force that is periodic (but not single frequency!) in the presence of thermal noise. It is critical that the external force is changing the entire environment of the molecule through a classical (long-wavelength) mode and not a specific vibration of the molecule through a quantum mechanical interaction. The latter had earlier been seen to provide only subtle effects at best, but the former can be enough to dramatically affect the rate and pathway of the reaction as we saw in our recent work. Thus while our most recent work is limited by the simplicity of the chosen model, it holds promise for determining the degree of control of the rates in more complicated chemical reactions.<br />
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This work was performed by my recently graduated student, Dr. Galen Craven, in collaboration with Thomas Bartsch from <a href="http://www.lboro.ac.uk/">Loughborough University</a>. The tile of the article is "Chemical reactions induced by oscillating external fields in weak thermal environments."The work was funded by the NSF, and the international partnership (Trans-MI) was funded by the EU People Programme (Marie Curie Actions). It was just released at <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4907590">J. Chem. Phys. 142, 074108 (2015)</a>.<br />
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<br />Rigoberto Hernandezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06684074512292221470noreply@blogger.com0