The Division of Organic Chemistry will co-sponsor a symposium entitled “Chemistry and Policy: Solving Problems at the Interface”, which is scheduled for the 2010 Boston ACS Meeting, and has been designated a Presidential Event by ACS President Joseph Francisco. The list of confirmed speakers is:
- Kathryn Beers, Deputy Division Chief of the Polymers Division at NIST, former Assistant Director of Physical Sciences and Engineering at OSTP
- Joan Berkowitz, Professor at the University of Maryland and Co-founder of Farkas Berkowitz & Company Consulting Firm
- John Deutch, Institute Professor of Chemistry at MIT who has served as Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Under Secretary of the Department of Energy
- Jon Gavenonis, Health Care and Transportation Development Manager with DuPont Engineering Polymers
- David Goldston, Director of Government Affairs for NRDC and science policy columnist for Nature; former Chief of Staff for the U.S. House Science Committee
- Jay Keasling, Professor at University of California, Berkeley; prominent synthetic biologist at the forefront of disease-targeted research and low-cost health solutions in developing countries
- WIlliam Rees, Principle associate director for Global Security at Los Alamos National Laboratory; former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
- George Whitesides, University Professor at Harvard who has served on the National Research Council and advisory councils for the NSF, NASA, and the Department of Defense
The symposium is being organized by the ACS Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee, MIT 2010 The Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee (GSSPC), which was created in 2005 to facilitate ongoing involvement among graduate students in planning symposia at the American Chemical Society (ACS) biannual national meetings. Student groups are chosen from a college or university to produce quality symposia co-sponsored by the ACS Division of Chemical Education that are relevant to the chemical community. For more information on the project see: http://web.mit.edu/gsspc/.