Category: Upcoming Events

The California Los Padres Section of the American Chemical Society invites the general public to join us in a discussion of the effects of climate change and what can be done to address it. 

Continue reading “CLIMATE CHANGE: WHAT TO EXPECT AND WHAT CAN BE DONE”

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):

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.

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
Location: Firestone 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

Regular $30.00 USDStudent $15.00 USD

Meal Option

Burger Burger w/Beyond Meat Vegetarian Pattie Stuffed Bell Pepper (Vegetarian) DBA Baby Back Ribs Citrus Glazed Half Chicken Pan Seared Salmon

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

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”

The cooling weather and the shorter days announce the arrival of fall. It is, therefore, time to gather for our Fall Luncheon. Professor Evan Miller of UC Berkeley returns to his home turf to introduce us to chemical biology and to discuss his breakthroughs in neuronal imaging. Continue reading “Fall Luncheon with Speaker Evan Miller”

You are cordially invited to attend the 2018 Western Regional Meetings (WRM) of the ACS. The WRM will be held at the Beckman Auditorium on the CalTech campus in Pasadena, California, on October 27, 2018.  This one-day “nano” meeting shares its theme with that of 2018 National Chemistry Week theme: “Chemistry is Out of this World!” The meeting features speakers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and The Aerospace Corporation. Continue reading “2018 Western Regional Meeting”

World renowned expert on scientific and business communication Jean-Luc Doumont will visit UCSB soon, and we are happy to report that we have reserved seats for CALPACS members to see this incredibly popular speaker. Please use the link below to make your reservation via UCSB, and check the box labeled “California Los Padres American Chemical Society” to claim this benefit.

4-6 PM Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Topic: Getting the Message Across
Location: Corwin Pavilion, UCSB (Google Map)
Cost: Free
Click here for the reservation form

The ability to articulate ideas effectively is an invaluable asset for engineers, scientists, business people, and so many others. The written documents and the oral presentations these create are often the most visible outcome of their work, and are thus critical to the advancement of their projects and of their career.

In this talk, Jean-Luc Doumont, will discuss how to get your message across to stakeholders. Doumont, an engineer from the Louvain School of Engineering (PhD
in applied physics from Stanford University) is a popular invited speaker at top-notch universities and international conferences for what are now classic lectures (or related interactive workshops) on scientific communication, visual structure, pedagogy, statistical thinking, and other topics.

Philosophical honesty is the essential ingredient of policy making. The allocation of public and corporate resources must be made according to experimental results that are true and arguments that are logically sound. Otherwise, public trust is eroded and public and private resources are squandered. Please join us for an important lecture on the difficulties of maintaining philosophical integrity in a world of complex experiments and intricate arguments at the California Los Padres Section’s annual π day lecture series on science and policy. Pies will be served at 3:00 PM, with the talk commencing at 3:14 PM. We are privileged to host Professor Theodore Porter of UCLA’s Department of History.

Statistical Pi: Metaphysics and Manipulation of Numbers
Speaker: Theodore Porter, Ph.D.
Abstract
Statistics, in its mathematical form, was closely associated with the “error curve” or normal distribution, a formula that contains e as well as π, and that inspired wonderment for the great range of phenomena to which it applied. But it was originally a descriptive science of the state, and was bound up with a reverence for facts.  Now, perhaps more than ever, statistics and quantitative data are treated as almost synonymous with evidence.  So much faith creates an irresistible temptation to distort and manipulate, and it sometimes appears impossible to separate funny numbers from scrupulous ones. Have we created a crisis of numbers?

Date: Saturday, March 10, 2018
Time: 3 – 5 PM
Place:  Building 8 (Bioresource & Agricultural Engineering), Room 123, CalPoly San Luis Obispo. Click here for campus map.
Cost: Free
Your RSVP through the form below is requested to help event planning. Please click here to download the event flier..

Theodore Porter is a historian of science and Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA, where he has taught for about 25 years.  His research has  mainly focused on ideas and uses of quantification, measurement, data, and statistics, and especially they ways they link the natural sciences and medicine with social knowledge.  His books include The Rise of Statistical Thinking, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life; Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age, and (in a few months) Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity.