Our friends with a taste for quantitative information sometimes ask: “How ‘good’ is the University of Utah Chemistry Department compared to other departments in the U.S. which are granting Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry?” One reasonably objective answer lies in a comparison of the following quotient Q for as many departments as you have the patience to make the calculation:
Q = sum of federal research dollars awarded in a year to the department
the number of tenure track faculty members in the department in the same year
The supposition here is that the author of the most innovative research proposal receives the most federal research funding. Chemical & Engineering News, July 21, 2003, page 29, reported federal research dollar awards to the University of Utah for Chemistry for the year 2001. The number of tenure track faculty members for Utah in 2002 is found on pages xiii to xix of the 2003 ACS Directory of Graduate Research. Combining these two data sets, one obtains:
Rank:
- Johns Hopkins University
- Harvard University
- Stanford University
- M.I.T.
- Cal. Tech.
- Northwestern University
- U.C.L.A.
- Columbia University
- Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
- University of Illinois, Urbana
- Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
- Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City
- Univ. of California, Berkeley
- Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The year 2001/2002 in terms of federal research funding was about average for the Utah Chemistry Department for the interval between 2000 and 2010.
The big good news of the Spring 2006 Newsletter was that Peter Armentrout was still chairing the Department and progress was being made on construction of the David M. Grant NMR Center casually called the “Gauss Hause.” With the 20/20 hindsight of 8 added years of experience it is now evident in 2014 that the huge bays in the Gauss Hause designed to accommodate an 800 MHz and a 900 MHz NMR spectrometer were unnecessary. New equipment designs mitigated the detrimental effects arising from overlap of intense magnetic fields from neighboring MHz NMR spectrometers.
Prof. William H. (Bill) Breckenridge retired early from the Utah faculty on July 1, 2005 after 34 years of exemplary service as a notably successful classroom teacher of Honors freshmen chemistry classes and an internationally acclaimed researcher on “van der Waals” bonding between metal atoms (and ions) and rare-gas atoms. His Utah awards include the Hatch Teaching Prize, the University Distinguished Teaching Award, and the University Distinguished Research Award. Only two other Utah faculty members have collected all three of these top prizes. Bill won a J.S. Guggenheim Postdoctoral Fellowship to do research in France in 1985. Over the years Bill won many other awards. Bill has a long standing enthusiasm for French culture, language, and wine as well as science. In retirement Bill spends much of his time collaborating with English and French scientists in the laboratories abroad. In managing the human resources of a first rate Chemistry Department one must accept the reality that some of our most gifted scientists will move out of Utah in the middle of a brilliant career as Josef Michl, Greg Voth, and Bill Breckenridge have done. On the other hand, more of our notable faculty members have come to Utah well into their brilliant careers as, for example, Henry Eyring, Bob Parry, Cheves Walling, John Gladyz, Peter Armentrout, Cindy Burrows, Scott Anderson, Henry White, and Joel Miller. Perhaps the single greatest strength of the Chemistry faculty has been a core of home run hitters who have performed well year after year without ever changing uniforms. The heaviest hitting all stars in this category are Peter Stang, Dale Poulter, Jack Simons, Gary Keck and Joel Harris.
In Spring 2006, the comparative newcomer to the Utah Chemistry faculty was Professor Michael H. Bartl. He had come to Utah from a 3-year postdoctoral stint in the lab of Prof. Galen Stucky at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His degree education had been entirely in his native Austria, and he spoke excellent English. He was a materials scientist. Among many strengths, he knew how to synthesize semiconductor nanocrystals and how to characterize them with advanced optical/laser spectroscopy. He uses photons rather than electrons as the main information source in studies broadly called Nanophotonics-Nanotechnology that involves sub-micron spatial resolution and picasecond time resolution.
Newsmakers mentioned in the Spring 2005 and 2006 Newsletters include:
Marilyn Burton and Jerry Driscoll received Chemistry Outstanding Staff Awards in 2005
Professor John Conboy made excellent publicity for Utah Chemistry by an imaging technique showing the distribution of chiral molecules on a solid surface [Chem. Eng. News, Feb. 14, 2005, 83(7), pp. 47-55.]
Prof. Richard D. Ernst and coworkers discovered that SF6 is not “extremely inert”
The late Henry Eyring was honored in “The Days of ’47 Parade” (but not for his foot racing
Prof. Jon D. Rainier chaired the 39th National Organic Chemistry Symposium at Utah, June 12-14, 2005
Dr. Regina F. Frey (Ph.D. 1986, with Jack Simons) is a Senior Lecturer in Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO
Mrs. Carolyn Brady with her husband Rod Brady are responsible for the annual Robert W. Parry Teaching Award
Dr. Steve Brown successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation at Cal. Tech
Dr. Dale Brugh (Ph.D. 1997, Morse) given tenure in Chem. Dept. at Ohio Wesleyan Universit
Gretchen Domek won the mark of “distinction” for her MPhil thesis concluding her 2 yr. Rhodes Scholarship
Prof. Steven M. Kuznicki (Ph.D. 1980) appointed endowed chair professor of Chem. Eng. At Univ. of Alberta Steve Hamilton (B.S. 2005, Matt Sigman) studying medicine at Mayo Clinic on a full scholarshi
Keith Jacobs (B.S. 1992) Faculty Fellow at Univ. of Montana-Missoula in business financ
Andrew J. Leavitt (Ph.D. 1994, Tom Beebe) is professor of chemistry at Univ. of West Georgia, Carrollton, G
Dr. Mandy Hosford (Ph.D. 2005, Burrows) and Prof. Chuck Wight completed the Wahsatch Steeplechas
Ryan Julian (B.S. 1999) is faculty member at Univ. of California, Riversid
Dr. Christopher R. Lloyd (Ph.D. 1996) detects microbial contamination in food, water, and medical diagnostics
Dr. Tim Newbound (Ph.D. 1988) troubleshooter for Saudi Arabian American Oil compan
Dr. Jeffrey D. Owen (Ph.D. 1971) owns a five-acre business park near Seattle, WA
Kirk Ririe (B.S. 2005) is a co-founder and CEO of Idaho Technology Inc.
Mark Thomson (B.S. 1987) earned a Ph.D. at Colorado State in 1995 and has taught since in Louisiana and Arkansas
Matthew Thorum (B.S. 2005) has begun Ph.D. work at Univ. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Teresa Jasmine Tuan (B.S. 2006) her precocity is described in a Daily Utah Chronicle article published Tuesday, June 8, 2006, Vol. 116, No. 7, entitled “Sixteen Going on 30”
Prof. George F. Uhlig (Ph.D. 1973, with Henry Eyring) mentor of talented undergraduates at College of Eastern Utah
Prof. Dan W. Urry (Ph.D. 1964, with Henry Eyring) entrepreneur/inventor of contractile protein-based machines IN MEMORIAM
Melvin George Jacobsen (1924-2005) loyal shipping and receiving clerk, Chemistry Stockroom
Maria Ana Curelaru (1967-2005) (B.S. 1989) (Ph.D. 1994, Univ. Texas, Austin) began working at Kemin Nutrisurance in Des Moines, Iowa in February 2005