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California State University, Long Beach • Fall 2010

The Department of Chemistry and Biochem-istry’s 50th anniversary was celebrated onApril 17 with an alumni reunion banquet.

Twenty alumni along with many of their spouses,as well as present and former faculty, attendedthe event.

The evening began with a reception on theMolecular and Life Sciences Center (MLSC) patio.Guests took a guided tour of MLSC and a guidedhard-hat tour of the new Hall of Science underconstruction. Following a banquet held in theChart Room, Dr. Doug McAbee made a presenta-tion on the history of the department, and Dr.Jeff Cohlberg gave a nostalgic overview. Wewere fortunate that Dr. Ken Marsi maintained aphoto archive from his 21 years as departmentchair, and we enjoyed lots of vintage photos,including snapshots from the 1976 and 1977pizza banquets. Several attendees recognizedthemselves in the photographs.

Included among the attendees were alumniand faculty spanning the department’s history.The graduating classes of 1964-07 were wellrepresented, and faculty in attendance includedall the living past department chairmen: Drs.Darwin Mayfield, Roger Bauer, Nail Senozan andDoug McAbee.

Chemistry was offered for the first time atLong Beach State College in 1953, and the firstthree B.S. degrees in chemistry were awarded in1958. Formal department status came with the1960-61 academic year. The faculty at that timecomprised Drs. A.G. Tharp, Gene Kalbus, RogerBauer, Ed Becker, Darwin Mayfield, Julie Kierbow,Bertha Odenheimer, Ed Harris, Dot Goldish, ClydeOsborne, Don Simonsen and John Stern. Dr. May-field and Dr. Goldish both attended the 50thanniversary banquet. A 25th anniversary banquetwas held in 1983.

We hope to continue to hold alumni reunionbanquets every few years, and we hope thatmore of you will be able to attend future events.

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Alumni Reunion Banquet Celebrates Department’s 50th Anniversary

Above: Dr. Doug McAbee gives a presentationon the department's history.

From left: Bill Hulbrock (B.S., chemistry, 1970;M.S., biochemistry, 1974), Christine

Angeletakis, Dr. Roger Bauer, Steve Jones(B.S., chemistry, 1979) and Chris Angeletakis(B.S., chemistry, 1976; M.S., chemistry, 1978).

Foreground: Dr. Bob Loeschen, Dr. Tom Maricich, Dr. Dot Goldish, Ernie Valfre(B.S., chemistry, 1978), Jason Barca (student), Steve Laven (B.S., biochemistry, 1993), Gary Hathaway(B.S., chemistry, 1964), George Mast (B.S., chemistry, 1970). Standing: Dr. Paul Buonora, Dr. MargieMerryfield, Director of Development Maryanne Horton and Annette Guerrero (B.A., chemistry 1986).

Alumni Reunion Banquet

I’ve always felt that Iwork on one of thebest campuses, and

this year is no exception.The faculty and staff havebeen truly amazing. As

many of you know, we just went through ayear of furloughs (two days per month) witha pay cut of about 10 percent. This hasaffected everyone on campus, including ourstudents, who had fewer class days in manycases because of faculty furloughs. Serviceswere not always available for students, asthe campus was totally shut down for sixdays plus additional days when staff mem-bers were off, and many offices were closed.It was difficult for everyone to get their jobsdone. However, despite this and major cutsto our operating budgets, the faculty andstaff worked really hard to make sure stu-dents still got the best education possibleand the support services they needed. Icommend them for the outstanding job theydid in a difficult situation and their commit-ment and dedication to our students andtheir success.

Our campus received a number ofrecognitions this past year, including amajor national report from the SouthernRegional Education Board that singled outCSULB as one of the top institutions recog-nized for its efforts in outperforming mostsimilar U.S. institutions (public master’s) inhelping students stay on track and graduate.CSULB increased its six-year graduation ratefrom 2002 to 2006 by 20 percent to a rateof 48 percent. This was done on a campusthat, in 2006, had nearly 38,000 students, afreshmen class with a median SAT score of1,015 and 33.9 percent Pell Grant recipients.In 2007, the rate jumped an additionalseven points to 54 percent, with the samehigh percentage of Pell Grant recipients anda majority of students entering who weredeficient in CSU standards for math andEnglish. This year, CSULB graduated 9,070students. The increase in graduation ratesand numbers has been due to many studentsuccess efforts implemented on our campus,including three mandatory advisement sessions for all incoming freshmen, specificprograms set up for students at risk for

dropping out, pre-baccalaureate supportthrough the Beach Learning Community,curriculum innovations in math pre-bac-calaureate and graduation writing instruc-tion, and college-based programs thatsupport students such as our college’sFreshmen Experience Success Program.

During the 2009-10 academic year,our campus started on a new journey withthe Highly Valued Degree Initiative (pleasesee link to the initiative on the CSULBhomepage). President F. King Alexanderasked the campus to launch this initiativewith the goal of boosting graduation rateseven higher while sustaining and raisingthe value of our degrees. Task forces werecreated that will work on streamlining cur-riculum for students, providing even bettersupport services and advising, and increas-ing the use of supplemental instructionclasses for low completion rates (LCR)courses (high percent of D and F grades).The College of Natural Sciences and Math-ematics has several LCR courses, so it is apriority of ours to implement more supportfor students to help them be successful thefirst time they enroll in these courses.

As you can see, we really care aboutthe success of our students and their timelygraduation. This, however, is not just a cam-pus priority but should be one we share withour friends and alumni in the community.Thus, we invite you to become engaged withthe Department of Chemistry and Biochem-istry—especially you who are alumni. Wevalue your input, partnerships and contribu-tions to programs in the department as wellas others in the college. If you are interestedin gift giving to set up student scholarships,to build and sustain programs or to namerooms in our new science building, pleasecontact Maryanne Horton, our director ofdevelopment in the college. Her e-mailaddress is [email protected], or you maycall her at 562-985-1687.

As always, we thank you—faculty, staff,students, alumni and friends—who havecontributed in some way. Your support helpsmake it possible to provide the high-qualityprograms for our students so they leaveCSULB with highly valued degrees.

Dr. Laura Kingsford

Alumni Reunion Banquet .....................................1Message by the Dean ..........................................2Remarks by the Chair...........................................3Faculty Recognition for Excellence ......................3New Isothermal Titration Calorimeter..................4State Budget Crisis ..............................................4New Hall of Science .............................................5New Powder X-ray Diffractometer........................6Distinguished Lecturer: Rebek.............................6Stephen Mezyk’s Radical Chemistry ....................7New Department Website ....................................7Faculty Reports....................................................8Bob Soukup Retires............................................11Faculty Publications ...........................................14Awards & Scholarships ......................................16Alumni News ......................................................18M.S. Theses........................................................19Staff News .........................................................20SMACS...............................................................20Memorial Benches .............................................21Advisory Council New Members ........................22Alumni Giving ....................................................22Where Are They Now?........................................22Individual and Corporate Gifts...........................23Honor Roll .........................................................23

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Messageby the Dean

Top photo: Jace Jones, Steve Jones (B.S., chemistry, 1979), Dr. RogerBauer, Mark Zakhour (Facilities), George Mast (B.S., chemistry, 1970),Michael Manneh (B.S., chemistry, 1993), Al Basiulis, Danute Basiulis(M.S., chemistry, 1976), Roger Meyer (B.S., chemistry, 1968) andShirley Meyer. Above: Jeannette Santage and Dr. Darwin Mayfield.

Left to right, below: Arti Patel, Chris Appleton (B.S., chemistry, 1972),Richard Kurjan, Katherine (Christopherson) Kurjan (B.S., chemisty,1986), Arlene Oto (B.S., chemistry, 1982; M.S., chemistry, 1990).

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Greetings to all the alumni andfriends of the Department of Chem-istry and Biochemistry. It has been a

challenging year for the department, butwe are working hard to maintain a qualityprogram in the face of reduced state sup-port. This year, we were able to offer a fullschedule of classes, and next year, we shouldbe able to restrict cuts to our General Edu-cation (CHEM 100) and Preparative Chem-istry (CHEM 101) classes. We were able tosurvive a year of faculty and staff furloughs,including three days each semester whenthe university was closed and all classeswere cancelled.

There have been plenty of bright spotsas well. Our faculty had continued success inpublishing the results of their research,obtaining external funding and receivinghonors in recognition of their work. We addedan isothermal titration calorimeter and apowder X-ray diffractometer to our facilities.Fifty of our students graduated with bachelor’sdegrees, and nine of our students completedtheir M.S. degree programs. Our studentscontinued to be involved in large numbers inresearch, co-authoring publications andmaking presentations at national meetings.We had an outstanding DistinguishedLecturer program, featuring a visit from Dr.Irwin Rebek, Jr. of the Scripps Institute. Weheld our first alumni reunion in many years.We have seen a substantial increase incontributions to the department by ouralumni and friends. Finally, we have had thepleasure of watching the new Hall of Sciencerise in between PH2 and the Molecular andLife Sciences Center, and we look forward tomoving into the building next spring andsummer. Our students continue to gainacceptance to leading graduate andprofessional schools.

At the alumni reunion banquet, I pre-sented a comparison between the depart-ment in 1975-76, the year I joined thefaculty, and today.

• In 1975, the prime activity of achemist was using a fine wire to unclogthe pen on a chart recorder, while in 2010it is sitting in front of a computer.

• In a more serious vein, the numberof our majors has increased from 164 to 476,while the number of tenure-track facultyhas remained the same at 23, and thenumber of graduate students is also aboutthe same (45 in 1976 and 46 this year).

• The typical size of an upper-divisionclass was under 40 in 1975, while now it is60-80.

• In 1975, when research was justbeginning to be required for tenure andpromotion, our faculty published eightresearch journal articles, compared to 34in 2008-09.

• In 1975, a student paid $194 a year($767 in today’s dollars) to attend CSULB;now fees are $5,008 for undergraduatesand $6,040 for grad students (more thandouble the fees in 2000).

• State funds for operating expenseshave gone from $85,000 in 1975($336,000 in today’s dollars) to $38,300today (the 1975 figure does not includeseparate allocations for new and replace-ment equipment).

Our department will continue to growand evolve. We have survived budget crisesin the past, and we will survive this one aswell. The changes in our department at leastpartly reflect the changes going on in highereducation everywhere. We may embracesome of the changes that are occurring moreenthusiastically than we embrace others, butwe can take pride in continuing to providehigh-quality training in chemistry and bio-chemistry for this generation of students and,hopefully, the coming generations as well.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Cohlberg

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Chem/BiochemFaculty WinRecognition for Excellence

Dr. Michael Schramm was named thisyear’s winner of the Mayfield Award for out-standing teaching at our Commencementceremony in May. The College of Natural Sci-ences and Mathematics Student Councilestablished the award in the 1990s in honorof former chemistry professor Darwin Mayfield.Each spring the students hold a noontimepicnic, at which they may vote for theirfavorite professor, and this year Dr. Schrammwas their choice.

Dr. Lijuan Li was one of four recipientsof a university Distinguished Faculty Scholarlyand Creative Achievement Award, presentedannually at an awards ceremony at the WalterPyramid. Dr. Li was recognized for her highlyproductive research program in inorganicchemistry. Many of her publications focus onthe properties of metal nitrosyl compounds,complexes in which metals are coordinatedwith the biologically active compound nitricoxide, which plays a major role in regulatingblood pressure. Her work may have thera-peutic applications.

The same ceremony also honored thetwo recipients of a new award, the Provost’sAward for Impact Accomplishment of theYear in Research, Scholarly & Creative Activity.One of these awards went to Dr. Steve Mezyk,who was honored for his studies of chemicalkinetics by pulse radiolysis, including work onthe potential use of radiological techniquesfor wastewater decontamination.

A paper from Dr. Eric Sorin’s lab,"Equilibrium conformational dynamics in anRNA tetraloop from massively parallel molec-ular dynamics,” was a cover article for NucleicAcids Research. Dr. Sorin and four undergrad-uate students, biochemistry majors AllisonDePaul and Sarav Patel, chemical engineeringmajor Erik Thompson and mathematics/eco-nomics double major Kristin Hardemanauthored the paper.

Finally, Dr. Xianhui Bu has done it again—his recent Angewandte Chemie InternationalEdition paper, “A Tale of Three Carboxylates:Cooperative Asymmetric Crystallization ofThree-Dimensional Microporous Frameworkfrom Achiral Precursors,” was designated aHot Paper by the editors of the journal “forits importance in a rapidly evolving field ofhigh current interest.”

California’s ongoing budget crisis continues to affect the Depart-ment of Chemistry and Biochemistry. For 2009-10, with thestate facing a $42 billion deficit, the CSU budget was reduced

by $649 million, a six percent cut. To help address this problem, facultyand staff voted to accept a furlough program that reduced their num-ber of working days (and their pay) by 9.3 percent. In addition, studentfees were raised by 30 percent, while enrollment was cut. Many classeswere cancelled, and students scrambled to get the courses they neededto progress toward graduation. Fortunately, at CSULB, the universitywas able to tap (and essentially deplete) their reserve funds to mitigatethe effect on course offerings, and a late decision to support additionalsections of critical lower division courses from Student Success fundsenabled our department to offer a full schedule of classes.

But the cuts were felt in other ways. With class meetings cancelledbecause of furloughs, it was challenging for faculty to teach courses sothat all essential material in the curriculum could still be covered, andchallenging for students to master the material with less class time.Tenure-track hiring was cancelled because of a lack of funds for researchstartup expenses. We were not permitted to hire a replacement for ourlong-term instrument technician, Bob Soukup (see article on Bob’sretirement). There was no money to buy new instructional equipmentor to replace existing equipment—lottery funds normally used for thispurpose were diverted to paying for service contracts—and we still hadto cancel contracts on two instruments. There were insufficientresources to provide matching funds for some faculty grant proposalsand less support for faculty and student travel. Class handouts werebanned in order to save photocopying costs, and faculty were directedto post material for students online only.

For 2010-11, the situation is uncertain as of this writing. Californiastill faces a roughly $19 billion shortfall. The governor’s budget proposalcontains a restoration of roughly half the funds that were cut last year.But the proposed budget faces an uncertain fate in the Californialegis lature, where Democrats may be unwilling to accept other cutsproposed by the governor, including the elimination of the state’s wel-fare program, and Republicans continue to oppose any tax increases.The university is currently planning significant cuts in class offerings.In our department, this means substantial reductions in lab sections ofour general education and preparative chemistry classes. Support forfaculty research has been cut substantially, and many tenure trackfaculty are carrying heavier teaching loads. We were unable to rehirea number of our part-time lecturers. Other cuts instituted last yearwill continue.

