CALPACS 2021 Fall Luncheon and General Meeting

CALPACS cordially invite members of the chemistry community to our fall luncheon and general meeting. Flavio da Cruz, Project Manager for the Low Carbon Resources Group at SoCal Gas Research, Development and Demonstration will inform us of hydrogen’s future in the energy grid. We will recognize our fifty-year members, present our section awards and report the section’s progress to you in our general meeting. Please use the form at the bottom of this post to make your reservation. We look forward to seeing you.

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How Liquid Ammonia Transitions to Metal

In June of this year, Professor Stephen Bradforth of USC and his collaborators made the cover of Science magazine with their stunning results on how liquid ammonia transforms into a liquid metal as more alkali metals are dissolved into it. We are thrilled to have Professor Bradforth speak to our section about these exciting results this coming Sunday, November 8, 2020. Due to the pandemic, this lecture will be conducted over Zoom, and the details are below. Please join us for an exceptional talk on truly outstanding results. The abstract of the talk appears below.

SpeakerProfessor Stephen Bradforth
Title: Probing the transition from solution electrolyte to liquid metal
Date: Sunday November 6, 2020 
Time: 3:00 PM
Zoom Location: Please us the “Contact” link above to request the Zoom link for this lecture.
Cost: Free

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Earth Day Poetry Contest

Earth Week is next week, and the American Chemical Society has streamlined the illustrated poetry contest submission process and extended the contest entry deadline. All submissions will now be submitted through this portal   https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/outreach/ccew/plan-an-event/illustrated-poem-contest.html by Sunday, May 3rd at 9 p.m. PST.  Our local section name is California Los Padres and is needed during the submission process.

The illustrated poetry contest is open to all students in Grades K-12. The poems must be original works composed of 40 words or less, following one of the given styles and accompanied by an original illustration. This year’s theme Protecting our Planet through Chemistry should be the focus for the poem and illustration. Contest guidelines can be found in the attached contest flyer.

Additional Earth Week resources for teachers and students:
a.     www.acs.org/kids – Adventures in Chemistry site which has six experiments for home
b.     www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/k-8/thebestof.html – The Best of WonderScience has nine 3-6 grade activities available for free
c.     www.acs.org/inquiryinaction – Activities made for the classroom, all free
d.     www.nisenet.org/athome – From our partner the NISE Network
e.    AACT open resources through April 17   https://teachchemistry.org/news/unlocked-resources-through-march-3  
f.     Celebrating Chemistry Coloring Book (grades K-2) 
g.    Endangered Elements Color by Numbers (PDF) (grades 3-6)
h.    ChemCatcher (PDF) (grades 9-12, undergraduate)
i.     Earth Day 50th Anniversary Timeline (PDF) (grades 9-12, undergraduate)
j.      and more educational resources organized by age group.

Please contact Heather Shafer via our contacts page if you have any questions about the poetry contest or Chemists Celebrate Earth Week.

Wine Tasting at Demetria Estate

The frenetic activity of late fall portends many holiday activities, and the annual CALPACS wine tasting event is one of them. This year’s tasting is scheduled on Saturday December 7, 2019, at Demetria Estate, one of the most spectacular properties in the Santa Ynez Valley. (The wine is pretty good, too.) As usual, we will have an assortment of cheeses with crackers, fresh bread, and soups made by your executive committee members to accompany the fine wines submitted for evaluation to the discerning palates of CALPACS members. Please use the form below to make your reservation. We look forward to closing another year of chemistry advocacy in the tricounty area with your company.

Date:  Saturday, December 07, 2019

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM 

Winery: Demetria Estate, 6701 Foxen Canyon Road, Los Olivos, CA 93441 805.686.2345 (Bing Map) Please bear in mind that entrance to Demetria is controlled. You must dial the winery at the gate, and announce that you are with CALPACS. You will then have to drive about an additional mile to reach the winery.

Cost:  $15 per tasting

Name(s) of attendee(s):

Lecture on Chemistry of Aging

Please join us the afternoon of Saturday, November 7, 2019, for a special lecture on the chemistry of aging with Professor Steven Clarke of UCLA. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Chemistry Department at California State University, Channel Islands.

Title: Fighting off chemical aging with biochemistry: protein and small molecule damage and repair
Date: Saturday, November 9, 2019
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Location: Cal State Channel Islands Boating Center
3880 Bluefin Circle
Oxnard, CA 93035 (Click for map)
Cost: Free

Snacks and coffee will be served!

