My Path to the Perkin Medal

My Path to the Perkin Medal

The Perkin Medal is considered the highest honor in American industrial chemistry. It has been awarded annually over the past 115 years to a recipient chosen by the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Chemical Industry, and the Science History Institute. In this talk, Dr. Jane Frommer will describe some of the lessons learned at chosen points along the path, often surprising until the underlying chemistry is revealed.

Thu
1/20/22
 
5:30 pm
 - 
Thu
1/20/22
 
7:00 pm
  
·  
Online (Zoom)
5:30 pm
 - 
7:00 pm
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Add to Calendar 2022-01-20 17:30 2022-01-20 19:00 America/Los_Angeles My Path to the Perkin Medal The Perkin Medal is considered the highest honor in American industrial chemistry. It has been awarded annually over the past 115 years to a recipient chosen by the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Chemical Industry, and the Science History Institute. In this talk, Dr. Jane Frommer will describe some of the lessons learned at chosen points along the path, often surprising until the underlying chemistry is revealed. Online (Zoom)
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The Perkin Medal is considered the highest honor in American industrial chemistry.  It has been awarded annually over the past 115 years to a recipient chosen by the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Chemical Industry, and the Science History Institute.

Dr. Jane Frommer was chosen as the Perkin Medalist in 2020 for pioneering work with electronically conducting polymers and with scanning probe instrumentation that paved the way for its use in chemistry, materials science and technology. The path wound through doped polymers and amorphous carbon-coated magnetic discs, from liquid crystal phase transitions to phase-separated monolayers of fluorocarbons and hydrocarbons, onto ebeam-patterned substrates for DNA origami and into 3D-printed nanogrids. This seemingly random walk did have a theme: the molecular sources of material behavior.

In this talk, she will describe some of the lessons learned at chosen points along the path, often surprising until the underlying chemistry is revealed.

Jane began her post-Caltech career in 1980 by creating and studying the solution state of electronically conducting polymers at the Allied Corporation (now Honeywell).  She then was instrumental in a series of scanning probe inventions at IBM Research. Together with a number of instrumentalists, they demonstrated unambiguously the imaging and manipulation of single molecules with STM (scanning tunneling microscopy). On a multiyear sabbatical at the University of Basel Physics Institute, her academic team expanded scanning probes into measuring functional properties of organic monolayers with AFM (atomic force microscopy).  She now serves as a science advisor addressing chemical and material challenges of nanotechnology. For example, at Google Jane and Steve Boyer expand the reach of search and machine-learning into curated public molecular databases.

Jane is active in the Silicon Valley American Chemical Society (ACS), an associate editor of the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, and an advisor and reviewer for public and private science foundations and community organizations.

She is also an ACS Fellow and the 2017 recipient of the ACS Award in Industrial Chemistry.

Jane obtained her BS in chemistry from Tufts University, performing bio-organic undergraduate research at MIT with Professor Bill Rastetter.  She then worked in Vitamin D research with Dr. Michael Holick at Mass General Hospital.  Her PhD from Caltech with Professor Bob Bergman covered studies of transition metal-functionalized polymers and organometallic cluster compounds as models for Fischer-Tropsch catalysis.

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