As of this writing (mid-August), we are waiting to see what typeof budget emerges. It is now clear that we will not have a budget inplace by the beginning of the fall semester. If a budget is passed duringthe coming months that restores to the CSU some of the funds cut lastyear, it may be possible to offer additional classes in the spring. Ourhighest priority is to make sure that our majors and other majors inareas related to science get the classes they need to make unimpededprogress toward graduation.

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State Budget Crisis Affects the Department

Department GetsIsothermal Titration

CalorimeterBy Dr. Brian L. McClain

In fall 2009, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistryreceived a $334,625 Major Research Instrumentation Grant fromthe National Science Foundation for the purchase of a MicroCal

Auto-iTC200 isothermal titration calorimeter (ITC). The proposal waswritten as a collaboration among Drs. Brian McClain, DouglasMcAbee, Eric Marinez, Michael Schramm, Vasanthy Narayanaswami,Paul Weers and Kasha Slowinska.

ITC is a sensitive, rapid and direct method for measuring theenthalpy of interaction between two chemical species through thedetection of heat exchanged when the two species interact. Theinstrument is a complement to the MicroCal differential scanningcalorimeter already in the department. The combined use of the twoinstruments allows full characterization of the thermodynamics ofmany chemical systems.

The Microcal Auto-iTC200 provides throughput of up to 384samples with unattended operation; all filling, data collection andcell cleaning functions are fully automated. The instrument candirectly measure sub-millimolar to nanomolar dissociation constantsand can measure dissociation constants in the nanomolar to picomo-lar range using competitive binding techniques. Most important, aslittle as 10 µg of protein can be used. ITC requires no labeling orimmobilization and presents no buffer restrictions.

Several faculty labs are using the ITC in their research. Dr.McClain’s lab is studying the binding of drugs and fatty acids tohuman serum albumin. Dr. Schramm and his students will be lookingat the interaction of a-helical peptidomimetics on protein-proteininteractions and at the uptake of cavitands by lipid vesicles. Dr.Marinez's group is using ITC to characterize the binding of anions tosynthetic ligands based on enterobactin. Dr. McAbee will be examiningthe binding of lactoferrin to the asialoglycoprotein receptor and toserum proteins. Dr. Narayanaswami's lab will use ITC to characterizethe interaction of apolipoprotein E with the low-density lipoproteinreceptor and with the amyloid-beta peptide. Dr. Weers and his stu-dents will investigate the binding of apolipoproteins to lipid vesiclesand to lipopolysaccharides. Dr. Slowinska's group will look at theinteraction of drugs and other small molecules with a collagen drugdelivery matrix.

The instrument will be housed in the Institute for IntegratedResearch in Materials, Environments and Society (IIRMES), and thiswill facilitate its use in collaborative and cross-disciplinary researchinvolving faculty from other departments and other CSU campuses.

The ITC will also be integrated into a number of our courses,including the physical chemistry laboratory course. This will provideour undergraduate and graduate students with hands-on experienceusing one of the most ubiquitous bioanalytical instruments currentlyavailable in industry.

The department is fortunate to have this truly state-of-the-artinstrument as part of its suite of modern instrumentation.

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The construction of the new Hall of Sci-ence is proceeding on schedule, and the build-ing should be ready for us to move in duringthe spring 2011 semester and hold classes infall 2011.

The building will contain 180,000 grosssquare feet and 98,000 assignable square feet,of which 14,200 square feet will go to theDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry.The total cost of the project is $110 million.The basement will contain the science shops,storage, and both teaching and research labsfor the Biology Department. The first floor willhouse two 180-seat and two 80-seat lecturehalls, in addition to the dean’s offices, advisingoffices, and additional teaching and researchlabs for Biology. The second floor will houseteaching and research labs for the Physics andScience Education Departments.

The third floor will be shared by theDepartments of Chemistry and Geology. Thewest wing of the building will include fourteaching labs for general chemistry and a laband instrument room for instrumental analysisand a physical chemistry laboratory. Five fac-ulty members in the areas of physical and ana-lytical chemistry will have research labs, andone room will house a laser facility. Thedepartment office and 14 offices for chemistryfaculty will line the south face of the building.The chair’s office will move from its presentlocation in MLSC, with a vista of the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains, to the southside of the new building, with a vista of theside of PH2 that previously faced the loadingdock. The labs will be served by the issue roomin MLSC, and a bridge will connect the thirdfloor of the new building with MLSC.

You can view the project’s progress on thedepartment website (http://chemistry.csulb.edu/cameras/). The work began with the demolitionof PH3 during summer 2008. By the end of thefall semester, we had a rectangular pit linedwith retaining walls. At that point, work wasinterrupted for three months because of a haltto all state-funded construction in California.During the spring and early summer, under-ground utilities were installed and a concretefoundation was poured. Steel girders startedrising in July 2009, and the last beam was putinto place in a topping-off ceremony thatSeptember. During the fall 2009 semester, thebuilding acquired most of its shell with theinstallation of precast walls, windows and aroof. By the beginning of summer 2010, theoutside of the building was nearly complete,and work on the inside was well underway.

New Hall of Science Nears Completion

To view time-lapse movies ofPeterson Hall 3’s demolition and thenew building’s construction, visit http://chemistry.csulb.edu/cameras/.

Photo by David J. Nelson

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By Dr. Michael P. Schramm

Dr. Julius Rebek, Jr.2009 Allergan Distinguished Lecturer

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was privileged to host Dr. Julius Rebek, Jr., achemistry professor at The Scripps Research Institute and director of The Skaggs Institute forChemical Biology, as the 2009 Allergan Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Rebek visited our department

on Nov. 18. He presented two riveting talks: one, a lecture for a general audience; and the other, atechnical seminar on the topic of molecular recognition and molecular self-assembly.

Dr. Rebek received his Ph.D. degree in 1970 from the Massachu-setts Institute of Technology, studying peptide chemistry with Dr. D.S.Kemp. He was appointed director of The Skaggs Institute for ChemicalBiology in 1996 after academic appointments at UCLA, University ofPittsburgh and MIT, where he was the Camille Dreyfus Professor ofChemistry from 1991-96.

Dr. Rebek’s early work included development of the three-phasetest for reactive intermediates and invention of molecular cleft struc-tures for molecular recognition. He was a pioneer in developing thefirst synthetic, self-replicating molecules (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1990, 112,

1249-1250). He has received numerous prestigious awards, given scores of presentations under namedlectureships, is an editorial advisory board member for many high-impact publications and commercialcompanies, and has authored over 425 publications.

Dr. Rebek continues to be a leader in the field of molecular recognition and self-assembly. In hisfirst lecture, “Molecular Assembly and Encapsulation,” he described some of his group’s first efforts todevelop molecules that assemble and encapsulate other molecules. In these complexes, new chemicalphenomena emerge. Using NMR spectroscopy as a tool, Dr. Rebek convincingly demonstrated the driv-ing force that dictates self-assembly: appropriate filling of space. Moreover, these new assembliesallow for the study of chemical phenomena within the capsules with time scales from milliseconds tohours that could not otherwise be observed in solution, where the lifetimes of the relevant species aretoo short. The NMR data was quite cleverly used to develop a series of breathtaking animations thatRebek played for the audience, giving his best description of the actual physical behavior based onchemical observation.

A second—standing room only—technical lecture elaborated on “The Inner Space of Molecules,”where themes from earlier in the day were revisited in depth and applied to assemblies of greatercomplexity and assemblies in which more than one guest is encapsulated in larger capsules. In thesestudies, several new forms of stereoisomerism emerge. Molecules held in new arrangements give newand thought-provoking challenges to conventional definitions of isomers. Dr. Rebek then elaborated onsome unusual contortions that molecules undergo as they are “driven” to fill space inside cavitandsand capsules. A new expanded capsule emerges when a seam of spacers is introduced. This arrange-ment allows a long alkyl chain to go from a compressed and coiled conformation to a more familiarexpanded zigzag conformation. This behavior mimics our everyday notion of the compression of aspring, except now it is reduced to the molecular level. An encapsulation complex of anandamine isshown below with two “seams” of spacer molecules that allow this lengthy molecule to fill the space

defined by the two capsule halves at theend. Coiling and kinks of the guestemerge with unfavorable energetic con-sequences; in the end, the energeticbenefit of encapsulation wins!

Throughout the lectures, despitethe complex experiments required to prove the existence of such complexes, Dr. Rebek had a masterfulway of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, awaiting the next detail, discovery or anima-tion. It was truly a privilege for the department to host Dr. Rebek as our 2009 Allergan DistinguishedLecturer. We are very grateful to The Allergan Foundation for their ongoing support of this program.

New Powder X-ray DiffractionInstrumentBy Dr. Shahab Derakhshan

The new powder X-ray diffractometer(XRD) in my research laboratory is avaluable addition to the single crystal

X-ray machine in Dr. Xianhui Bu’s lab andcompletes our instrumental needs for crys-tallography tasks. When single crystals withsuitable sizes are not available, powder dif-fraction techniques are unique tools forcrystal structure determination. In addition,the XRD instrument enables us to confirmthe formation of desired phases, phasehomogeneity and, if present, the type ofside products in polycrystalline samples.

The Panalytical X’pert Pro Alpha1 sys-tem is equipped with a state-of-the-artX’Celerator ultrafast detector. The mono-chromatic incident beam results in high-resolution diffraction patterns.

The XRD instrument is housed in MLSC302 and will be available for all interestedfaculty labs in our department. This willparticularly be beneficial for materialsresearch labs. In addition, researchers fromother departments such as Physics andAstronomy, Geological Sciences, ChemicalEngineering, and Mechanical and AerospaceEngineering will be able to use this instru-ment in collaborative research projects.

The XRD system will also be employedin CHEM 332: Inorganic Chemistry Labora-tory and CHEM 531: Advances in InorganicChemistry. The students will get hands-onexperience in obtaining diffraction patternsand in analyzing the diffraction data. Thiswill provide a great opportunity for ourstudents to understand both the principlesof diffraction techniques and their appli-cations in crystallographic structuredetermination.

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By Anne Ambrose

Remediation of chemical contaminants in waters, elucidating aerosol chemistry in theatmosphere and even understanding the chemistry behind carcinogenesis have long beeninterests of Stephen Mezyk, professor of physical and environmental chemistry, whose

expertise in radical chemistry has earned international recognition. “I try to do chemistry thathelps overcome some of the bigger problems in the world,” he said. Now, his RadKEM labora-tory is turning its sights in a new direction, working to improve reprocessing methods for spentnuclear fuel in support of the many nations currently generating electricity through cleannuclear energy programs.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently named CSULB's Dr. Stephen Mezyk as theonly principal investigator from a non-Ph.D.-granting institution among 23 universities toreceive Nuclear Energy University Program 2010 funding for nuclear education and technologies.This four-year grant for $1.4 million was one of 13 Fuel Cycle Research and Development grantsexploring methods for recycling and disposing of used fuel produced by nuclear power plants,and one of the largest of 42 university grants for nuclear research awarded by DOE this year. Dr.Mezyk will be working with the colleagues at the Idaho National Laboratory and University ofCalifornia, Irvine, on this project to explore the effects of radiolysis on the extraction ligandsused to selectively recover radioactive nuclides from dissolved spent fuel. The project will exam-ine the chemistry behind the alpha and gamma radiation-induced degradation of these ligandsunder anticipated reprocessing conditions. Dr. Mezyk's research is ultimately aimed at under-standing the fundamental mechanisms of radiation damage that occurs, thus allowing forimproved isotope recycling efficiency and reduction of high-level radioactive waste.

Dr. Mezyk, who joined CSULB in 2001, earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University ofMelbourne, Australia. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Advanced Oxidation Technologiesand has received multiple research grants and contracts, particularly for his water chemistrystudies. This spring, he received the CSULB Provost’s 2010 Award for Impact Accomplishment ofthe Year in Research, Scholarly and Creative Activity, following his CSULB Distinguished FacultyScholarly and Creative Achievement Award in 2008.

In addition to his research accomplishments, Dr. Mezyk is also a respected teacher andmentor. He received the CSULB University Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 2007 and,over the past nine years, has mentored his RadKEM research students to pursue careers in medi-cine, veterinary and doctoral research programs. His students have had extensive experience atworking at state-of-the-art Department of Energy national laboratories, writing scientific paperspublished in such prestigious journals as Environmental Science and Technology, RadiationResearch, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Water Research and Environmental Chemistry. Many ofhis students have presented their research in talks at national and international conferences, andobtained their own research funding from outstanding organizations including the Arnold Beck-mann Foundation, CSULB’s Women and Philanthropy, Phi Beta Kappa and the Orange CountyWater District. He also recently appeared as an expert in water and nuclear chemistry in theaward-winning video series, Understanding Chemistry in Your World, by Coast Learning Systems.

By Dr. Eric J. Sorin, Web Page Committee Chair

Iam happy to announce that the newDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistrywebsite will, by the time of this publication,

be fully functional and fully accessible to thegeneral public. The Web Page Committee hasspent considerable time redesigning the web-site to dramatically improve the overall visualappeal, organizational flow and ease of navi-gation. Most notably, users will now see amuch stronger focus on the research takingplace within the department and the sense ofcommunity that exists within our college.

Among the many changes that have beenmade, the new homepage now includes amodern flash banner with a continuouslyrotating panel that highlights areas of activeresearch within the department. The homepagealso dons a new “Department News” columnand an interactive calendar that will minimizethe amount of navigation needed to keep upwith department, college and university events.The links menu has been replaced with a muchmore concise horizontal drop-down menu,thereby consuming less screen space and sim-plifying the navigation process. Within the“People” and “Research” menus, you will findseveral new options to access departmentalinformation, including new categories todescribe the research each faculty member is pursuing.

Our goals were simple: modernize the aes-thetics of the website, make navigation simpleand expose the Internet community to infor-mation on our academic programs, researchactivities and community atmosphere as accu-rately as possible. With many contributions andsuggestions from members of the department,we feel we have accomplished these goals andlook forward to the continued maturation ofour new website, which serves as the interna-tional portal into the heart of our department.Please visit us at http://chemistry.csulb.edu andget to know the new department website!

Web Page Committee members are Drs.Paul Buonora, Vas Narayanaswami,Young Shon, Paul Weers, and gradu-ate students Emel Adaligil andTommy Neubauer.

Stephen Mezyk’sRadical Chemistry Benefits Society

New Depar tmentWebs i te

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Dr. Roger AceyThere are several new faces in the group

this year. Nolan Dunisch, Brent Wilkinson andReyna Raya are the newest undergraduatestudents, and Aparna Shinde joined the groupas a graduate student. Nolan and Brent areworking alongside Paul Madera on the metal-lothionein project. Paul has been able to cloneseveral variants of the protein, and Nolan andBrent are determining the optimal cultureconditions for expression of the protein. Reynaand Aparna's projects involve butyrlcholin -esterase. We are collaborating with Dr. KenNakayama’s group to develop a class ofcholinesterase inhibitors that potentially could

be used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s dis-ease. Reyna is evaluating the inhibitory activ-ity of these compounds, and Aparna isdetermining whether they are capable ofinhibiting amyloid plaque formation. JoselynDel Cid and Felisha Cage have been looking atbutyrylcholinesterase in neuroblastoma cellsand will begin looking at the enzyme in differ-entiating stem cells this summer.