Steven Clarke, Ph. D., is Faculty Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. He received his B.A. degree from Pomona College in 1970 and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1976. After a two-year postdoctoral appointment as a Miller Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the UCLA faculty in 1978. His research at UCLA has focused on roles of novel protein methyltransferases in aging and biological regulation.

2019 Fall Luncheon and General Meeting

On Saturday, October 5, 2019, CALPACS will hold its annual Fall Luncheon and general meeting at the Firestone Barrelworks in Buellton, CA. Professor Mahdi Abu-Omar of UCSB will discuss his progress in applying transition metal catalysis to sustainable materials.

Immediately following the technical talk, the Executive Committee will hold this year’s General meeting where we report our progress to the membership at large and listen to your input. We look forward to seeing you. Please use the form at the bottom of this page to make your reservations.

Speaker: Professor Mahdi Abu-Omar, Mellichamp Chair of Green Chemistry, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Department of Chemical Engineering, UCSB
Title: Smart Materials from Lignin to Enable the Circular Economy
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2018
Time: 11:30 AM – 2:00 PM
LocationFirestone Barrelworks, Buellton (620 McMurray Rd., Buellton, CA 93427 (805) 350-7385
Cost: $30 regular members, $15 student members. Please use the form at the end of this page to make your reservation along with your meal choice. A description of the menu follows the reservation form.

Abstract

Transition metal catalysts have been an integral part of the success story of the petrochemical industry in the past century. For this century and the future, we must advance developments in renewable materials and the utilization of sustainable resources. Approximately 1.4 billion tons of lignocellulosic biomass is an annually renewable source of chemicals in the U.S. alone. The major components of biomass are cellulose, xylan, and lignin- all polymeric and contain high percentage of oxygen. Current biomass processing underutilizes lignin. We have developed selective reaction chemistries that convert lignin selectively into phenolic molecules/synthons. We have coined this process chemistry CDL for Catalytic Depolymerization of Lignin. Spectroscopic data coupled with mechanistic investigations revealed the roles of solvent and catalyst in this unique reactive-separation, which provides selective molecules from lignin. Renewable bio-phenol motifs have been synthesized and converted to polymers with advanced thermo-mechanical properties that rival those from petroleum. A fully biobased thermoset networks have been created with tunable mechanical properties and glass transition temperature. The implication and use of lignin synthons to make renewable, recyclable, and self-healing thermoset polymers will be discussed.

Mahdi Abu-Omar is the Suzanne and Duncan Mellichamp Professor of Green Chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Mahdi is the Founder of Spero Renewables, a chemistry technology company that provides cost-effective and renewables substitutes to petrochemicals. From 2009 through 2018, Dr. Abu-Omar served as the associate director of the Center for Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels (C3Bio), an Energy Frontiers Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy. He has authored more than 200 original research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. His research interest is in the areas of sustainability and green chemistry through the development and understanding of inorganic catalysts. Mahdi is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 2012 and was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at Weismann Institute in 2008. He chaired the Gordon Research Conference on Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms in 2013. Dr. Abu-Omar completed his Ph.D. from Iowa State University and postdoc from Caltech.


Reservation Type
Meal Option
Guest Names



Starter
805 HOUSE SALAD
Entrees
DBA BBQ RIBS
Tender baby back ribs, Nitro Merlin BBQ sauce, grilled corn, 805 beans
STUFFED BELL PEPPER
Roasted red bell pepper stuffed with quinoa, seasonal veggies
PAN SEARED SALMON
Seared Alaskan salmon, wilted spinach, fingerling potatoes, grilled lemon
CHEF’S BURGER
Chef’s signature rotating burgers
*Beyond Meat plant-based vegetarian patty available upon request.
CRISPY CITRUS GLAZED HALF CHICKEN
Oven roasted, chili citrus glazed Jidori chicken, garlic thyme fingerlings, citrus slaw
Dessert
LEMON CHEESECAKE
Freshly baked lemon cheesecake, graham cracker crust, lemon curd drizzle

2019 Pi Day Lecture: Defense Technology Modernization

Please join us on the UCSB campus on Saturday March 9 for our annual pi day lecture on science and policy. This year we have the privilege of hosting Colonel Francisco Leija of the United States Army. Colonel Leija will discuss technology modernization in the United States military, the associated implications for the Department of Defense and university research and defense policy. Continue reading “2019 Pi Day Lecture: Defense Technology Modernization”