Chemistry Symposium for Graduate Alumni

Symposium Speaker Biographies

Professor Gary B. Schuster (Ph.D. ’71)

Gary B. Schuster (B.S. 1968, Clarkson College of Technology; Ph.D. 1971 University of Rochester) is currently Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Vasser Woolley Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Previously, he served as Dean of the College of Sciences.

Professor Schuster received his Ph.D. at Rochester, working with Professor Louis E. Friedrich. He was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. After twenty years in the Chemistry Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he became Dean of the College of Sciences and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech in 1994. Among the numerous honors he has received, he was most recently awarded the 2006 Charles Holmes Herty Medal recognizing his work and service contributions since his arrival at Georgia Tech as well as the Chancellor's Award from the University System of Georgia in 1998. He is also a recipient of the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and Paul Flory-IBM Fellowship.

Professor Schuster has published more than 230 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals on topics ranging from biochemistry through physical chemistry. One of his best-known discoveries is called Chemically Initiated Electron Exchange Luminescence. It provides the mechanistic basis that allows the understanding of the bioluminescence of the North American Firefly. This discovery forms the basis for new clinical diagnostic procedures that have recently been commercialized.

His current research interests focus on the interaction of light with matter and investigation of small molecules that bind and cut DNA selectively when irradiated with light. The fundamental goal of this research is the discovery of new means to control the physical and optical properties of liquid crystals with light, focusing on the development of triggers designed to induce a reversible nematic to cholesteric transition under the influence of circularly polarized light. Systems investigated are biaryl chromophores, axially symmetric benzylidene cyclohexanes, and chiral cycloheptatrienes. This work has application to understanding the origin of certain diseases, such as cancer, and aging.

Gary and his wife Anita have two sons, a granddaughter, and grandson. Eric lives in Atlanta and Andrew lives in Chicago, Illinois. Their family enjoys downhill skiing and travel.

Professor Lanny S. Liebeskind (Ph.D. ’76)

Lanny S. Liebeskind, (B.S. 1972, SUNY Buffalo, Ph.D. 1976, University of Rochester) is currently the Director of University Science Strategies and the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry at Emory University. At the University of Rochester, he worked with Professor Andrew S. Kende. Following his graduate work, he spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and a year at Stanford as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow, both in the laboratories of K. Barry Sharpless.

From 1978 to 1985 he was an assistant and then associate professor at Florida State University, moving to Emory University at the end of 1985. He was promoted to Professor in 1988 and at the same time was awarded the Samuel Candler Dobbs Chair in Chemistry. He served as Chair of the Chemistry Department from 1996-2000 and as Senior Associate Dean for Research from 2000 - 2005.

Professor Liebeskind is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, most recently the Clifford C. Furnas Memorial Award from SUNY Buffalo in 1997 and the Herty Award of the Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society in 2002. He was recognized as a 2006 Cope Scholar Awardee of the American Chemical Society. He has presented over 250 invited lectures at universities, chemical companies, and meetings throughout the world and has published 136 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. He was Chair of the National Institutes of Health Medicinal Chemistry A Study Section and a member of the Advisory Board of the Petroleum Research Fund of the ACS. Since 1990 Professor Liebeskind has served as an Associate Editor of the journal Organometallics and was an Associate Editor of the "Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis" published by Wiley as well as the editor of "Advances in Metal–Organic Chemistry" published by JAI Press. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Uppsala University and the University of Umeâ, the last three in Sweden. He was consultant for Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Pharmacia (Monsanto) and currently is a consultant for Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development. Professor Liebeskind’s research interests are centered on the discovery of new reactions and the application of transition metal chemistry to problems in organic synthesis.

Professor Clifford P. Kubiak (Ph.D. ’80)

Clifford P. Kubiak, (B.Sc. 1975, Brown University; Ph.D. 1980, University of Rochester) is currently Harold C. Urey Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego. At Rochester, Kubiak completed his doctoral research working with Professor Richard Eisenberg. He then pursued his postdoctoral research in photochemistry from 1980-1981 with Mark S. Wrighton at M. I. T.