I am very happy to report that Gwen Jor-daan, Simon Moon and Jim Yano are finishingup the last series of experiments for their M.S.degrees and are actively writing their theses.They are model department citizens, and I will

From left: Dr. Eric Sorin, Dr. Christopher Brazier, Dr. Lijuan LI, Dr. Young Shon, Dr. Jeffrey Cohlberg,

Dr. Krzysztof Slowinski, Dr. Robert Loeschen, Dr. Kasha Slowinska, Dr. Paul Buonora, Dr. Marco Lopez,

Dr. Vasanthy Narayanaswami, Dr. Brian McClain, Dr. Paul Weers and Dr. Tom Maricich.


Reports from Faculty

be sorry to see them leave. They have been thecornerstone of the lab. Gwen’s project hasinvolved isolating the promoter sequence forthe MT gene. Simon has been looking atchanges in posttranslational modification ofhistone H1 during development. Jim has beeninvolved in purifying a down-regulated tran-scription factor from macrophages.

Dr. Paul BuonoraIn this year following my sabbatical, I

have been focused on finishing up old projectsand beginning new ones. With the renewal ofthe college’s NIH-RISE grant, written with Dr.Marco Lopez of this department and Dr. Bal-want Khatra of the Biological Sciences Depart-ment, I kicked off the fall semester recruitingfreshman and sophomore students into theprogram. The RISE program supports the skillsdevelopment of students who will pursuePh.D.s in the biomedical sciences. As RISEStarters coordinator, I work with freshman andsophomore students to prepare them to enterinto research in their junior and senior years.To add support to the college’s developmentactivities for those students who are not inter-ested in biomedical careers, I worked with Drs.Chuhee Kwon from the Physics Department,Lora Stevens from Geology and Jen-Mei Changfrom Math to write a proposal to the NSFunder the S-STEM program to provide scholar-ship support to physical science majors withfinancial needs. Activities of the RISE Starterswill be shared with the students from the S-STEM grant, which was funded by NSF in May.

On the research side, I have been recon-stituting my research group since my returnfrom sabbatical. Bryan Fiamengo, Crystal Jenkinsand Jim Brady should all defend their respec-tive M.S. theses by the time this newsletter isdistributed. They have all worked on our studiesrelated to the diversity-oriented synthesisfrom bicyclic- and tricyclic-lactams. I pre-sented seminars at San Diego State Universityin December 2009 and at the Spring NationalACS Meeting in March on our work related tocorrecting the mechanism of the cyclocon-densation to form bicyclic- and tricyclic-lac-tams. Undergraduate students Ross Obenauerand Michael Kingham have participated inthe project during the past year. This projectis almost mined out and will be ending overthe next year or two.

As the longstanding bicyclic-lactamproject is phased out, we have begun a newproject designed to provide a low-costreagent for the synthesis of carbohydratesand pseudo-carbohydrates. Jose Guererro, apre-veterinary medicine biology major, hasmoved this project forward along with DaoNgo and Straun Phillips, a chemistry M.S.major. With the two Bridges to the Baccalau-reate students, who will join the group insummer 2010, we hope to move to our firstpublications and grant applications in the fall.

While tight budgets are common andhinder our work every year, this year wasextremely difficult with its lack of fundingand furloughs. This added to my delight atreceiving a $1,000 donation from Dr. KenIshida to support my group’s research work. A1983 CSULB microbiology graduate whoearned a minor in chemistry, Dr. Ishida worksin the research labs at the Orange CountyWater District. His support has allowed us topurchase the materials needed to begin ournew project.

Standing from left: Joselyn Del Cid, Felisha Cage, Nolan Dunisch,Paul Madera, Dr. Roger Acey, Gwen Jordon and James Yand.Seated: Brent Wilkinson and Apavna Shinde.

Photo by Victoria Sanchez

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Reports from FacultyReports from FacultyOn a personal level, my wife, Sarah, and I

took a little time to visit Seattle in June 2009for the first time. While there, we took a four-hour glass-working lesson at an art glassfoundry. It was my first time working glass atthis level since my undergraduate scientificglassblowing class. It was fun and challenging,and we were able to make a few itemsshipped to us after annealing.

Dr. Shahab DerakhshanIn my research group, we intend to

establish a broad, solid-state synthesis program,with the goal of discovering and characteriz-ing novel compounds with desired physicalproperties for some specific applications.Accordingly, my research is focused on twodifferent, but related, areas, namely energyrelated materials and magnetic materials.

The past year has been an exciting yearfor me as I designed the laboratory setup andeventually purchased and installed some ofthe major pieces of equipment and built oth-ers with great support from the CNSM scienceshop. I am glad to say that these pieces havenow come together, and our lab is operational.Our materials preparation lab is located inMLSC 332, and our state-of-the-art powderX-ray diffractometer was installed in MLSC302. I am very fortunate to have the opportu-nity to work with five very talented andenthusiastic undergraduate students in my lab.Alan Tran and Kenny Tran are trying to dis-cover new materials with some interestingmagnetic properties. Ryan Clark, Malinda Tanand Sophia Nguyen are searching for newfunctional materials with superior thermoelec-tric efficiency.

Another piece of exciting news for uswas that my research proposal entitled“Design, Synthesis and Physical Properties ofSome Novel Brownmillerite Compounds” wasrecognized for a Single Investigator CottrellCollege Science Award by the Research Corpo-ration for Science Advancement.

We have also started a collaborativeresearch project with Dr. Sergio Mendez’s groupfrom the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Since my appointment at CSULB inAugust 2009, I have published two articles inpeer-reviewed journals. Some of the workdescribed in one of these articles, published inthe Journal of Alloys and Compounds, wasdone at CSULB.

Dr. Tom MaricichAt commencement this spring, I was

honored to be selected as grand marshal forthe College of Natural Sciences andMathematics. Ikept the grad-uates in linewith my mace.My research

group is con-tinuing ourstudies of“Click Alkyla-tions” by sul-

fonimidates on various nucleophiles (IgorIzotov on phosphonic and phosphoric acids,Michael Fimbres on thiols, Holly Phung andMarilyn Ton on alcohols, and FranciscoRodriguez on new chiral sulfonimidates).Francisco graduated this year top in his classand received both the Robert B. Hendersonand Robert D. Rhodes Awards. He will beginhis Ph.D. studies in organic chemistry at Van-derbilt University this fall. More details aboutour research can be found on my updateddepartment website.

Another student (from the Food ScienceDepartment) is doing research on a projectgenerated from my consulting activities as anexpert witness. I have been retained on sev-eral cases involving severe scalp burns, whichresulted from the exotherm of water in hydro-gen peroxide with sodium metasilicate in hairbleaching powder. This happens when thesechemicals are mixed into a paste and appliedto the hair over the scalp. Sokrith Sea is test-ing various mixtures at different temperaturesto correlate the results and determine whichcommercial highlighting bleaches are haz-ardous and which appear to be safe.

On another level, I have been plantingseeds of future chemists by making presenta-tions at my grandson’s second and grand-daughter’s third grade classes. The childrenperformed hands-on experiments with sourcesof carbon dioxide and learned that the bub-bles in cupcakes are filled with CO2. By wear-ing placards of H, O and C, they held handsand demonstrated chemical reactions. After-wards, some students said that they wantedto become chemists.

Finally, although this fall will be my lastsemester of formal teaching, I will continueto mentor students, develop my researchprojects, warn the public about hazardous

consumer chemicals and catch a few good fishin Sitka, Alaska (see photos on my webpage).

Dr. Steve MezykIn the past 12 months, the CSULB Mezyk

RadKEMTM group has continued to focus onresearch, completing many old projects as wellas starting endeavors in our new area of nuclearchemistry. Our efforts for this year resulted in11 peer-reviewed papers and reports published,an additional nine papers accepted for journaland symposium publication, 24 conferencepresentations, and receiving nearly $1.8 millionin new grants from the Department of Energyand the National Science Foundation. This suc-cess was highlighted by my publication of fivereview articles, an invited expert talk at theACSEPT nuclear reprocessing conference inPortugal and recent recognition by the univer-sity in my receiving the CSULB Provost’s Awardfor Impact Accomplishment of the Year inResearch, Scholarly or Creative Activities. Ithas truly been another amazing year.

As always, my hardworking groupchanged this year, with graduations and newstudents joining. Timothy Feliciano completedhis final year with me this summer, finishingup his Beckman project on the radical-basedremoval of antibiotic metabolites from watersand graduating with his B.S. degree in bio-chemistry. He is currently applying for M.D./Ph.D.schools across the country. Thomas Neubauercompleted his M.S. degree on the redox chem-istry of sulfonamide antibiotics and has nowstarted his Ph.D. degree at U.C. Riverside insolid-state NMR. Jonathan Kleinman alsocompleted his M.S. degree on the roles of dis-solved organic matter in advanced oxidationprocess treatment of chemically contaminatedwaters and is now back to full-time employment.

We will also be losing Tom Cullen andAndrea Hewitt at the end of 2010, when theycomplete their remaining courses. New under-graduate research students in the group areJeremy Scheeler, who will be working onnitrosamine carcinogenesis kinetics, andMathew Stephens, who will be studying thetemperature-dependent kinetics of using radi-cals to remediate dry-cleaning fluid contami-nated soils and waters. Two new graduatestudents have joined us: Charlotte Hirsch isinvestigating the radical chemistry involved inmusk ketone (perfume components) removalfrom waters intended for reuse, and HanqingPan is looking at troposphere aerosol chem-istry of nitrate and hydroxyl radical reactionswith isoprene at low temperatures.

Continued on pg. 10, Reports from Faculty

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Reports from FacultyReports from Faculty

Amidst all of these successes, there wereseveral especially noteworthy achievements.One of the biggest was our collective successin obtaining scholarship funds so that my students were able to attend conferences withme, allowing them to give 13 oral and posterpresentations at two American ChemicalSociety meetings in Washington, D.C., and SanFrancisco, as well as other national meetingsin San Diego and Florida. Kimberly Rickmanwas awarded a Beckman Scholars nationalscholarship. She and Kimberly Johnston alsogot CSULB Women and Philanthropy scholar-ships, and four other students (Thomas Cullen,Andrea Hewitt, Delora Gaskins and ThomasNeubauer) received internal CSULB fundingand scholarships for their research travel andefforts. Three other students received specialrecognition from the Chemistry and Biochem-istry Department, with Garrett McKay beinggiven the ACS Polymer Organic Chemistry(CHEM 320A & B) award, Edsel Abud receivinga Marsi undergraduate scholarship and TimothyFeliciano being acknowledged for his prowessin Analytical Chemistry (CHEM 451). Three ofmy students also received summer REU scholar-ships at Johns Hopkins University (Edsel Abud),Brandeis (Delora Gaskins) and University ofColorado (Garrett McKay). Lastly, I was privi-leged to have three of my students (Edsel Abud,Kimberly Johnston and Kimberly Rickman)accepted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.

My personal efforts during this periodconcentrated on obtaining research funding.Two grants this year (totaling the majority ofmy new funding) were from the Departmentof Energy for the investigation of the chem-istry involved in the degradation of designerchemicals used for nuclear waste reprocessing.These grants were focused in the investigationof alpha radiation effects and are a collabora-tive effort between CSULB and U.C. Irvine,where we will be using their nuclear reactor,and Idaho National Laboratory. We will also beusing facilities and the efforts of co-workersin France (Marcoule), Sweden (Chalmers) andGermany (Jeulich). Another grant obtained thisyear from the National Science Foundationwas for the investigation of the impacts ofnatural organic matter on the large-scaletreatment removal of pharmaceuticals fromwaters intended for reuse. This two-year effortis being performed in collaboration with theUniversity of Colorado. All three of thesegrants will provide my students and me travelfunds and access to national and international

laboratories to utilize their state-of-the-artequipment. Lastly, I was privileged to receiveanother personal donation of $1,500 from KenIshida, directed to travel funding, which wasused by several undergraduate research stu-dents to attend and present at a nationalACS meeting.

With this focus on research, my teachingschedule was necessarily altered to only haveclasses in the fall semester. In 2009 I taughtGeneral Chemistry (CHEM 111B), trying to inspirethe science majors of the future; Air and WaterPollution (GEOL 191), which I designed andtaught to cover the major elements of generalchemistry to environmental science and policymajors using real-world examples as well asexcerpts from my research; and a Colloquium inPhysical Chemistry (CHEM 595C), where six M.S.students summarized several research papers inthe field of radical-based chemistry and gave aclass presentation; in addition to my usualresearch-based courses of CHEM 695, CHEM 697and CHEM 698. My CSULB service efforts weremainly concentrated on the DepartmentRetention, Promotions and Tenure Committee.However, I also completed my expert consultantefforts as an environmental/physical/radiationchemist for an online telecourse Liberal ArtsChemistry textbook written by Nancy Gardner.We have recently learned that one of theseonline videos, entitled Compounds: Opposites DoAttract, won an international Gold AVA award,recognizing excellence in audio/video productionas judged by the Association of Marketing andCommunication Professionals.

In summary it was another amazinglysuccessful year, and I am looking forward tomany more to come.

Dr. Ken NakayamaOur collaborative work with Dr. Roger

Acey’s group on the cholinesterase inhibitorshas been very fruitful over the past six or soyears. Drs. Eric Sorin and Katherine Kantardji-eff (Cal Poly Pomona) have contributed greatlyto the project through their expertise in com-putational methods. Every student in the grouphas also contributed to the progress made inthis project. Carmen Castillo and Juan Guerrero,undergraduates I recruited from CHEM 323A,have worked very hard during 2009-10 onsome organophosphorus inhibitor synthesis.Meanwhile, Omar Gallegos and Elise Van Fossenjoined our research group in spring 2010 andare quickly familiarizing themselves with thelab work. Graduate student Astor Suriano is

making nice progress with the synthesis ofchiral organophosphites. Ex-graduate studentRicardo Gallardo-Macias reports that he hascompleted his first year in the Ph.D. program inchemistry at Yale University and is doing well.

I have been involved in teaching theAdvanced Organic Laboratory course (CHEM420) since fall 2007. Every semester, I try toincorporate reactions from the literature intothe course curriculum to give students anopportunity to experience “real-world” examplesin the lecture and lab.

