Announcement of upcoming opportunities with the American Chemical Society and CALPAC and events.
We are pleased to celebrate Professor Alison Butler from the University of California, Santa Barbara as the recipient of the 2022 Richard C. Tolman Award. The luncheon will be Saturday, August 5 from 11:00-2:30 PM at the UCSB Faculty Club. The event is sponsored with the California Los Padres Section of the American Chemical Society.
A buffet lunch will be served, followed by a lecture from Dr. Butler.
Continue reading “Richard C. Tolman Award Luncheon”Industry Tour: San Luis Obispo Water Treatment Plant and The Water Resource Recovery Facility
Sustainability in water use is one of our state’s great challenges. Please join CALPACS for an afternoon adventure demonstrating how chemistry and engineering can address that challenge.
We will tour the Water Treatment Plant (WTP) and the Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF). The WTP uses ozone disinfection, ballasted flocculation, and chemical treatment to provide up to 16 million gallons of fresh water daily to the city of San Luis Obispo. The WRRF treats 4.5 million gallons of wastewater daily for discharge into San Luis Creek and for re-use in irrigation. In addition, the facility produces electricity from biogas and compost. A casual lunch will be provided at the beginning of the tour.
Please use this form to reserve your spot, as attendance is capped for safety reasons at 25 attendees.
Date: Thursday, May 4, 2023
Itinerary:
12: 15 Check-in at the WTP
1:00 Tour of WTP
2:00 Drive to WRRF
2:30 Tour of WRRF
3:30 End of Event
The WTP is on Stenner Creek Road, 0.8 miles north of Highway 1. The location is shown on this map. The WRRF is located on Prado Road, as shown here.
Cost: Free! This event is sponsored by Calpacs.
The CALPACS Executive Committee is absolutely thrilled to announce the return of our annual wine tasting event. After a two-year break, we will be convening at Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez to partake of their Signature Private Tasting with the accompaniment of charcuterie, cheeses and artisanal breads provided by your section officers. We cordially invite you to take a break from the holiday madness to relax with fellow chemists and scientists and to discuss the state of the scientific world and life in our beautiful section along the California coast. Please use the form below to make your reservation. We look forward to welcoming you back to our annual start to the holiday season.
Date: Saturday, December 10, 2022
Time: 2:00 – 3:30 PM
Location: Sunstone Winery, 125 N Refugio Rd, Santa Ynez, CA 93460 (805) 688-9463 (Directions from Bing Maps)
Cost: $10. Please use the Paypal from below to reserve your place.
Please set the hours of 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM on Saturday, October 15th aside for the annual CALPACS luncheon. Please join us for drinks, lunch and a talk about extraterrestrial chemistry. Taylore McClurg of NASA’s Jet Propulsions Laboratory (JPL) will speak to the section about her experiences working on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and being in charge of retrieving samples from Mars.
A buffet lunch with choices of chicken, beef and vegetarian dishes will be served.
Please RSVP from the Paypal buttons at the bottom of this page.
Speaker: Taylore McClurg, NASA JPL
Title: Engineering Challenges with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Mars Rover
Date & Time: Saturday, 10/15/22, 11:00 – 14:00
Place: UCSBMosher Alumni House
Cost: $10, $5 for students
Taylore McClurg:
As early as she can remember, Taylore wanted to be an astronaut. But when she watched the movie Apollo 13, where the engineers in mission control must to find a way to create a C02 scrubbing system with only the items available to the astronauts in space, she knew she wanted to do that. Solve the complex problems of being and traveling in space. Taylore earned her B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and joined Northrop Grumman after graduation. In her 13 years at Northrop Grumman, she has worked on weather satellites, lunar mission, communications satellites, and, for 8 of those 13 years, the James Webb Space Telescope. Taylore lead the requirements and verification team for the spacecraft element and observatory, ensuring all the requirements for mission success were verified – proving the system will work to NASA. Now with JWST operating and producing the amazing science we all hoped for, Taylore has taken a position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working as the verification lead for the Mars Sample Return Lander. This Sample Return mission will bring back the Martian soil samples currently being collected by the Perseverance Rover.
We are pleased to invite you to a lecture on the cutting edge sensors manufactured by Teledyne Imaging Sensors for the most innovative telescopes orbiting earth and residing on it. Dr. James Beletic, president of TIS, will deliver this talk on the UCSB campus. Please use the RSVP from at the bottom of this page to reserve your spot. If you wish to join via Zoom, please answer “yes” to the corresponding question. A free box lunch will be served to those who attend in person.
Continue reading “JWST and Beyond: Infrared Sensors for Astronomy”As soon as the role of mRNA in the cell was elucidated, scientists hypothesized that it could be used as a vehicle for rapid deployment of vaccines. After many decades of research, this hypothesis was finally validated in the BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. As we move toward the latter stages of the covid-19 pandemic, please join us for a talk that will elucidate the motivations and innovations behind mRNA vaccines, their future and how their safety and efficacy were ensured by the regulatory process. Our esteemed ACS member, Dr. Rebecca Anderson, will bring all the experiences of her long career in pharmaceutical research, development and regulatory approval to the discussion of mRNA vaccines, their efficacy and their safety.
A free lunch will be provided as well as free parking. Please use the form at the bottom of this page to make your reservation for this lecture to help us plan for the event. We look forward to seeing you.
Continue reading “mRNA Vaccines: Efficacy and Safety. April 23, 2022”As some of you may know, CALPACS is supporting a local nonprofit called ChemTalk. They have made great progress, raising more funds and growing their website traffic to over 200,000 visitors a month in less than a year.
ChemTalk need additional volunteers, paid interns, and potentially employees later this year. Helping them can either be remote (writing articles, helping with social media or video editing), or in their new “ChemTalk LiveLab” located in Camarillo where they will record and livestream chemistry experiments, demonstrations, and scientific equipment. See the link below for a full description of the LiveLab. They will also potentially use the LiveLab as a base for chemistry outreach to local schools that have limited science resources onsite.
If you teach middle school, high school or college chemistry ChemTalk hopes you can fill out this short survey on how you could benefit from the LiveLab: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUacDGXrnOHTdusuFbtJwZyfj6wMvmLMoGSASZEegwe3-2eg/viewform
Please contact Scott Gietler at admin@chemistrytalk.org with questions. You can find more information in this flyer:
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.
Please join us for a virtual lecture this Sunday afternoon 3/14/21, pi day, at 3:14 PM for a lecture about navigating Federal Drug Administration regulations during the pandemic.
Continue reading “Medical Device Development and US FDA Regulation”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.
Speaker: Professor 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