Professor Kubiak was a faculty member at Purdue University from 1982 – 1998. In 1998 he moved to UCSD as Harold C. Urey Professor, and served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry from July, 2002 - June, 2006. He has held visiting appointments at Tohoku University as a Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, and at the University of Chicago as the Robert W. Wheland Professor. He has organized numerous meetings, symposia, and workshops; and he served in several capacities in the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry, including Secretary (1999-2001), and Chair (2005). He has served on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Accounts of Chemical Research and Inorganic Chemistry.

The author of over 150 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, Professor Kubiak’s research is in inorganic electron transfer, carbon dioxide utilization, and molecular electronics. His group has developed the technique of low temperature reflectance infrared spectroelectrochemistry (IRSEC) to measure rates of ultrafast (10¹¹ – 10¹³ s^-1) intramolecular electron transfers. The protocol is based on broadening and coalescence of IR spectral lineshapes, and is much like dynamic NMR, but for dynamics that occur on a timescale a billion times faster than NMR. Kubiak’s research group is involved in the development of photocatalysts and electrocatalysts for the reduction and fixation of carbon dioxide. The photochemical “splitting” of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen at illuminated semiconductor wafers modified by catalysts is under investigation. The integration of solar CO₂ splitting technology and CO conversion is an important goal for the ultimate production of liquid fuels from CO₂ and light. The group’s research in molecular electronics combines organic synthesis of putative molecular based devices with surface science and spectroscopic (RAIRS, STM, AFM, Kelvin Probe, ellipsometry) characterization. Recent accomplishments include the measurement of the electrical resistances of single organic molecules, demonstration of ohmic conductance responses of single surface-confined organic charge transfer complexes, and demonstration of chemically gated changes in electrostatic surface potential in host/guest and donor/acceptor self-assembled structures on Au(111) surfaces.

Panel Chair - Dr. Pawel Fludzinski (Ph.D. ’82)

Pawel Fludzinski (B.Sc. 1978, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Ph.D. 1982, University of Rochester) received his doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Rochester under the mentorship of Professor Andrew S. Kende. He held a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship while pursuing studies with Professor Gilbert Stork at Columbia University from 1983 to 1984.

Dr. Fludzinski joined discovery research at Lilly in 1984 as a medicinal chemist, and subsequently held numerous management positions within Lilly Research. He is currently Vice President of Lilly Research Laboratories, and was named Team Leader for Ruboxistaurin (PKC β Inhibitor) Global Brand Development Team in 2003. In this role, he has overall responsibility for the development, market preparation, submission, and launch of this molecule.

Before assuming his current position, Dr. Fludzinski was responsible for Strategy, Research Acquisition, and LRLJapan. In this role, he led the overall strategic planning process for LRL, in addition to his responsibilities for Lilly’s Research Acquisition Group, which is charged with identifying and evaluating exciting ideas, technologies, or molecules from outside Lilly. Finally, he was also responsible for LRLJapan, which includes all of Lilly’s R & activities in Japan.

From September 2001 to February 2004, Dr. Fludzinski served as one of three Managing Directors for Lilly BioVentures, an internal venture capital fund; in June 2002 he was appointed to the CID Equity Partners’ Seed Fund Board; and in November 2002, he was appointed to the Board of Director’s of Fluidigm Corporation, a privately-held microfluidics innovator. In May 2003, he joined the Board of the Japan-America Society of Indiana (JASI), and finally, from May 2003 to May 2004, Dr. Fludzinski served on the Board of Directors of Indiana University’s Advanced Research & Technology Institute (ARTI). Dr. Fludzinski is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Indiana Academy of Sciences, and the American Chemical Society.

Within the Indianapolis community, Dr. Fludzinski currently serves as Vice-Chairman of the Board for the Indianapolis Zoological Society and has been a Board Member since 1996. He also recently agreed to chair a capital campaign to endow a Synthetic Organic Chemistry Chair at the University of Rochester in honor of his Ph.D. mentor, Professor Emeritus Andrew Kende.