Dr. Vas NarayanaswamiBy the time each of us in my group could

say “Apolipoprotein E” the year was gone! Itwas eventful and fun, with one deadline afteranother. I do not remember any details exceptthe fabulous time we had with the group atthe beach on the eve of Halloween… Wecarved pumpkins and laughed and shriekedwith glee at my pathetic attempt at carving aphospholipid bilayer. It truly was a ghastlypiece of work that could send a shiver downSinger’s and Nicholson’s spines.

I was delighted to have two new studentsjoin my group last fall: Gursharan Bains, agrad student with a very positive attitude—her eternal optimism will serve her well in allher endeavors, and Darin Khumsupan, anundergraduate in biochemistry with a quirkysense of humor matched only by that of herbrother’s! We wrapped up the year withPanupon Khumsupan (PK), also a biochemistryundergraduate, presenting his biophysicalwork on the role of high-density lipoproteinscontaining apolipoprotein E (apoE) as poten-tial “nanovehicles” to transport and deliverbioflavonoids of pharmaceutical and nutra -ceutical relevance in an oral format at the2009 Southern California Conference forUndergraduate Research at CSU DominguezHills. Carlos Gallo and Max Amaya also pre-sented their work at this meeting on thepurification of recombinant rat apoE for stud-

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From left to right: Omar Gallegos, Carmen Castillo, Elise VanFossey, Astro Suriano, Dr. Ken Nakayama and Juan Guerren.

Continued from pg. 9

Bob Soukup retired last December after 34½ years as the instrument and computertechnician for the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department.

Soukup was born in Long Beachand graduated from Poly High School. Hedabbled with electronics in high school andworked in a TV store. Soukup served in theU.S. Navy from 1966-70 and received train-ing at the Navy school in Vallejo in computerhardware (which used vacuum tubes in thosedays) and in encryption and de-encryption,as well as received training in electronics atthe Navy school on Treasure Island in theSan Francisco Bay. He served off the coast ofVietnam and in the Mekong Delta on shipsthat fired shells in support of the infantry.

After leaving the Navy, Soukup contin-ued to work at the TV store while enrolling inthe program leading to a B.S. degree inindustrial technology (now industrial engi-neering) at CSULB. He graduated cum laudein 1974 and continued to work in TV elec-tronics. He also took courses related to biomedical engineering at the City of Hope andat Cerritos College, which gave him a familiarity with scientific instruments. In 1976, theCSULB Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry hired Soukup to maintain the Perkin-Elmer R12 60 MHz NMR.

According to Soukup, there was not enough work with the NMR to keep him occu-pied full time, so he “found other things to do.” As several generations of faculty andstudents know well, this meant that Soukup was the person to go to when any piece ofequipment stopped working. Whether it involved mechanical devices, vacuum pumps,balances, refrigeration units or scientific instruments with sophisticated electronics,Soukup was almost always able to either fix the problem or do the required trouble -shooting so that the right replacement part could be ordered. Armed with a voltmeterand a soldering gun, Soukup was often able to identify and replace a faulty componentof a circuit board that would have cost thousands of dollars to replace.

As the department entered the computer age in the mid-1980s, Soukup became thedepartment’s computer technician as well. He designed and maintained the department’sWeb page and server, kept all the department computers smoothly connected to the net-work and served as the all-purpose computer doctor.

Soukup met his wife Elizabeth when she was a microbiology major at CSULB in the1980s. His daughter, Jennifer, is now 21. The Soukup family spends time at their home inLong Beach and at a second house in Idyllwild.

In retirement, Soukup plans to do deferred maintenance on both houses and tospend time researching his family genealogy and visiting “long-gone relatives” in otherparts of the country. He also plans on doing some woodworking, learning the art of inlayand marquetry at which his father was an expert. In a recent e-mail, Soukup said,“Retirement is great! I’m actually busy from dawn to dusk, more so than when I wasworking, and finding more things to do all the time.”

ies related to the effect of secondhand smokeexposure on oxidative modification of apoE.

We kicked off the New Year on an excel-lent note with four manuscripts accepted forpublication: one in biochemistry, where ArtiPatel, a graduate student in biochemistry, wasthe first and PK was the second author, on flu-orescence spectroscopic investigations of thelipid-binding domain of apoE. A second paperentitled “A new HDL mimetic peptide thatstimulates cellular cholesterol efflux with highefficiency greatly reduces atherosclerosis inmice” was published in the Journal of LipidResearch. Arti and I were co-authors, con-tributing a biophysical analysis of the peptideto this multi-laboratory collaborative project.The third paper, an invited review article onhelix bundle proteins, appeared in ComparativeBiochemistry and Physiology, and the fourthpublication, with one of my former collabora-

tors, which appeared in Brain Research, wason the protection offered by apoE against spe-cific types of neurotoxicity.

Then started all the travel to regional andnational/international conferences. Our lab waswell represented at the CSUPERB Symposium inSanta Clara in January, where Arti was one ofthe finalists for the Don Eden graduate studentresearch award for excellence in biophysicalresearch. Arti and PK received travel awardsfrom CSUPERB to present their findings at theBiophysical Society meeting in San Franciscoin February. Arti was also one of two studentsfrom California to receive a travel award fromthe Biophysical Society. PK and Ricardo Ramirez,an undergraduate student in biology/physiology,gave a talk on flavonoid-bearing nano vehiclesat the ACS Undergraduate Conference atChapman University and at the ASBMB meetingin Anaheim. For my part, I attended the Bio-physical Society, ASBMB and the American

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Front row from left: Panupon Khumsupan, Arti Patel, Dr.Vasanthy Narayanaswami, Gunsharan Bains. Back row:Ricardo Ramirez, Muhamman Rafay and Darin Khumsupan.


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Bob Soukup Retires

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Brittany Maynard continues to exploreexpanding the internal dimensions of resor-cinarene cavitands using a unique approach.Her work this summer was supported by aMonahan Award.

I completed my first year of teachingCHEM 320A/B and began my second roundthis spring. Organic chemistry remains adelight to teach, given so many bright, tal-ented and dedicated students in our depart-ment. Quite to my surprise I was honored bythem as the recipient of the Mayfield Awardfor Outstanding Faculty Member in the Col-lege of Natural Sciences and Mathematics2010. This award was completed unexpectedto me and quite humbling—to think thatstudents thought so highly of me has onlymotivated me to continue to develop as aninstructor and has pushed me to try newthings to motivate future students. Organicchemistry remains a very challenging classfor many students—a time honored tradition,it seems. Its place as a cornerstone of subse-quent courses gives it this unique distinction,so keeping organic chemistry up to date,inspiring and enlightening remains its majorchallenge to me.

This past year, I was able to travel toJapan to visit a former colleague, professorTetsuo Iwasawa of Ryukoku University, a sur-prisingly similar college to our own! On thistrip, I also had the pleasure of visiting Ki noKenkyukai to continue my studies of Shin ShinToitsu Aikido and Shin Shin Toitsu Do. I lookforward to returning in future years for theintellectual challenges both my colleagueand instructors present.

Dr. Young ShonOur research continued on the design,

synthesis and characterization of nanoparticle- hybrid materials. During the past year, we alsostarted to obtain some positive results for theapplication part of our research. Overall, I thinkit was the most productive year in terms ofresearch results since I came to CSULB. A totalof four research papers were published in thispast year. An article entitled “Direct Assembly ofPhotosensitive C60-Gold Nanoparticle HybridFilms” was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, a new ACS journal focusing onimportant developments in technologicalapplications of novel materials. An under -graduate student, Tuong Dinh, is the onlyco-author of this article. Another researchpaper, entitled “Stability of Tetraoctylammonium

In generating these molecules, we hope tohave a collection of compounds suitable formodulating several biological pathways. Ourfirst screens will target the p53-HDM2 andBAX-Bcl protein-protein recognition eventsthat are a cornerstone of study for the devel-opment of new chemotherapeutics. JennyPham and Michelle Park have been working onthis project for over a year, and we haveenlisted the efforts of Lisa Garcia, MonicaRoyer, Payal Patel and this summer’s two vol-unteers, Auvid Mirhosseini (UCSD) and AshelyKim (Cypress High School).

Jenny and Michelle presented their workat the 2009 CNSM poster session, and Michellealso presented her work at an ACS Undergrad-uate Research Conference in April 2010 atChatman University. I presented our work inmy first faculty seminar at CSU Northridge inDecember 2009. In December 2010, I will givean oral presentation at Pacifichem on thiswork in a symposium session on protein, pep-tide and peptidomimetic design.

A second project utilizes molecularrecognition as a tool to develop synthetic smallmolecule receptors that we hope will one dayshuttle molecules of our choosing across biologicalmembranes. We have prepared a collection offluorescently labeled small molecules that arecomplementary for a synthetic receptor known asa cavitand. Cavitands sequester these guests whenembedded in phosphocholine micelles. We are nowturning our attention to vesicle systems that arecomposed of a lipid bilayer. Utilizing fluorescentmicroscopy, we are tracking the migration of hostand guest. Through synthesis, we aim to tune thesemolecules to control their localization andfunction. Chidi Umeh and Katie Feher are workingon this project diligently.

Finally, efforts to support the membranetransport project involving measuring theeffects of cavitands on micelles and vesiclesare being explored by Massiel Trujillo andMareya Youssef, respectively.

Massiel had a very productive year as botha McNair Scholar and RISE fellow. Massiel pre-sented her work at the McNair Scholars ResearchSymposium in July 2009, she was one of threeCSULB students to be selected to present atthe National McNair Symposium at U.C. Berkeleyin August 2009 and she competed in the CNSMstudent undergraduate research competition inNovember 2009. Massiel published her findingsin the CSULB McNair Scholars Journal in spring2010. Finally, Massiel will be beginning herPharm.D. degree at UCSF this fall!

Heart Association meetings; in the latter two,our work on the effect of secondhand smokeexposure that is funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) waspresented as posters.

The outstanding work done by the studentshas earned them awards and scholarships. Artireceived a two-year TRDRP Cornelius HopperDiversity Supplement Award for graduate students.Ricardo Ramirez was selected for a Children’sHospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI)NIH-funded Student Summer Research Programscholarship to carry out his research training inmy lab at CSULB. Gursharan is funded by arecently obtained two-year sub-contract on theTRDRP grant. Last, Arti was awarded the AllerganGraduate Summer Research Fellowship tocontinue her research project over this summerin my lab, and Darin received the NHKLaboratories, Inc. Biochemistry and OrganicChemistry Award.

It was with a heavy heart this springthat I bade farewell to all the undergraduate students from my class and my research group,who were moving on in pursuit of their dreams.In particular, we will miss PK and his wry senseof humor, as he will be returning to his homecountry, Thailand, with a plan to study phyto-chemicals of biomedical relevance.

Dr. Michael SchrammMolecular recognition is the study of

how and why molecules interact. At its essencelies the attraction of molecules at energy lev-els “weaker than covalent.” Hydrogen bonding,metal coordination and the hydrophobic effectcover some of these possible forces. In nature,we find countless crucial interactions predi-cated on noncovalent interactions such asenzyme-substrate recognition, DNA-proteinbinding and ion-receptor transport. From asynthetic point of view these principles havestrongly influenced areas of research from drugdesign to materials science to molecular self-assembly. Our research uses molecular recog-nition as a design principle to develop newsynthetic molecules that are compatible withand capable of regulating biological function.

Current efforts in the Schramm researchgroup utilize the principles of molecularrecognition to solve chemical problems. Weare actively preparing a 1,000 member smallmolecule library of alpha-helical peptido -mimetics. This collection of compounds isdesigned to target a spectrum of protein-protein interactions based on the alpha-helix.

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Bromide-Capped Gold Nanoparticles: Effects ofAnion Treatments,” was published in Colloids andSurface; A. Shaeleen Chuc and Parfait Voundi,both undergraduate students, are the only otherco-authors. Two other papers were the results ofcollaboration with Dr. Kwon’s group in theDepartment of Physics or Dr. Slowinski’s group inour department. Two undergraduate students,Nicole Choi and Michael Aquino, contributed tothe research and are listed as co-authors. Inaddition, we recently submitted a paper on thecatalytic property of Pd nanoparticles. Agraduate student, Elham Sadeghmoghaddam,discovered that Pd nanoparticles are a good andselective catalyst for the isomerization of allylalcohol to propanal.

Linh Tran, another graduate student, isgetting closer to the synthesis of his targetfinal product, water-soluble nanoparticle-cored dendrimers. Erick Ovalle and WendyChaing also studied the synthesis of monodis-perse nanoparticle-cored dendrimers in thepast year. Wendy received the American Insti-tute of Chemists Undergraduate Award thisyear. Besides Elham, Hanmo Gu and ZachariahMel investigated catalytic isomerization andhydrogenation reactions using Pd nanoparti-cles with different structure and composition.Michael Aquino, Leeann Korprapun, JosephineYee and Paul Vaccarello participated in thepreparation of Au, Ag and AuAg nanoislandfilms for optical sensing of biomolecules. Par-fait Voundi and Phuong Nguyen studied theconductivity of different nanoparticle filmsupon exposure to volatile organic compounds.Parfait received a CSU LSAMP Scholarship forthe 2009-10 academic year. Besides Wendy,Erick, Hanmo, Michael, Parfait and Phuong areleaving my research group after completingtheir degree programs in this past year. Sev-eral other students are also getting close tothe completion of their course work. There-fore, it is anticipated that we will have a lotof changes over the next year, and I am cer-tainly looking forward to the challenge.

Dr. Kris SlowinskiWith support from the Research Corporation

and ACS-PRF, my laboratory continues to performresearch on electrical properties of nanostructures.We have published a paper (in collaboration withShon’s group) on the relative efficiencies ofelectron tunneling across self-assembled mono -layers (SAMs) of n-alkanethiols and n-alkan e- s elenols, (E. Adaligil, Y.S. Shon, and K. Slowinski,Langmuir, 2010, 26 (3), pp 1570–1573) and


another paper (E. Adaligil, and K. Slowinski, J. Electroanal. Chem., 2010, in press) describingunusual effects of aliphatic alcohols on long-range electrochemical electron transfer acrossalkanethiol monolayers. We continued ourresearch on electrical properties of DNA andpublished a paper (in collaboration with Mike Hillat Occidental College) on spatially resolvedelectrochemical detection of DNA lesions usinggold electrodes modified with DNA monolayers(W.J. Hammond, J. Arndt, T. Nguyen, K.U.Slowinska, C. Jackson, H.A. Burgoyne, M.G. Hill,and K. Slowinski, ECS Transactions, 2009, 16(38), 55).

