Drexel students now have access to a one-stop shop for academic support with Drexel’s new Writing and Tutoring Centers! In May, several of Drexel’s academic tutoring centers moved to the Korman Center, co-locating to support student academic success. Read on to learn more about these resources — and how you can take advantage of them!

We are pleased to recognize the recent grants, publications, presentations, awards and honors of members of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Two Drexel University faculty members from different disciplines have come together to provide a unique opportunity for graduate students: learn how to flex their creative muscles.

Mario Scotto Di Vetta is using his co-op opportunities to travel around the country and dig up some dirt on his future career opportunities. 

Drexel students join with other university students and industry professionals to help promote science among the youth of the Philadelphia area.

Monical Ilies, PhD, associate teaching professor in the Department of Chemistry has received the Evidence Based Teaching Award in STEM

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Chemistry and the Director of the Drexel Center for Advanced Polymers and Materials Chemistry, has his 384th scientific paper: Shuxi Li (Drexel Chemistry), Apoorva Shah (Triton Systems, Inc.), Alex J. Hsieh (Army Research Lab and MIT), Ross Haghighat (Triton Systems, Inc.), S. Solomon Praveen (Drexel Chemistry), Indraneil Mukherjee (Drexel Chemistry), Elizabeth Wei (Drexel Chemistry), Zongtao Zhang (Drexel Chemistry), and Yen Wei (Drexel Chemistry) on "Characterization of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate - silica) hybrid materials with different silica contents", published online in May 2007 by a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Polymer.

A well-deserved congratulations to Dr. Daniel King, co-winner of the 2007 Allan Rothwarf Award for Teaching Excellence, which is awarded to faculty at the junior level. The award was presented at the 2007 Faculty Recognition Dinner which was held on Wednesday, May 30, 2007.

Congratulations to Mr. William Erb, who is the recipient of the 2007 American Institute of Chemists Graduate Achievement Award. The awardee is selected by the department on the basis of both their academic record and demonstrated accomplishments in research, teaching, and service to the department.

Nature's science and technology blog Nascent just did a review of activities on Nature Island in Second Life. Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley has developed an area on Nature Island where his organic chemistry undergraduate students can take quizzes and where his group's research (UsefulChem project) is posted.

As read in the February 1, 2007 Drexelink... Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley, e-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor of Chemistry, hosted the Open Notebook Science Session at the Science Blogging Conference at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymers and Materials Chemistry and Director of the Center for Advanced Polymers and Materials Chemistry, delivered an invited lecture on "Nanostructured Materials Platforms for Biocatalysis, Drug Release, Neurological Diseases, Dentistry, and Tissue Engineering" in the Department of Chemistry at Rutgers University, Newark. He also served as invited panelist on NIH Biomaterials and Biointerfaces (BMBI) study section in Bethesda, MD.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymers and Materials Chemistry and the Director of the Center for Polymers and Materials Chemistry, delivered invited lectures on "Nanoporous Materials for Bioscience and Biotechnology" in the Department of Chemistry at University of Connecticut, Storrs, and on "Nanostructured Materials Platforms for Biocatalysis, Drug Release, Neurological Diseases, Dentistry, and Tissue Engineering" in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. He also served as invited panelist on NIH study section for "Nanotechnology for dental materials (NIDCR RFA DE-07-005)" in Bethesda, MD.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymers and Materials Chemistry and Director of the Center for Polymers and Materials Chemistry, presented an invited paper on "Templated Synthesis of Novel Electroactive Periodic Mesoporous Organosilica Materials" at the 7th National Conference on Functional Organic Solids in Suzhou, China. The paper was co-authored by Yi Guo, Andreas Mylonakis and Dr. Zongtao Zhang of the Chemistry Department, and Prof. Peter Lelkes, Calhoun Chair Professor, of the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems at Drexel University.

As read in the November 2006 Drexelink... Dr. Anthony Addison, professor of chemistry, presented the paper "Some Bis (azacylce)Isoindolines and Mono- Di- and Trinuclear Complexes of Nickel (II) Derived From Them&uot; at the American Chemical Society's 232nd National Meeting in San Francisco. The paper is about work performed by Drexel undergraduates Evan Beard, Lindsay Crist, Larry Wolf and Andrew Milewski.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymers and Materials Chemistry and the Director of the Center for Polymers and Materials Chemistry, was honored with a Lecture-Chaired Professorship in Nanotechnology at the Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU) in Taiwan. He delivered an inaugural speech on "A Nanoporous Materials Platform for Drug Release, Conformational Diseases, Dentistry, and Bioengineering" at the International Symposium on Nanotechnology, sponsored by the Center for Nanotechnology at CYCU.

Dr. Lynn Penn, Department Head of Chemistry, delivered a talk entitled "Polymer Brushes for Creating Fiber Surfaces of Controlled Structure and Technological Relevance" at the Fiber Society Meeting, October 10-12, in Knoxville, TN.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymers and Materials Chemistry, co-chaired a successful International Symposium on Polymer Chemistry (PC2006) in Dalian, China. He also presented an invited paper there on "Synthesis of nanoporous materials for applications in dentistry, drug release, neural diseases and bioengineering", co-authored by Dr. Solomon Praveen, Houping Yin, Dr. Man-Chien Chao, Yi Guo and Dr. Alpa Patel of the Chemistry Department and Prof. Peter Lelkes of the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems, Drexel University, as well as Prof. George Baran of Temple University.