From 1997 to 2000, Dr. Fludzinski lived and worked in Japan. He was named Executive Director of Globalization for Japan in January 1997, and then became Executive Director of LRLJapan in March 1998. His primary responsibility was to develop and implement a strategy for achieving simultaneous launch of new products in Japan. In March of 1999 (until his departure in October 2000), he was named Representative Director and Chairman of Chugai Lilly Clinical Research Co, a newly formed Joint Venture between Lilly and Chugai Pharmaceuticals. As a result of his efforts in Japan, he was awarded the “Chairman’s Ovation Award”, a peer nominated, competitive award for leadership given by the Chairman of Eli Lilly and Co.

Pawel, his wife Louise (Lou) and their infant daughter, Nya currently reside in Indianapolis.

Dr. Karen H. Brown (Ph.D. ’72)

Karen H. Brown received her undergraduate degrees in history and chemistry from the University of Rochester and went on to earn her Ph.D. in chemistry in 1972. At Rochester, she completed her doctoral studies under the mentorship of Professor William H. Saunders. She is currently an independent consultant working with executives in the semiconductor industry.

Dr. Brown retired from the United States Department of Commerce in 2003, where she served as the Deputy Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1999 to 2003. From 2000 through 2001 she also served as Acting Under-Secretary for Technology in the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration. Prior to her appointment at NIST she worked for IBM for over twenty years.

In her role as Deputy Director of NIST, she oversaw an $800M annual operating budget and 3,300 on-site staff complemented by 2,000 manufacturing and business specialists serving smaller manufacturers around the country. Dr. Brown’s distinguished career has melded science and administration, earning her peers’ praise for successfully moving ideas from the laboratory into manufacturing. In more than two decades with IBM she developed an expertise in and made major contributions to semiconductor lithography, a technique that is central to the production of modern computer chips and thus essential to computer products.

Earning regular management promotions in recognition of her work, Brown was appointed an IBM assignee to SEMATECH, a global consortium of semiconductor manufacturers where she was Director of Lithography from 1994 to 1998. Her work has earned her awards for excellence and outstanding contributions to her field from both SEMI and SEMATECH, and IBM elected her to the position of Distinguished Engineer.

In 2001 the University of Rochester recognized Brown’s extraordinary achievements by awarding her the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Medal.

Dr. Edward J. J. Grabowski (Ph.D. ’65)

Dr. Edward J.J. Grabowski, (B.Sc. 1961, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D., 1965 University of Rochester) recently retired as Vice President of Chemistry (Process Research) at the Merck Research Laboratories, a Division of Merck & Company, Inc. in Rahway, NJ after almost thirty nine years of service. He is currently a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. At Rochester he completed his doctoral studies under the mentorship of Robert Autrey.

Dr. Grabowski recently completed an eight year term as a member of the Organic Synthesis Editorial Board. He also served as a member of the ACS’s Petroleum Research Fund’s (PRF) Advisory Board from 1994-2000 and in 2002 assumed the position of Chair of the PRF’s Advisory Board. He is a co-author on approximately 100 research papers and reviews, a co-inventor on more than 50 US patents, and has presented over 150 invited lectures at symposia and universities over the years. He has also presented courses on Process Research at the University of Wisconsin, MIT, the Catholic University of Louvain and WuXi Pharma Tech in China. Among his most recent honors, he received the Award for Lifetime Scientific Achievement from the North Jersey Section of the American Chemical Society in 2001 and was the Devon W. Meek Lecturer in Chemistry at the Ohio State University. In 2005, he was the Lambert Lecturer at Boston University and also received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the University of Rochester.

Dr. Grabowski’s research interests were program-driven and focused on the design and development of practical syntheses of MRL’s drug candidates and products. They have encompassed contributions in synthetic and physical organic chemistry to such diverse areas as heterocyclic chemistry (pyrazines, imidazoles, 5,11-diazaditwistanes, condensed heterocyclic systems); carbapenem antibiotics (thienamycin, MRSA carbapenems); amino acid chemistry; catalytic enantioselective phase transfer alkylation reactions; silylation-mediated quinone oxidation reactions and oxidations in general; enzyme-mediated syntheses; natural product chemistry, oxazaborolidine reactions; resolution methods in lieu of enantioselective syntheses; enantioselective acetylide additions mediated by asymmetric aminoalkoxides, enantioselective syntheses and methods in general with a recent focus on asymmetric hydrogenation; photochemistry and reaction mechanisms. His chemical contributions are reflected in the manufacturing processes for the following Merck drugs: AGGRASTAT®, CLINORIL®, FOSAMAX®, PRIMAXIN®, PROSCAR®, STOCRIN®, and SITIGLIPTIN®.