Two graduate students left the groupthis academic year. Bill Hammond graduatedin January and is currently attending medicalschool at Boston University. Emel Adaligilgraduated in June and is currently enrolled ina Ph.D. program at Tufts University. In May2010, I was awarded an NIH-SC3 grant forthe project titled “Biosensing in electrochemi-cally controlled nano-junctions.” The grantwill provide $75,000 per year for four yearsand will allow my group to continue ourresearch on the conductivity of DNA. My groupnow consists of eight undergraduate students:Sara Agahi, Jason Barca, Jason Chang, WilliamDo, Andrew Nguyen, David Roeuth, JonathanThang and Tri Tran, who are eagerly lookingforward to a very productive summer.

I have served as department vice-chairfor the last two years and collaborated withdepartment Chair Jeff Cohlberg on severalprojects aimed at improving the quality ofinstruction in our department. We have devel-oped a formal departmental policy concerninglecturer evaluations and established a newdepartmental award given annually to an out-standing teaching associate. I have proposedto develop standard course outlines for thegeneral chemistry sequence (Chem 101, 111A,111B) to ensure uniform standards in multiplesection courses (the outlines were developedand approved by the Freshman ChemistryCommittee). I also organized mid-semesterteaching evaluations for all teaching associates.These evaluations give our teaching associatesan important insight into what and how stu-dents are learning. Moreover, the mid-semesterevaluations provide students with an opportu-nity to anonymously communicate with TAsabout the course.

Following the evaluations, the graduatestudents meet with me individually, if neces-sary, to discuss their evaluations and to sug-

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gest possible ways to improve their teachingeffective ness. I have also organized a new work-shop for teaching associates who are scheduledto teach courses in the department. The work-shop is held every semester and is devoted tohands-on experience in classroom activities ingeneral chemistry. Students are asked to lead a15-minute mock discussion session, which isvideotaped. The taped presentations are ana-lyzed and discussed.

Finally, I spent a significant amount oftime working alongside Drs. Brazier, Buonora, Li and Weers on a new departmental RTP policy,and I am very glad that our proposal wasapproved almost unanimously.

Dr. Eric SorinHaving just completed my third year at

CSULB, the past 12 months have provided mewith some new and exciting experiences. Firstand foremost, we submitted our first NIH grantproposal (co-authored by students Sarav Pateland Mona Bakhom) and our lab’s first two man-uscripts. While our grant was not funded, ourmanuscripts were both published in early 2010.The first, a study of the accuracy of molecularmodels applied to helical peptides and proteins,was published in PLoS ONE. The second, whichfocuses on the folding and equilibrium dynamicsof a small RNA structural motif, was acceptedas a featured article in Nucleic Acids Research.

These articles were co-authored by myfirst group of graduating students, includingbiochemistry major Allison DePaul, chemicalengineering major Erik Thompson, mathematicsand statistics major Kristin Haldeman andbiochemistry major Sarav Patel. Allison, whogave her first oral presentation at the regionalACS undergraduate research conference thisspring, is headed off to the Pharm.D. program atUC San Francisco, and Kristin is thrilled to beentering the biostatistics Ph.D. program at UCDavis. Sarav, who presented a poster at theregional AAAS conference in Oregon in June, hasbeen accepted to the M.D. program at U.C. Irvine.Erik is continuing his participation in the Sorinlab as he enters the local job market. It is trulydifficult to watch these students, and now closefriends, leave our lab and our community, but itis also exhilarating to see them realizing theirdreams. I couldn’t be more proud of my first cropof CSULB undergraduates!Indeed, Sorin lab students have had a verysuccessful year: Erik won this year’s HypercubeAward in Computational Chemistry; Yi An


2009-10

14

Dr. Roger Acey

• Acey, R.A., and R.C. Kanner. Thimerosal removingdevice. Allowed 1/10/10 U.S. Patent Serial#11/624,059.

Dr. Xianhui Bu• Zhang, J., S. Chen, and X. Bu. 2009. Nucleotidecatalyzed conversion of racemic zeolite-typezincophosphate into enantioenrichedcrystals. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 48, 6049-6051.

• Chen, S., J. Zhang, and X. Bu. 2009.Spontaneous resolution of racemic camphoratesin the formation of three-dimensional metal-organic frameworks. Inorg. Chem., 48, 6356-6358.

• Wu, T., J. Zhang, X. Bu, and P. Feng. 2009.Variable lithium coordination modes in two- andthree-dimensional lithium boron imidazolateframeworks. Chem. Mater., 21, 3830-3837.

• Wu, T., X. Wang, X. Bu, X. Zhao, L. Wang, and P.Feng. Synthetic control of selenide supertetrahe-dral clusters and three-dimensional co-assemblyby charge-complementary metal cations. Angew.Chem. Int. Ed., 48, 7204-7207.

• Chen, S., J. Zhang, T. Wu, P. Feng, and X. Bu.Multi-route synthesis of porous anionic frame-works and size-tunable extra-framework organ-ic-cation-controlled gas sorption properties. J.Am. Chem. Soc., 131, 16027.

• Chen, S., J. Zhang, T. Wu, P. Feng, and X. Bu.2010. Zinc(ii)-boron(iii)-imidazolate framework(zbif) with unusual pentagonal channels pre-pared from deep eutectic solvent. Dalton Trans.,39, 697-699.

• Zhang, J., T. Wu, P. Feng, and X. Bu. 2010.Hydrogen-bonded boron imidazolate frameworks.Dalton Trans., 39, 1702-1704.

• Morris, R.E., and X. Bu. 2010. Induction of chiralporous solids containing only achiral buildingblocks. Nature Chemistry, 2, 353-361.

• Che, S., J. Zhang, X. Yu, X. Bu., X. Chen, and Z.Xue. 2010. Formation of aminoxy and oxo com-plexes from the reaction of Nb(nme2)5 with O2and the crystal structure of Nb(net2)5. Inorg.Chem., 49, 4017-4022.

• Wang, L., T. Wu, F. Zuo, X. Zhao, X. Bu, J. Wu,and P. Feng. 2010. Assembly of supertetrahedralt5 copper-indium sulfide clusters into super-supertetrahedron of infinite order. J. Am. Chem.Soc., 132, 3283-3285.

• Zhang, J., S. Chen, and X. Bu. The first anionicfour-connected boron imidazolate framework.Dalton Trans., 39, 2487-2489.

• Zhang, J., S. Chen, R.A. Nieto, T. Wu, P. Feng,and X. Bu. 2010. A tale of three carboxylates:Cooperative asymmetric crystallization of three-dimensional microporous framework from achiralprecursors. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 49, 1267-1270.

• Zhan, Y., T. Wu, T. Dou, R. Liu, X. Bu, and P.Feng. 2010. Three-dimensional photoluminescentframeworks constructed from size-tunable cuiclusters. Crystal Growth & Design, 10, 2047-2049.

• Zheng, S., T. Wu, J. Zhang, M. Chow, R. Nieto, P.Feng, and X. Bu. 2010. Porous metal carboxylateboron imidazolate frameworks (mc-bifs). Angew.Chem. Int. Ed., 49, in press.

Dr. Shahab Derakhshan• Wu, H., A.V. Skripov, T.J. Udovic, J.J. Rush, S.Derakhshan, and H. Kleinke. 2010. Hydrogen inTi3Sb and Ti2Sb: Neutron vibrational spec-troscopy and neutron diffraction studies. J. Alloyand Compounds, 496, 1-6.

• Grosvenor, A.P., F. Ramezanipour, S. Derakhshan,C. Maunders, G.A. Botton, and J.E. Greedan.2009. Effects of bond-character on the elec-tronic structure of Brownmillerite-phase oxides,Ca2B’xFe2-xO5 (B’ = Al, Ga); an X-ray absorp-tion and electron energy loss spectroscopicstudy. J. Mater. Chem., 19, 9213-9220.

Dr. Lijuan Li • Wang, R., X. Wang, E.B. Sundberg, P. Nguyen,G.P.G. Grant, Q. Sheth, S. Zhao, K.A. Herron, K.A.Kantardjieff, and L. Li. 2009. Synthesis, struc-tures, spectroscopic and electrochemical proper-ties of dinitrosyl iron complexes with bipyridine,terpyridine, and 1,10-phenathroline. Inorg.Chem., 48, 9779–9785.

• Wang, R., J. Zhang, and L. Li. 2009.Conformation preference of a flexible cyclohexa-netetracarboxylate ligand in three new metal-organic frameworks: structures, magnetic andluminescent properties. Inorg. Chem., 48,7194–7200.

• Song, X., Z. Wang, Y. Liu, C. Wang, and L. Li. 2009.A high sensitive gas sensor for ethanol basedon mesoporous ZnO-SnO2 nanofibres.Nanotechnology, 20, 075501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0957-4484/20/7/075501.

• Wang, R., M.A. Camacho-Fernandez, W. Xu, J.Zhang, and L. Li. 2009. Neutral and reducedroussin’s red salt ester [Fe2(µ-rs)2(NO)4] (r = n-pr, t-bu, 6-methyl-2-pyridyl and 4,6-dimethyl-2-pyrimidyl): synthesis, x-ray crystal structures,spectroscopic, electrochemical and density func-tional theoretical investigations. Dalton Trans.,777–786.

•Wang, R., W. Xu, J. Zhang, and L. Li. 2009.Synthesis, characterization and crystal structureof a dinuclear iron nitrosyl complex with 2-mercapto-1-[2-(4-pyridyl)-ethyl]-benzimidazolyl.J. Mol. Struc., 923, 110-113.

• Li, X., C. Wang, L. Li, Y.Y. Zhao, H.Y. Wang, andY. Young. 2009. Preparation and dielectric prop-erty investigation of ferrocene/poly(vinyl pyrroli-done) composite membranes. J. Nanosci.Nanotech., 9, 704-708.

• Wang, R., W. Xu, J. Zhang, and L. Li. 2010. Anew hexanuclear iron-selenium nitrosyl cluster:primary exploration of the preparation methods,structure, spectroscopic and electrochemicalproperties. Inorg. Chem., May 11. DOI: 10.1021/ic9014509.

• Wang, R., J. Zhang, and L. Li. 2010. A 2D metal-organic framework with a flexible cyclohexane-1,2,5,6-tetracarboxylic acid ligand: synthesis,characterization and photoluminescent property.J. Mol. Struc., 970, 14-18.

Dr. Stephen Mezyk• Jones, K.G., W.J. Cooper, and S.P. Mezyk. 2009.Absolute rate constant determination for thereaction of hydroxyl radicals with domoic andkainic acid in aqueous solution, Env. Sci.Technol., 43, 6764-6768.

• Mincher, B.J., and S.P. Mezyk. 2009. Radiationchemistry effects on radiochemistry: a review ofexamples important to nuclear power. Radiohim. Acta., 97, 519-534.

• Mincher, B.J., G. Elias, L.R. Martin, and S.P.Mezyk. 2009. Radiation chemistry and thenuclear fuel cycle. J. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem.,282, 645-649.

• Mincher, B.J., G. Modolo, and S.P. Mezyk. 2009.The effects of radiation chemistry on solventextractions: 3. a review of fission productextraction, a review of actinide and lanthanideextraction. Solv. Ext. Ion Exch., 27, 579-606.

• Mezyk, S.P., D.R. Hardison, K.E. O’Shea, W. Song,D.M. Bartels, and W.J. Cooper. 2009. Radiationchemistry of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE)reaction intermediates in aqueous solution: 2-methoxy-2-methyl propanal, 2-methoxy-2-methyl-propanol, and 2-methoxy-2-methyl–propanoic acid. Chemosphere, 77, 1352-1357.

• Mincher, B.J., S.P. Mezyk, W.J. Cooper, S.K. Cole,R.V. Fox, and P.R. Gardinali. 2010. Free radicalchemistry of disinfection byproducts. 3.Degradation mechanisms of chloronitromethane,bromonitromethane and dichloronitromethane. J.Phys. Chem. A, 114, 117-125.

ResearchPublications

for Department Faculty

• Elias, G., B.J. Mincher, S.P. Mezyk, T. Cullen, andL.R. Martin. 2010. Anisole nitration duringgamma-irradiation of aqueous nitrite and nitratesolutions: free radical vs. ionic mechanisms. Env.Chem., 7, 183-189.

• Swancutt, K.L., S.P. Mezyk, and J.J. Kiddle. 2010.Free-radical-induced chemistry of nedaplatinand satraplatin under physiological conditions.Rad. Res., 173, 843-848.

• Abbott, A., T. Sierakowski, J.J. Kiddle, K.K. Clark,and S.P. Mezyk. 2010. A detailed investigationof the reductive destruction of chemical warfareagent simulants in water. J. Phys. Chem. B, 114,7681-7685.

• Mincher, B.J., G. Modolo, and S.P. Mezyk. 2010.Review: Effects of radiation chemistry on sol-vent extraction. IV. Separation of trivalentactinides and considerations for radiation resist-ant solvent systems. Solv. Ext. Ion Exch., 28,415-436.

• Cooper, W.J., S.A. Snyder, S.P. Mezyk, J.R. Peller,and M.G. Nickelsen. 2010. Water ReuseFoundation 04-017-01, Reaction rates andmechanisms of advanced oxidation professes(AOPs) for water reuse.

• Madden, K.P., and S.P. Mezyk. Critical review ofrate constants for reactions of hydrogen atomsin aqueous solution. J. Phys. Chem., in press.

• Mezyk, S.P., E.M. Abud, K.L. Swancutt, G. McKay,and D.D. Dionysiou. Removing steroids fromcontaminated waters using radical reactions.ACS Symposium Series: Emerging Contaminants:Pharmaceuticals, Personal Care Products andOrganohalogens, in press.

• Swancutt, K.L., S.P. Mezyk, and L.R. Martin.Kinetics and efficiencies of radiolytic degrada-tion in lanthanide/actinide separation ligands –NOPOPO. ACS Symposium Series: Nuclear Energyand the Environment, in press.

• Martin, L.R., B.J. Mincher, S.P. Mezyk, G. Elias,and R.D. Tillotson. Effects of aqueous phaseradiolysis on lactic acid under TALSPEAK condi-tions. ACS Symposium Series: Nuclear Energy andthe Environment, in press.

• Elias, G., B.J. Mincher, S.P. Mezyk, T.D. Cullen,and L.R. Martin. Nitration mechanisms ofanisole during gamma irradiation of aqueousnitrite and nitrate solutions. ACS SymposiumSeries: Nuclear Energy and the Environment, inpress.

• Mezyk, S.P., T.D. Cullen, G. Elias, and B.J.Mincher. Aqueous nitric acid radiation effectson solvent extraction process chemistry. ACSSymposium Series: Nuclear Energy and theEnvironment, in press.

• Dong, M.M., S.P. Mezyk, and F.L. Rosario-Ortiz.Reactivity of effluent organic matter (EfOM)with hydroxyl radical as a function of molecularweight. Env. Sci. Technol., in press.

