Personal Mention

Chemistry Ph.D. candidate Tom Ribelli received the Best Poster Award at the 8th Controlled Radical Polymerization Symposium during the 2017 American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition. Selected by a panel of judges for his poster “Development of Highly Active Copper Catalyst for Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization,” the honor includes a $150 cash award. Ribelli works in the research group of Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner Professor of Natural Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. His research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of highly active copper catalysts for use in atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), with the aim of moving towards more “green” systems. Learn more.

Courtney Ehrlichman, deputy executive director for the Traffic21 Institute and Mobility21, is producing a monthly podcast series on women working in the smart transportation field. The series is called “Amplify.” Her initial podcast aired last week with PennDOT Secretary Leslie Richards. The discussion with Richards ranges from Pennsylvania’s leadership in the future of transportation to her re-entry into the workforce after being a stay-at-home mother. Upcoming interviews will feature Jill Ingrassia, managing director of AAA’s Government Relations and Traffic Safety Advocacy departments, Suzanne Murtha, senior program manager with Atkins in North America, and Martha Morecock Eddy, practice leader for transportation technology for KCI Technologies, Inc. Listen to “Amplify.”

Chemist Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, with collaborators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Akron, has come up with a methodology that fine tunes the characteristics of brush polymers to allow them to more closely mimic the characteristics of biological materials. Their technique is published as a letter in the Sept. 28 issue of Nature. In Nature, the group reports that they used controlled radical polymerization (CRP) methods to create a library of brush polymers. CRP techniques, such as atom transfer radical polymerization, which was developed by Matyjaszewski more than 20 years ago, allowed them to systematically vary the three variables for each polymer and create a well-defined reference set that researchers can use to reverse engineer a polymer architecture that will closely mimic a given biological tissue. Find out more.

Lenore Blum, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, is one of 25 people named to the inaugural class of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Fellows. The inaugural class includes past AWM presidents, AWM Lifetime Service Award winners, and AWM Humphreys Award winners. Each fellow also is at least 25 years beyond her/his terminal degree and has been a member of AWM for at least 10 years. Blum, who joined the Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science in 1999, is a founder of AWM and a past president.

Gary Aldrich, head coach of the Carnegie Mellon track and field teams, was the throws instructor at the Brazilian Olympic Committee Coaches Academy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Sept. 18-22. Aldrich was asked by the academy to serve in this position following his stint as the U.S.A. Men's Throws Coach at the 2017 IAAF World Outdoor Championships that were held in London in August. The academy was an intensive learning environment in which Aldrich lectured for four hours a day as well as an additional four hours of "Learn by Doing" at the throwing area. Find out more.