The Spring 2004 issue of the U. of Utah Department of Chemistry “Alumni Newsletter” reported important advances being made by Professor Sheila David and independently by Professor Cynthia Burrows in the understanding of DNA damage arising from oxidative chemical reactions. In the same issue of the newsletter, the use of a laser “tweezer” to hold in place particles as small as 1/100th the diameter of a human hair in water done by Professor Joel Harris was reported. Further along in the same newsletter the assembly of a “metacluster” supercomputer (by Julio Facelli, David Grant, and Greg Voth) for advanced simulations of biological processes is also described.

Among the many news items in the Spring 2004 issue of the newsletter are the following: Professor Bill Breckenridge won the University’s Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award; Dale Poulter, Peter Stang, and Cynthia Burrows authored articles on chemical elements in the September 8, 2003 story “It’s Elemental: The Periodic Table” in C&E News; Janis Louie won an NSF Career Award to discover the untapped chemistry of CO2; Dale Poulter won the ACS James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry; Jack Simons authored a 461 page book “An Introduction to Theoretical Chemistry” published by Cambridge University Press in 2003; Rosemary Laufer took early retirement from her long held post as Administrative Assistant to the Department Chair and was succeeded in the post by Debbie Olson [Considering Rosemary’s excellent memory of where all the bodies are buried, some may await with anxiety the possible publication of her memoirs]; Ron Ragsdale ran out of breath at 18,000 feet of elevation on Mt. Kilimanjaro, but his daughter Krista made it to the 19,340 foot summit; Dr. Ilya Zharov, born in Russia, joined the faculty at Utah after postdoctoral work with Josef Michl in Boulder, CO; Dr. Kevin E. Ashley (Ph.D. 1987) has weathered the embarrassment of a role in the “Cold Fusion” episode and has a responsible job with NIOSH in his home town of Cincinnati, OH.