• Swancutt, K.L., M.K. Dai, S.P. Mezyk, and K.P.Ishida. Absolute kinetics and reaction efficien-cies of hydroyxl radical induced degradation ofmethyl isothiocyanate (MITC) in different qualitywaters. Chemosphere, in press.

• Rickman, K.S., and S.P. Mezyk. Sulfate radicalremediation of chemically contaminated waters:Destruction of b-lactam antibiotic activity.Chemosphere, in press.

• Dai, M.K., and S.P. Mezyk. Hydroxyl radical-induced degradative oxidation of b-lactamantibiotics in water: Absolute rate constantmeasurements. J. Phys. Chem. A, in press.

Dr. Ken Nakayama• Gallardo-Macias, R., and K. Nakayama. 2010.Sn(II) compounds as catalysts for the kabachnik-fields reaction under solvent free conditions:facile synthesis of a-aminophosphonates.Synthesis, 57-62.

Dr. Vasanthy Narayanaswami• Bielicki, J.K., H. Zhang, Y. Cortez, Y. Zheng, V.Narayanaswami, A. Patel, J. Johansson, and S.Azhar. 2010. A new HDL mimetic peptide thatstimulates cellular cholesterol efflux with highefficiency greatly reduces atherosclerosis inmice. J. Lipid Res., Jan. 14. [E-pub ahead of print].

• Pate, A.B., P. Khumsupan, and V. Narayanaswami.2010. Pyrene fluorescence analysis offers newinsights into the conformation of the lipopro-tein-binding domain of human apolipoprotein E.Biochemistry, 49, 1766-1775.

• Crutcher, K.A., H.N. Lilley, S.R. Anthony, W. Zhou,and V. Narayanaswami. 2010. Full-lengthapolipoprotein E protects against the neurotoxi-city of an apoE-related peptide. Brain Res.,1306, 106-115.

• Narayanaswami, V., R.S. Kiss, and P.M. Weers.2010. The helix bundle: a reversible lipid bindingmotif. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. A Mol. Integr.Physiol., 155, 123-133.

Dr. Michael Schramm• Schramm, M.P. 2009. Compounds with all-car-bon functions:1,3-dienes, synthesis by elimina-tion reactions. Science of Synthesis, Houben-Weyl Methods of Molecular Transformation,Georg Thieme Verlag KG, 46.9.

• Trujillo, M., and M.P. Schramm. 2010. Measuringcritical micelle concentration as a function ofcavitand additives using surface tension and dyemicellization. McNair Scholars Research Journal,CSU Long Beach, 14, 155-168.

• Schramm, M.P., and S.A. Kozmin. 2010.Preparation and [2+2] cycloaddition of 1-triiso-propylsiloxy-1-hexyne with methyl crotonate: 3-butyl-4-methyl-2-triisopropylsiloxy-cyclobut-2-enecarboxylic acid methyl ester. OrganicSyntheses, in press.

Dr. Young Shon

• Shon, Y.S., S. Chuc, and P. Voundi. 2009.Stability of tetraoctylammonium bromide-cappedgold nanoparticles: effects of anion treatments.Colloids and Surface: A, 352, 12-17.

• Dinh, T., and Y.S. Shon. 2009. Direct assembly ofphotosensitive c60-gold nanoparticle hybrid films.ACS Applied Mater. & Interfaces, 1, 2699-2702.

• Choi, H.Y., M.S. Guerrero, M. Aquino, C. Kwon,and Y.S. Shon. 2010. Preparation of gold nanois-land arrays from layer-by-layer assemblednanoparticle multilayer films. Bull. Korean Chem.Soc., 31, 291-297.

• Adaligil, E., Y.S. Shon, and K. Slowinski. 2010.Effect of headgroup on electrical conductivity ofself-assembled monolayers on mercury: n-alka-nethiols vs. n-alkaneselenols. Langmuir, 26,1570-1573.

Dr. Kris Slowinski• Adaligil, E., and K. Slowinski. 2010. Electrontunneling through monolayers of alkanethiolsself-assembled on a hanging mercury drop elec-trode in the presence of aliphatic alcohols, J.Electroanal. Chem., in press.

• Adaligil, E., Y.S. Shon, and K. Slowinski. 2010.Effect of headgroup on electrical conductivity ofself-assembled monolayers on mercury: n-alka-nethiols vs. n-alkaneselenols. Langmuir, 26,1570-1573.

• Hammond, W.J., J. Arndt, T. Nguyen, K.U.Slowinska, C. Jackson, H.A. Burgoyne, M.G. Hill,and K. Slowinski. 2010. Detection of DNA π-stack lesions using scanning electrochemicalmicroscopy. ECS Transactions, 16 (38), 55.

Dr. Eric Sorin• DePaul, A.J., E.J. Thompson, S.S. Patel, K.Hardeman, and E.J. Sorin. 2010. Equilibrium con-formational dynamics in an RNA tetraloop frommassively parallel molecular dynamics. NucleicAcids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkq134.

• Thompson, E.J., A.J. DePaul, S. Patel, and E.J. Sorin.2010. Evaluating molecular mechanical potentialsfor helical peptides and proteins. PLoS One 5,e10056, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010056.

Dr. Paul Weers• Chiu, M.C., C.P.L. Wan, P.M.M. Weers, and E.J.Prenne. 2009. Apolipophorin III interaction withmodel membranes composed of phosphatidyl-choline and spingomyelin using differentialscanning calorimetry. Biochem. Biophys. Acta(Biomembranes), 1788, 2160-2168.

• Narayanaswami, V, R.S. Kiss, and P.M.M. Weers.2010. Review. The helix bundle: a reversible lipidbinding motif. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. A, 155,123-133.

15

2009-10Research

Publicationsfor Department Faculty

Robert B. Henderson AwardDr. Robert B. Henderson, a distinguished scientist

and teacher of organic and general chemistry, was afounding member of the Department of Chemistry andBiochemistry and taught from 1955-82. He served as chairof Physical Sciences and associate dean of the college.This award is given to a student best exemplifyingHenderson’s scholarship and commitment to the profes -sion of chemistry. This year, two awards of $2,000 werepresented to Francisco Rodriguez and Andrea Hewitt.

Kenneth L. Marsi Scholarship The Kenneth L. Marsi Scholarship was established by

faculty, staff, family, friends and former students of Dr.Kenneth L. Marsi on the occasion of his retirement in1996. Dr. Marsi was a distinguished scientist, teacher oforganic chemistry, and served superbly as departmentchair for 21 years. He passed away in 2005. The $2,000scholarships are used to defray registration fees ofoutstanding junior and senior chemistry or biochemistrymajors. This year's scholars are Edsel Abud, Jason Barcaand Tuyen Tran.

McAbee-Overstreet Fellowship The McAbee-Overstreet Fellowship recognizes a

graduate student for excellence in scholarship andcommitment to research. It was established by a donationfrom Cathie Overstreet, who received her M.S. degree inbiochemistry at CSULB in 2004 under the supervision ofDr. Doug McAbee and went on to a Ph.D. in molecularbiology at UC Irvine. This year, an award of $1,780 wasgiven to Paul Madera, a biochemistry graduate studentworking with Dr. Roger Acey.

Michael Monahan Fellowship The Monahan Award was established through a

generous bequest from Dr. Michael Monahan, an alumnusof our department who received his B.S. in chemistry in1963 and his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry in 1968at U.C. San Diego. He was a distinguished scientist andmember of the faculty at the Salk Institute andsubsequently a senior research scientist at BeckmanInstruments. Dr. Monahan was also the founder andpresident of California Medicinal Chemistry Corp oration.In 1985-87, following his retirement, he served as anadjunct faculty member in the Department of Chemistryand Biochemistry. According to his will, the income fromhis bequest is to be used to support student research inthe department. This year’s award of $1,500 waspresented to Brittany Maynard, a B.S. biochemistrystudent working with Dr. Michael Schramm.

Spyros Pathos IV Award The Spyros Pathos IV Award is presented annually to

a student excelling in the second semester of generalchemistry, CHEM 111B. This award was made possible bythe friends of Spyros Pathos IV, who was an undergraduatechemistry major in the department at the time of hisdeath in 1993. This year’s recipient is Jeremy Scheeler.

David L. Scoggins Award This award memorializes David L. Scoggins, a 1968

B.S. chemistry graduate of CSULB and a graduate studentand teaching assistant in the Department of Chemistry atthe time of his death in 1969. The award recognizesoutstanding scholarship and promise by a graduatingchemistry or biochemistry student who intends to pursuea career in one of the health-related professions. TheScoggins scholar this year is Timothy Feliciano.

John H. Stern Award in Physical Chemistry The Stern Award, consisting of a cash prize, is given

in memory of Dr. John H. Stern, internationally known forhis work in solution thermodynamics and author of manypublications in that field. The award was established bycolleagues, former students and friends of Dr. Stern, whowas a member of the faculty from 1957-87 and a

distinguished teacher of physical and general chemistry.Jessica Servinwas named the recipient of the $1,000Stern Award for 2010.

NHK Laboratories, Inc. Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry Award

NHK Laboratories is a family-owned, private labelcontract manufacturer of vitamins, minerals, herbs,nutritional supplements and over-the-counterpharmaceuticals. NHK operates two facilities in Santa FeSprings, Calif., with certified “A” ratings under the NNFAGood Manufacturing Practices program and the NSF GMPRegistration, as well as a subsidiary company, NHK ChemicalCorporation. Along with the $1,000 NHK scholarship, therecipient also has the opportunity to complete a course-credit internship at NHK’s Santa Fe Springs laboratory. Thisyear's recipient is Darin Khumsupan.

Louis M. Perlgut ScholarshipDr. Louis M. Perlgut, professor of biochemistry in the

department from 1965-82, taught the biochemistrycourses for both science majors and nursing students, andsupervised both graduate and undergraduate research. Dr.Perlgut served as the first graduate adviser for the M.S.program in biochemistry and was largely responsible forlaunching the program. Upon his death in 2003, his familyestablished this scholarship to defray the tuition expensesof a graduate student in biochemistry. Donations to thePerlgut Scholarship fund can be made through theCommunity Foundation of Tompkins County (N.Y.). Thisyear, a $1,000 scholarship was presented to Ryan Kemp.

James F. Myrtle Graduate FellowshipThis award has been established by the depart-

ment master’s alumnus, Dr. James Myrtle (‘67), inhonor of his CSULB biochemistry professor, the late Dr.Donald Simonsen, whom Dr. Myrtle described as“dynamic, relentless, untiring, perspiring and particu-larly inspiring,” and whose teaching “lit the path I sub-sequently took.” That path led to a Ph.D. inbiochemistry and organic chemistry from U.C. River-side; a 27-year career in pharmaceutical and medicaldevice product development, including develop ment ofthe PSA test for prostate cancer; and subsequentlyteaching chemistry. The recipient of the $1,200 awardis Yi An, a graduate student in Dr. Eric Sorin’s lab.

Fred H. Dorer Research ScholarshipThe Dorer Undergraduate Research Scholarship has

been established by CSULB alumnus Dr. Fred H. Dorer, whoreceived his B.S. degree in chemistry in 1961 and hisdoctorate in chemistry from the University of Washingtonin 1965. Dr. Dorer worked as a research chemist for ShellDevelopment Company before joining the CSU, where hehas served six different campuses in 42 years as bothprofessor and provost, in addition to a stint as associateprogram director for chemical dynamics at the NationalScience Foundation. In 1991, he was named a DistinguishedAlumnus of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathe -matics. The winner of the $1,250 scholarship is Duc Le.

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Awards &Scholarships

Chemistry and Biochemistry Students 2010

Andrea Hewitt Darin Khumsupan

Edsel Abud Ryan Kemp

Jason Barca Yi An

Paul Madera Duc Le

Endowed Awards

17

Timothy Feliciano

Aaron Joffe

Wendy Chaing

Heather McKinney

Thomas Neubauer Francisco Rodriguez Van Buzzo

Erik Thompson

Alexandria Brooks

Subject Area AwardsFreshman Chemistry Award

Aaron JoffeSpyros Pathos IV Award

Jeremy ScheelerInorganic Chemistry Award

Trina TranOrganic Chemistry Award

David RuddMerck Award in Organic Chemistry

David RuddBiochemistry Award

Joe SalcedoJohn H. Stern Award in Physical Chemistry

Jessica ServinAnalytical Chemistry Award

Timothy Feliciano

Special Departmental AwardsRobert B. Henderson Memorial Scholarship

Andrea Hewitt, Francisco RodriguezAmerican Institute of Chemists Baccalaureate Award

Chemistry–Wendy ChaingBiochemistry–Panupon Khumsupan

American Institute of Chemists Graduate AwardChemistry–Thomas NeubauerBiochemistry–Judith Valle

David L. Scoggins Memorial AwardTimothy Feliciano

Toni Horalek AwardAlexandria Brooks

Hypercube AwardErik Thompson

M. Monahan Memorial Summer Research FellowshipBrittany Maynard

Kenneth L. Marsi AwardEdsel Abud, Jason Barca, Tuyen Tran

McAbee-Overstreet AwardPaul Madera

Louis Perlgut ScholarshipRyan Kemp

Outstanding Teaching Associate AwardHeather McKinney

Allergan Undergraduate Summer Research FellowshipArti Patel

James F. Myrtle Graduate FellowshipYi An

Fred Dorer Undergraduate Research ScholarshipDuc Le

Departmental HonorsUndergraduates

Nabilah Ali, Allison DePaul, David TruongGraduates

Emel Adiligil, Van Buzzo

College AwardsGraduate Dean’s List of University Scholars & Artists

Thomas NeubauerRobert B. Rhodes Award

Francisco Rodriguez

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Victoria San

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Panupon Khumsupan

Brittany Maynard

Judith Valle

Tuyen Tran

Joe Salcedo Jessica Servin

Trina Tran David RuddJeremy Scheeler

Nabilah Ali Allison DePaul David Truong Emel Adiligil

Awards

&Scholarships

18

If you enjoy reading news about other alumni,please send us updates about yourself so thatwe can include them in the next newsletter.

1962Robert Hutchins (M.S., chemistry) writes, “Iretired from Drexel University last year after40 years. I thoroughly enjoyed my years atCSULB (and I met my wife there!).”

1964Gary Hathaway (B.S., chemistry) writes, “Igraduated in February 1964 and got my firstpublication with Dr. Roger Bauer. With Dr.Bauer’s encouragement I applied for and wasaccepted to two graduate schools. I chose U.C.Davis and completed my Ph.D. in comparativebiochemistry (in under three years, a recordwhich I believe still stands) thanks in no smallpart to my excellent training at CSULB.