As read in the September 2006 Drexelink... Dr. Anthony Addison, professor of chemistry and Gordan T. Reeves, chemistry doctoral student, presented the research posters " Synthesis, Characterization and Comparison of Ruthenium (II) Complexes of Tetradentate Thioether and Pyridine-Containing Ligands and Bidentate Nitrogen Coligands" and "Synthesis and Structures of New Binuclear Copper (II) Complexes with Bis(3-alkoxy-2-hydroxybenzaldehyde) Thiocarbohydrazones" at the American Chemical Society's 38th Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting. The research was completed in collaboration with colleagues and featured the work of Diana Dragancea, a Soros Foundation Fellow at Drexel in the spring of 2006 from the Republic of Moldova.

Also read in the September 2006 Drexelink... Dr. Daniel A. Kleier, senior instructor of chemistry, and colleagues published the article "Computational Characteristics of Metal Binding Groups for Metalloenzyme Inhibitors" in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, vol 2., pp990-6.

Dr. Daniel King, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, presented the poster entitled "Quantitative Measures of Personal Response Device Effectiveness" at the American Chemical Society Fall National Meeting in San Francisco on 9/12/06.

At the request of the UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Dr. Peter Wade served as Chairman of the Visiting Committee for Initial Accreditation of an undergraduate chemistry program at the University of Sharjah. The accreditation visit occured from June 6th to June 8th in 100 degree temperatures. Peter also served as a member on the initial accreditation team for an undergraduate chemistry program at the American University of Sharjah from June 10th to June 12th. Formal reports were prepared for both accreditation visits and a short meeting was held with HH Sheikh Nahyan bin Moubarak al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Education.

The Owens research group was well represented at the 54th American Society of Mass Spectrometry Meeting held in Seattle, WA, May 28-June 1, 2006. William J. Erb presented a paper entitled, "The Study of Salt/Analyte Ratios for Four Matrices in MALDI TOFMS", along with coauthors Kevin G. Owens and Andrew J. Hoteling. The group also presented a poster entitled, "Optimization of the Electrospray Deposition Technique to Produce Better Quantitative MALDI Samples", which was co-authored by former chemistry undergraduate student Rocco DelConte, William J. Erb, and Kevin G. Owens.

Dr. Daniel King, Assistant Professor in the Chemistry Department, gave a talk entitled "Teaching environmental chemistry: which course components are most effective?" at the Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) held in Hershey, PA, on Sunday, June 4th.

Congratulations to Ms. Mozhgan Bahadory, a winner of the 2006 Teaching Excellence Competition. She will receive a certificate and a cash award to be presented at the Award Ceremony in the Bossone Auditorium at 3 pm on June 1, 2006, Graduate Student Day. Dr. Stephen Director, the Provost, will be present to make some remarks and the ceremony will include a keynote address by Dr. Ron Berk of the Johns Hopkins University. The award ceremony will be followed by a reception in the Lobby of the Bossone Building.

Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymer and Materials Chemistry, was honored with Cheung-Kong Lecture-Chaired Professorship in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. The Chair is named after "Chang Jiang (a.k.a. Yangtze River)" and is endowed jointly by Mr. Li Ka-shing of Hong Kong, who is the No. 10 richest person in the world in 2005 according to Forbes magazine, and by the Chinese Ministry of Education). Dr. Wei was also appointed as Guest Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Tianjin University, China.

Ms. Alpa Patel, a Ph.D. candidate working under the direction of Dr. Yen Wei, Herman B. Wagner Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, is the winner in the research/service competition for graduate students at Drexel University. She will be presented the Award at the Ceremony on Thursday June 1, 2006 in the Bossone Auditorium on Market Street.

Congratulations to the following chemistry department graduate and undergraduate students who have won the awards listed below. The awards will be officially presented at the College of Arts & Sciences Honors Day which will be held on Tuesday, May 25, 2005.

Congratulations to Dr. Dan King, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, for his win in the "Battle of the Brains" competition at the Handschumacher Dining Center. Students nominated faculty to provide a recipe to the Dining Center staff and help serve the meal. The dish Dan suggested, chicken and chick peas in peanut sauce, sold the best… making him the winner. Cooking is chemistry…

Dr. Kevin Owens, Associate Professor of chemistry, presented a talk entitled "Quantitative Analysis by MALDI TOFMS: Is it REALLY Possible" at the January 18, 2006 meeting of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh held at Dusquesne University.

Congratulations to Ms. Alpa C. Patel, winner of the "Service is Our Business Award", at the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Poster Session sponsored by the Philadelphia Section of the American Chemical Society at the meeting held January 19, 2006 at Villanova University. Her poster was entitled "Electrospinning of Silica Micro/Nanofibers Containing CdSe/ZnS Quantum Dots". Her co-authors on the poster are Shuxi Li and her advisor Dr. Yen Wei. This is the third time Ms. Patel has won an award at the poster session.

Congratulations to Dr. Karl Sohlberg, Associate Professor of Chemistry, who received a five-year $527,152 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for his proposal entitled: "A New Approach to Modeling Switchable Interlocked Macro-Molecular and Nano-Devices.

Congratulations to the following chemistry department undergraduate students who have won the awards listed below. The awards will be officially presented at the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Day which will be held on Tuesday, May 18, 2004.

Dr. Anthony Addison, Professor of Chemistry, presented a paper entitled "Strongly Antiferromagnetically Coupled Copper (II) Dimers of Tripodal Oximate Ligands" at the 226th Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in New York City. The paper was co-authored by M. Vaidyanathan and colleagues. As a Councilor of the local ACS section, Dr. Addison also addressed the ACS Council on potentially adverse impacts of the new INS policies on the American scientific endeavor.

On Monday March 29, 2004 Interim Provost Dr. Ali Houshmand announced that Drexel University will officially confer a named professorship upon three of its most distinguished faculty members at the Convocation ceremony to be held in October of this year. The chemistry departments’ Dr. Yen Wei will become the Herman B. Wagner Professor of Chemistry.