He currently resides with his wife, Lenore, in New Jersey. His non-chemistry pursuits include a serious interest in classical music, particularly the string quartets of Beethoven, and the philately and postal history of the French Colonial Empire. Relative to the latter, he was elected to membership in the Académie de la Philatélie in France in July of 1999.

Dr. Margaret M. Wu (Ph.D. ’76)

Margaret M. Wu (B.S. 1970, Taipei Institute of Technology; Ph.D. 1976, University of Rochester) is currently Senior Scientific Advisor at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company, Annandale, New Jersey. Margaret Wu received her PhD at Rochester, working with Professor J. Christopher Dalton.

After completing her education and a period of brief employment at the American Cyanamide Company, Margaret M. Wu joined Mobil Chemical Research Laboratory in New Jersey in 1977. At Mobil and later ExxonMobil, she played a key role as an inventor of several important products and in successfully commercializing these products in the market. Dr. Wu is a recognized expert in the field of petroleum-based processes and products. In addition to synthetic lubricants, Dr. Wu's research has contributed significantly to technology in areas as diverse as polymer synthesis, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, and zeolite chemistry. In the early 1980s, Dr. Wu did pioneering work to produce ethylene from methanol in high yields by using proprietary zeolite catalysts. Her major discovery came a few years later when she took advantage of her experience to develop a new class of synthetic oil hydrocarbon base stocks. In 2002, she became the first woman to be named to the prestigious rank of Senior Scientific Adviser at ExxonMobil, the highest technical rank at the company.

Dr. Wu is the author or co-author of more than 70 issued US patents, 60 European patents and numerous publications. She is the recipient of many internal and external awards, including, most recently, the 2005 Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award, and the 2006 ExxonMobil Outstanding Patent Award for Commercial Success. In 2007 Dr. Wu received the ACS Award in Industry Chemistry, in recognition as a top industrial chemist for her "creative and outstanding research contributions leading to breakthrough synthetic lubricant products of considerable commercial and environmental importance."

Dr. Wu resides in Skillman, New Jersey with her husband, Dr. Wuu-Yong Wu, also a Ph.D. graduate from the Chemistry Department of University of Rochester. They have one daughter who is currently working in Japan.

Professor Frederick D. Lewis (Ph.D. ’68)

Frederick D. Lewis (B.A., 1965, Amherst College; Ph.D., 1968, University of Rochester) is currently Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. He completed his doctoral research under the mentorship of Professor William H. Saunders at Rochester. He went on to Columbia University as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow working with Professor Nicholas J. Turro from 1968-69.

Professor Lewis has been a member of the Northwestern University faculty since 1969. The recipient of numerous awards, Professor Lewis has most recently received the 2003 Award in Photochemistry from the Inter-American Photochemical Society, the 2004 Northwestern Alumni Association Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2005 Cope Senior Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. He served as Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1995-1999 and the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry from 1988-95. He currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry, the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology C: Photochemistry Reviews and Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences.

The author of over 250 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, Professor Lewis’ research is directed toward understanding the nature of the interaction of molecules with light, the field known as molecular photonics. Of special interest are molecules containing multiple chromophores, including DNA and organic molecules with arrays of stacked aromatic chromophores. The principal activity of his group is the design and synthesis of molecules expected to have specific photonic behavior.

Current projects underway in the Lewis Research Group include studies of the distance and angular dependence of electron transfer, energy transfer, and exciton coupling in DNA-based systems. The group is seeking to develop organic models for the π-stacked bases in duplex DNA that might find applications in the construction of molecular electronic devices. Tertiary amide and tertiary urea groups can serve as conformational control elements that allow the assembly of aromatic donor, acceptor, and bridging chromophores into well-defined geometries. Oligomeric poly(arylureas) with donor and acceptor chromophores at their termini have been prepared and self-organize into π-stacked geometries. Electronic interactions in simple di-, tri-, tetra-, and pentachromophoric molecules are being studied.

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