“I eventually went on to Caltech as direc-tor of the Protein and Peptide Micro-AnalyticalLaboratory. There, with no formal grant support,I published eight journal articles and received apatent on the protein chemical modificationprocess, which I named Chemically TargetedIdentification (CTID). I directly attribute this andother research to Drs. Donald Simonson andRoger Bauer’s biochemistry classes. I retiredwith 40 refereed publications, and for my lastseminar, I presented this and other data atCSULB in tribute to those specific lessonslearned from these two teachers.

“Ken Marsi’s organic mechanisms coursecertainly didn’t hurt my career in biochemistry,either, and I suspect my choice of a biophysicsminor was greatly influenced by Gene Kalbus’laboratory in analytical chemistry, particularlythe power of differential measurements. I willalways be grateful to all my professor/teachersat CSULB.”

1968Roger Meyer (B.S., chemistry) writes, “I gradu-ated in summer 1968 and began working forStuart Pharmaceuticals in Pasadena. I beganworking with the Technicon Autoanalyzer andpresented two papers based on my work inNew York City. In 1971, I transferred toAllergan Pharmaceuticals. Allergan was a smallcompany with only $1 million in sales the yearbefore. Allergan was a great choice, and I grewas the company grew, finally becoming a seniorscientist in the Analytical Lab Group. I pub-lished scientific papers of my work in J. Pharm.Sci., and many of my methods were adapted bythe USP. I retired in 1997 to pursue my secondpassion of growing exotic fruiting plants.”

1972Chris Appleton (M.S., chemistry) writes, “Mywife and I are still learning how to behave asretired people. Against our friends’ advice, weare moving to Mesa, Ariz., from Santa Barbara,Calif., to be closer to children and explore thenatural wonders of the Southwest. The newpassion for me is geology and having a chem-istry education is helping me to appreciateand understand this new interest. Our plan isto return to California in about three years.”

1976Chris Angeletakis (B.S., chemistry, 1976; M.S.,chemistry, 1978) now works through a consult-ing company, Proteas Technologies, which dealswith the design of new biomaterials mostly fordental applications. Of particular interest arebiocompatible adhesives and silicones.

1979Pat McKay (M.S., biochemistry) writes, “I just(literally) celebrated my 30th anniversary atGenentech. It’s hard to believe that much timehas passed since I graduated from CSULB! I’mstill working in our Process Development Groupand have had the opportunity to be a memberof various teams throughout the years thathave produced the biopharmaceuticalsHerceptin, Pulmozyme, Avastin and Lucentis. Ihave taught an evening chemistry class(Health Science Chemistry) at Skyline Collegesince 1998.”

1985Joy Bonde (B.S., chemistry) attended pharmacyschool at USC and is currently clinical opera-tions manager of the inpatient pharmacy atSaddleback Memorial Medical Center.

1990Miki Aurang-Csintalan (B.S., biochemistry)writes, “I worked in Dr. Cohlberg’s lab from1990-91 doing neurofilament research beforeheading off to medical school. I graduated in1995 with a medical degree, completed a resi-dency in internal medicine and practiced forKaiser Permanente for about 11 years, thendecided to work at UCI Student Health Center,where I have been since fall 2009. I enjoyreceiving the annual Chemistry Departmentnewsletter.”

1992Daniel Bernier (B.A., chemistry) writes, “Igraduated in 1992, doing some undergraduateresearch with Dean Jensen. After an M.S. atUCI, I received my Ph.D. from UCR in organicsynthesis (thanks to Dr. Nakayama for achallenging and interesting year of undergrad

O-Chem). I have been teaching organic chem-istry full time at Riverside City College for thelast six years. This year, one of my top studentsis a former fine arts major from CSULB whosaw the light. My parents still live across thestreet from CSULB, and my wife and ourdaughters visit every month.”

1993Michael Manneh (B.S., chemistry) writes, “Igraduated from CSULB in summer 1993. Backthen, I was a foreign student (F-1 visa) fromLebanon and did not have legal paperwork toremain and to work in the U.S. So I went backto Lebanon to work for my father in the foodbusiness at a sauce and beverage manufactur-ing plant called Tripak Food Industries, S.A.L. Istarted as a quality assurance supervisor andproduct development/R&D manager from1993-02. During that time, I enrolled at theAmerican University of Beirut (AUB) to pursuegraduate studies in food technology. I was apart-time student working and studying. InMarch 2002, I got my M.Sc. in food technolo-gy from the Department of Agriculture andFood Sciences at AUB. I was promoted to pro-duction manager at Tripak in summer 2002. In2004, I applied for my U.S. residency and gotmy Green Card in October 2004. I left Tripakin summer of 2005 and permanently moved toIrvine, Calif.

“In July 2007, I got a job as a senior foodtechnologist at CKE Restaurants, Inc. in Ontario,Calif., and have been in this position since then.My task has been to make CKE food specifica-tions, to monitor the quality of incoming ship-ments based on statistical sampling plan andlab testing, to supervise lab test procedures, tomake new lab test methods using AOAC, toaudit food manufacturing plants’ HACCP/SOPplans and to closely work with the CKE Pur-chasing Department and new prospective ven-dors for CKE Restaurants during annual bids. Ilove this job because it gives me the opportu-nity to understand the physicochemical andthe microbial changes of a wide range of fooditems…and I get to eat a lot of food for FREE!

“Thank you for your kind hospitality andreception you bestowed upon me during the50th Anniversary Alumni Reunion Banquet onApril 17. It was a great pleasure and honormeeting with you and with all the new and oldfaculty and graduates of the CSULB Departmentof Chemistry and Biochemistry.”

Continued

Alumni News

19

1995Thang Dinh (B.S., biochemistry) is now aresearch scientist with Allergan Pharma -ceuticals in Irvine and received awards forthe “Best Patent of the Year” in 2007 and 2010.

2001Liz De Selm (B.S., biochemistry, 2001; M.S.,biochemistry, 2004) is currently working atEMD Serano in their Billerica, Mass., facilitydoing GPCR work in the cancer researcharea. She completed work on two patents inlate 2009 and early 2010.

2004Jennifer Guzzo Latiff (B.S., biochemistry/chemistry) writes, “I attained my M.M. inpercussion performance and my teaching cre-dentials at CSULB. I met my husband Hamidon my Fulbright grant in Trinidad and havenow been married two years. I am currentlyteaching high school chemistry and biologyin Cerritos and direct a high school steel panprogram in Lakewood.”

Trina (Howard) King (B.S., biochemistry) isteaching eighth grade physical science atCarmenita Middle School in Cerritos. She isworking on her final credential and stopsinto the department from time to time.

2006In May 2010, Melissa Flores (B.S., chemistry)completed her Ph.D. at the University ofPennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her work withDr. Jeffrey Bode, which involved in part thechemoselective protection of alpha-ketoacids,was published in Organic Letters in the spring.

2008Casandra Cox (B.S., chemistry) is in thePh.D. program in chemistry at MIT. Shewrites, “Massachusetts is nice. In my sparetime I go hiking in the White Mountains inNew Hampshire or go to beach towns inMaine for lobster and lighthouse sightings.After getting my Ph.D., I would like to getinto consulting for environmental policy.”

Christine Bradford (B.S., biochemistry)writes, “I am currently three days away fromsitting my second-year preliminary exam atthe University of Wisconsin-Madison in thePh.D. program in biochemistry. I am in thelaboratory of Dr. Ronald Raines and am look-ing at the development of small moleculesthat can be used as internalization aids. I amtrying to understand some of the spatial andelectronic considerations that can affect theinternalization of molecules that specificallytake advantage of non-specific cell surfaceinteractions to get inside the cell. For thelast year and a half, I have been exclusivelydoing organic synthesis, particularly metalcatalyzed cross coupling. I have also evendabbled in computation with the help of oneof my lab mates. I will eventually be workingwith polymers, doing cell culture as well as

protein expression and purification. Myproject uniquely integrates technical aspectsfrom several disciplines, making it bothexciting and challenging.

“Besides working in the lab, I am enjoyingMadison and its beautiful seasons. Springcame early this year, and everything is begin-ning to explode in a colorful symphony thatwill soon complement warmer temperaturesthat should arrive in a month or two. I takeadvantage of our local farmer’s market, whichis one of the largest in the country, and do lotsof cooking. When it’s warm enough, kayakingon the lake is always enjoyable.”

Joseph Badillo (B.S., chemistry) hasadvanced to candidacy in the Ph.D. programat U.C. Davis. He earned an NSF GraduateResearch Fellowship in May 2010. This willprovide him with support for independentresearch through the next three years ofgraduate study.

Margaret Brown (B.S., chemistry) is currentlyworking in the Ph.D. program at theUniversity of Maryland.

Iqziar (Angela) Bustamante (B.S., chem-istry) landed an inside sales position in theMedtronic diabetes division. She transferredto the San Antonio office in late 2009.

2009Furkan Senal (M.S., biochemistry) isemployed as a protein biochemist at Amgen.

Alumni News

M.S. Theses

Emel Adaligil “Electron Transfer through Self-AssembledMonolayers of Alkaneselenols andAlkanethiols on Mercury Electrode”Research Advisor: Dr. Kris Slowinski

Aynur Bakirci“Proteomic Analysis of Hepatocyte Proteins inResponse to In Vivo Iron Overload” Research Advisor: Dr. Douglas McAbee

William Hammond“Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy ofDNA Monolayers” Research Advisor: Dr. Kris Slowinski

Wei Liao“The Epitope Specificity of the Human Anti-Candida Albicans Antibody M1g1”Research Advisor: Dr. Mason Zhang

Thomas Neubauer“Absolute Free-Radical-Induced Oxidative andReductive Kinetics and Degradation Efficienciesof Sulfa Drugs in Water” Research Advisor: Dr. Stephen Mezyk

Stephani Ngo“Analysis of the Structure and Function ofCAAP, a Chloroplast-localized SerinePeptidase Using Site Directed Mutagenesis ofthe Predicted Dimerization Domain” Research Advisor: Dr. Judith Brusslan

Merve Oztug“Characterization of Apolipophorin III/Lipopolysaccharide Complexes”Research Advisor: Dr. Paul Weers

Judith Valle“Quantification of Cross-Linking in CollagenModified with Gold Nanoclusters”Research Advisor: Dr. Kasha Slowinska

Tien Viep“O-GlcNAcylation of Glycogenin and ItsEffects on Glycogen Synthesis”Research Advisor: Dr. Balwant Khatra

20

Student Members of the American Chemical Society

SMACS is wrapping up another successful year that included touring the THUMS oil projectin the Long Beach Harbor, sending students to an undergraduate conference, taking part in theAlumni Reunion Banquet and hosting the student/faculty coffee and donut social hour.

During the fall semester, treasurer Marco Martinez organized a trip to tour the THUMS oilislands in Long Beach Harbor. This was a unique opportunity for the club to see how modern oilextraction is performed at one of the premier sites in the world in an environmentally friendly andaesthetically pleasing way. SMACS students learned about the state-of-the-art closed-cycle irrigation system as well as the use of palm, oleander, sandalwood, fig and acacia trees for sound-proofing and camouflage of the oil drilling derricks. Students were also educated on the collabo-ration between the City of Long Beach and the THUMS corporations using reclaimed city waterinjected into the wells to maintain reservoir pressure.

Our spring semester garb sale, where SMACS sells basic lab supplies such as goggles and labcoats to students taking chemistry lab courses, was our most successful sale yet, raising over$2,000 for the club. These funds allow SMACS to send undergraduate students to present theirresearch at conferences. This April, three SMACS members attended the ACS UndergraduateResearch Conference at Chapman University: Michelle Hansol Park, who gave a poster titled“Preparation of 3-Substituted Pyrroles: Progress Towards an a-Helical Peptidomimetic Library”;Panupon Khumsupan, who gave a talk titled “Reconstitution of Nanosized HDL Bearing Anti-amy-loid Flavonoids for Targeted Drug Delivery”; and Allison DePaul, who gave a talk titled “EquilibriumConformational Dynamics in an RNA Tetraloop from Massively Parallel Molecular Dynamics.”

Two SMACS members, Alexandria Brooks and Jason Barca, along with graduate student Arti Patel,assisted as student ambassadors at the Alumni Reunion Banquet. Many alums recounted to the stu-dents their excellent undergraduate experiences as members of SAACS (at that time) while at CSULB.

SMACS recently elected new officers: Michelle Stadick, president; Marina Zeldon, vice presi-dent; Akira Ueno, secretary; and Carissa Campos, treasurer. These four individuals have alreadygiven countless hours of their time to help grow the club and will be attending a student leader-ship conference over the summer to hone their leadership skills.

Wendy Beck and Brittany Maynard have taken over the reins of the Coffee and Donut Hour,where faculty and students mingle and munch on a weekly basis.

Drs. Schramm and McClain would like to thank the graduating members and outgoing offi-cers for their time and efforts to make SMACS successful. We would also like to congratulate theoutgoing president, Alexandria Brooks, on receiving the Horalek Award for noteworthy service tothe department.

Finally, SMACS was recognized by the ACS with a certificate of achievement for their“exceptional service throughout the 2008-09 academic year.”

Alumni support and participation in the club is always welcome. If you or your companywould be willing to provide a tour of your chemistry-related business or are interested in hiringCSULB chemistry graduates, please contact Dr. Brian McClain or Dr. Michael Schramm.

S M A C S


From left: Dr. Michael Schramm (adviser), Carissa Campos, Dr. Brian McClain (adviser), Michelle Stadick, Marina Zeledon and Jason Barca.

By Dr. Brian L. McClain

StaffNews

Buddy Saxon, administrative sup-port coordinator (ASC), left his positionin late May. Buddy moved to Modesto,Calif., where he and Delia Padilla weremarried. The couple followed their wed-ding with a European tour for their hon-eymoon. Buddy served as a Departmentof Chemistry and Biochemistry adminis-trative support assistant (ASA) from2002-05. He took a year’s leave ofabsence, returning in 2006, to servebriefly in the ASA position and then asASC from 2006 to this year.

Irma Sanchez, who had served asASA in the department since 2005, wasselected as the new ASC. Irma is a nativeof Long Beach who worked for the CSULBFoundation for three years before com-ing to the Chemistry and BiochemistryDepartment.

Tung Trinh became the depart-ment's new computer technician inDecember 2009. Tung grew up in a ruralarea of Vietnam and emigrated to theU.S. in 1979. He received both B.S. andM.S. degrees in electrical engineering atCSULB. Tung worked for the MechanicalEngineering and Electrical EngineeringDepartments and then transferred to thecomputer office of the College of Natu-ral Sciences and Mathematics in 2003,where he worked until assuming theposition in the Department of Chemistryand Biochemistry.

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Two of the founding members of theDepartment of Chemistry and Bio-chemistry, professors Don Simonsen

and Ed Becker, were recently honored withthe installation of memorial benchesdonated by their families.

Donald H. Simonsen, professor of bio-chemistry, died on Sept. 27, 2004 at age 83.Simonsen grew up in Oregon and received aB.A. degree from Reed College, an M.S.degree in biochemistry from Oregon StateUniversity in 1945 and a Ph.D. in biochem-istry from Indiana University in 1951. Heserved on the Chemistry Department facultyfrom 1956-80. In addition to teaching, Dr.Simonsen was active in campus administra-tion, serving as dean of faculty, vice presi-dent, and acting president from 1969-70during a turbulent year of antiwar protests.Benches dedicated to Dr. Simonsen and tophysics professor George Appleton now sitside-by-side at the east end of the grassyarea between PH1 and PH2. The bencheswere dedicated on Aug. 21, 2008 at a cere-mony attended by Dr. Simonsen‘s wifeNorma and other family members.

Edwin N. Becker, longtime professor ofphysical chemistry, died on Feb. 23, 2009 atage 87. A native of Iowa, Dr. Becker earneda B.S. degree in chemical engineering fromIowa State University and a Ph.D. in physicalchemistry from the University of Wisconsin.He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from1943-45. Dr. Becker was a founding memberof the Chemistry Department and served onthe faculty from 1955-83. He was a well-liked and respected teacher. He was alsochair of the Academic Senate for manyyears and was very involved in campus gov-ernance, where he acquired a reputation asa consensus builder and team leader. The EdBecker Bench was installed on FriendshipWalk, across from the MLSC building, and wasdedicated on Oct. 2, 2009 at a ceremonyattended by Dr. Becker‘s wife Catherine andhis five children and their families.

Those who wish to honor other depart-ment faculty with memorial benches shouldcontact Maryanne Horton, director of devel-opment of the College of Natural Sciencesand Mathematics. A bench may be estab-lished by a donation of $5,000.

Memor ia l BenchesHonor Former FacultyContinued from pg. 13

received a Myrtle Graduate Summer ResearchFellowship; incoming chemistry M.S. candidateJessica Servin received this year’s Stern Award inPhysical Chemistry; and biochemistry major TuyenTran became a McNair Scholar and won a Womenand Philanthropy Summer Research Scholarship.Our lab also recently accepted two new students:biochemistry major Samantha Cao and computerscience major Lynn Cherngchaosil, both of whomhave become valued and fun-loving members ofthe Sorin lab. We now head full-steam intosummer 2010 research activities with theaddition of three Bridges to the Baccalaureatestudents. This is the first time I have had theopportunity to participate in this program, andI’m excited to have these eager, youngscientists-in-training joining us for the summer.

Following Bob Soukup’s retirement, I tookover as webmaster this year, and, alongside main-taining our current website, a major project for

me has been serving as chair of the DepartmentWebsite Committee. This was a significantendeavor in which several CSULB students helpedmy colleagues and me to create what we feel is amodern, professional, informative and easy-to-navigate new website, which you will read moreabout in a separate column in this newsletter. Iwas also elected to the Academic Senate and theFaculty Advisory Committee on Technology, and Ilook forward to gaining an understanding of howour governing body works and participating inthat process.

Dr. Paul WeersThe Weers lab studies the role of

apolipoproteins in innate immunity and lipidtransport processes. In 2010, the group wasawarded a four-year grant from NIH to investi-gate the protective role apolipoproteins playagainst bacterial infection. Two manuscriptswere published: a review focusing onapolipoprotein structure and a collaborativeresearch project with Dr. Elmer Prenner fromthe University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada)describing the lipid-protein interaction usingdifferential scanning calorimetry. In the 2010spring semester, I visited the Prenner lab inCalgary during my sabbatical leave to focus onisothermal calorimetric analysis of apolipo -protein-liposome interactions. Earlier in theyear, I received tenure and promotion to asso-ciate professor.

The Weers lab welcomed new lab membersWendy Beck, Duc Le, Anthony Tabet and PankajDwivedi during the fall and winter of 2009-10.Wendy was awarded the Woman and Philan-thropy Undergraduate Research and CreativeActivity Scholarship. Duc received the Fred H.Dorer Research Fellowship, while Anthony wasadmitted to the RISE program. Our research waspresented at the CSU Program for Education andResearch in Biotechnology meeting in SantaClara (Daisy Martinon and Sean Lee), BiophysicalSociety meeting in San Francisco (Daisy Marti-non) and the American Society for Biochemistryand Molecular Biology meeting in Anaheim (YinPhung and Johana Rodriguez). While pregnant,Daisy was also prepared to present her work inAnaheim, but her baby did not agree andMaryanna was born. MARC student JohanaRodriguez graduated and moved on to UCLA tobecome a medical doctor. In addition, lab mem-bers Yin Phung, Catherine Valdez and Kathy Buigraduated from CSULB.


Front row, from left: biochemistry majors Tuyen Tran and SamanthaCao, entering master’s degree candidate Jessica Servin, computerscience major Lynn Cherngchaosil and biological sciences majorFelisha Eugenio. Back row: mathematics and statistics graduateKristin Haldeman, Dr. Eric J. Sorin, biochemistry graduate AllisonDePaul, chemical engineering graduate Erik Thompson, master’sdegree candidate Yi An and biochemistry major Mona Bakhom.

Photo by Victoria Sanchez

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Adv iso ry Counc i lNew Members

Since its inception more than 30years ago, the Department of Chemistryand Biochemistry’s advisory council hassupported the department’s mission toprovide students with excellence andopportunities in chemical and biochem-ical education. The current group of 21council members represents a variety ofchemical, pharmaceutical and biotech-nology companies in Southern California.This past year, the department welcomedthree new members to the council.

Sharmin Karim is executive directorat NHK Laboratories, Inc. (Santa FeSprings), a custom formulator, contractmanufacturer and contract packagerof private label dietary supplements,functional foods and pharmaceuticals.NHK Labs provides annual funds tosupport a six-week internship in theirresearch and development lab for oneundergraduate student, and thedepartment is grateful to Karim formaking this opportunity possible.

Dr. Robert Rzasa graduated fromCSULB with a B.S. degree in chemistryin 1993 and has been a faithful andgenerous contributor for nearly adecade. Dr. Rzasa works in an organicsynthesis lab designing new drugs forAmgen, Inc. (Thousand Oaks), a com-pany that currently employs a numberof former Chemistry and BiochemistryDepartment students.

Ernie Valfre graduated from CSULBwith a B.S. degree in chemistry in1978 and embarked on a career atBaxter BioSciences (Los Angeles) thathas evolved from coagulant researchto scientific systems management, tohis current position in quality controlas senior manager of ComputerSystems Validation. Baxter also employsa number of CSULB graduates, someof whom work for Valfre.

Karim, Rzasa and Valfre are greatadditions to the advisory council, andthe department looks forward to theirinput and support of its students and faculty.

Alumni Giving Makes a Difference!

Your donations to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry make a BIG difference. Simply put, your support determines how rich an educational experience we can provide to ourstudents: time to do research instead of working off campus, use of state-of-the-art equip-

ment in their classes and research labs, travel to professional meetings to present their results, andaccess to seminars and lectures by leading scientists discussing their own research.

About 97 percent of our budget is fixed in the form of salaries for faculty, teaching assistants,graduate assistants and staff. Only a small portion of our budget, around three percent (approxi-mately $100,000), is allocated for department operating expenses and what the state terms “non-instructional” expenses. These include faculty and student travel, equipment purchase andmaintenance (both for classroom labs and research labs), our seminar and Distinguished Lecturerseries, our advisory council activities, and student awards, scholarships and research fellowships.

Where does that three percent come from? Only about one-third comes from the state; theremainder comes from private sources, including distributions from the department's small endow-ment, a return from the overhead on research grants, gifts from corporate donors and, most impor-tantly, donations from alumni and friends.

What is the outlook for the near future? Our expenses continue to rise with inflation andincreased sales taxes while our state funding continues to decline with each budget cut. Lotteryfunds, previously used for purchasing new equipment, are being used to help pay for instrumentservice contracts during the budget crisis. Distributions from our endowment continue to be anuncertain source of funds in the current investment climate. All of this means your donations to ourdepartment are more important than ever. Each gift makes a difference.

What is the one bright spot? You! We are very pleased to report that the amount we receivedin donations from alumni and friends in 2009-10 was 50 percent higher than what we received in2008-09. Thank you for responding to our situation and for stepping up to help us through thisfunding drought. Your generosity is having a big effect on helping us to sustain the excellence ofour programs. We hope that, even in these difficult times, you will continue to give and give asgenerously as you can.

To make a gift, use the enclosed envelope or give online at https://cf.papubs.csulb.edu/giving/.Scroll down to the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and choose “Chemistry and Bio-chemistry Department.” For endowments or naming opportunities in the chemistry wing of the newHall of Science, contact Maryanne Horton at 562-985-1687 or e-mail [email protected].

Where Are They Now?C. Patrick "Pat" Dunne, a professor of biochemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Bio-

chemistry from 1976-79, has been with the U.S. Army Research Center at Natick, Mass., since heleft CSULB. Dr. Dunne is the senior advisor in Advanced Processing and Nutritional Biochemistry forthe Department of Defense Combat Feeding Directorate at Natick. Since 1991, he has led theAdvanced Preservation Project, which focuses on advanced food processing technologies, includingfood irradiation. He was a founding member and first chair (in 1999) of the Nonthermal Food Pro-cessing Division of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). He received a Federal Laboratory Con-sortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer in 2005 and was the 2005 winner of the IFTMyron Solberg Award, which recognizes leadership in developing industry/government/academiacooperative organization.

In 2009, Dr. Dunne was named as an IFT Fellow. The IFT noted that, "Through his work with theU.S. Army, Dr. Dunne has created combat ration options that have high levels of functional efficacy,have proven nutrient effectiveness and meet food safety standards." This year, Dr. Dunne and othermembers of the Washington State University Microwave Sterilization Consortium were honored withthe IFT Research and Development Award.

Dr. Dunne and his wife Maureen have three daughters and two grandchildren. His oldestdaughter, Eileen, just finished a Ph.D. in microbiology at Boston University Medical School, writing athesis on an antimicrobial peptide that disrupts ribosome structure.

23

Gifts by Individuals

During the 2009-10 fiscal year, the department received giftstotaling $225,450, including $32,195 from individual donors. Thefaculty, staff and students of our department are very grateful foryour generosity.

Cash gifts are used for scholarships, awards, the seminar program,and purchase of supplies and equipment for which there is notadequate state funding. Also, the costs of publishing theDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry newsletter are metwith private giving. You may give an income tax-deductible giftdirectly to the department by sending a check to:

CSULB Foundation/Chemistry FundDepartment of Chemistry and BiochemistryCalifornia State University, Long Beach1250 Bellflower BoulevardLong Beach, CA 90840-3903

The Office of University Relations and Development is informed ofall gifts, and you will receive a personal letter of acknowledge-ment from the department. You might investigate the possibilityof your company matching employee gifts, which multiplies thevalue of your gift to the department.

If you are contacted through the university giving program and agift is requested, please specify the Department of Chemistry andBiochemistry as the recipient of your gift, if that is your intention.

Thank you!

Corporate Gifts to the Department

Dr. and Mrs. Dennis M. Anjo

Dr. Martha Molina Bernadett, '85

Dr. Oliver M. Brown, '66

Dr. Norman R. Byrd

Mr. and Mrs. Ronald H. Carroll

Vickie Clawson

Dr. Jeffrey A. Cohlberg

Dr. Alan Cunningham, '56

Dr. and Mrs. Fred Dorer, '61

Dr. Jean-Bernard Durand, '84

Dr. Henry Eran, '74

Victor C. Gearhart, '72

Drs. Dot and Elihu Goldish

Gian Paola G. Grant, '05

Annette Guerrero, '86

Margaret A. Hohly, '67

Frederick W. Howe, '54

William H. Hulbrock, '70

Dr. Kenneth P. Ishida, '83

John J. Jasnosz, '62

Dr. Michael S. Kahr, '88

Kathy C. Kurjan, '86

Melissa H. Loughney, '83

Tim MacAndrew, '87

Dr. Raymond F. Maddalone

Michael Manneh, '93

Dr. Lewis E. Manring

Dr. Tom J. Maricich

Irene Marsi

Dr. Marianne Marsi-Manring, '78

Dr. Darwin L. Mayfield

Diane C. McGann, '86

Patrick A. McKay, '79

Drs. Margaret and Kent Merryfield

Dr. and Mrs. J. Mario Molina, '80

Dr. James F. Myrtle, '67

Dr. Vasanthy Narayanaswami

David R. Oliver, '77

Dr. Cathie M. Overstreet, '04

Dr. and Mrs. Arie A. Passchier, '61

Melanie M. Patterson, '78

Sue Perlgut

Dorthea A. Rzasa

Dr. Robert M. Rzasa, '93

Dr. Armando G. Samaniego, M.D., '83

Dr. and Mrs. Nail M. Senozan

Dr. Alan J. Senzel, '66

Dr. Young-Seok Shon

Mr. and Mrs. Ron Suphavarahasoonthorn

Gerald Y. Uyesato, '87

Dr. Paulus M. Weers

Dr. Carter J. White, '89

Mr. Gerald C. Wicker, '67

Mr. and Mrs. Gerald E. Wuenschell, '78

Honor Roll of Individual Donors(July 1, 2009 – June 30, 2010)

Total value of cash and in-kind gifts to the department during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010 was $193,255.

Companies and foundations contributing cash and in-kind gifts were:

Abbott Laboratories Fund (in honor of senior researcher Stan Huth (‘73), winner of the Abbott Outstanding Research Team Award)

Allergan Foundation* (Summer Research Fellowships)Allergan Pharmaceuticals, Inc.* (Equipment)American Chemical Society (Research)American Heart Association (Research)Amgen Inc.* (Research)Beckman Coulter Inc. * (Equipment)NHK Laboratories, Inc.* (Scholarship)Research Corporation (Research)

* Companies represented on the Chemistry and BiochemistryAdvisory Council.

Nonprofit org.U.S. PostageP A I DPermit No. 301Long Beach, CA

In addition to meeting fully its obligations of nondiscrimination under federal and state law, CSULB is committed to creating a community in which a diverse population can live and work in an atmosphere of tolerance, civility, and respect for the rights and sensibilities of each individual, without regard to economic status,

ethnic background, veteran status, political views, sexual orientation, or other personal characteristics or beliefs.

Design, photography and editorial assistance provided by University Publications and Public Affairs, 2010

California State University, Long BeachDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry1250 Bellflower BoulevardLong Beach, CA 90840–9401

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Members of the 2009-10 graduating class with members of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department faculty.

For past and present students and friends of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University, Long Beach.

alumni reunion banquet celebrates department’s 50th ... · construction. following a banquet held...

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