S. Dexter Squibb Lecture Series"New Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry"
Dr. Joseph S.
Francisco |
UNCA Chemistry Department Seminars |
| Speaker | Date and Time | Topic |
S. Dexter Squibb Lecture Series"New Frontiers in Environmental Chemistry"
Dr. Joseph S.
Francisco |
The twelfth annual S. Dexter Squibb Lecture series will take place on October 1-2, 2009. The speaker will be Joe Francisco, William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Purdue University.
Joseph S. Francisco completed his undergraduate studies in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin with honors, and he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. Francisco spent 1983-1985 as a Research Fellow at Cambridge University in England, and following that he returned to MIT as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1986 he was appointed Assistant Professor at Wayne State University. In 1991 he was a Visiting Associate in Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. He accepted an appointment as Professor of Chemistry and Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University in January, 1995, and in 2006 was appointed as the William E. Moore Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science and Chemistry at Purdue University. He served as President for the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) from 2005-2007. In 2008 he was elected to the Presidential succession of the American Chemical Society. He will serve as President-Elect for 2009, President for 2010, and is Immediate Past President for 2011.
He has published over 400 peer-reviewed publications in the fields of atmospheric chemistry, chemical kinetics, quantum chemistry, laser photochemistry and spectroscopy. He was appointed by the Secretary of the Navy to be member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee for the Department of Navy (1994-1996). He has served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Spectrochimica Acta (Part A); Advances in Environmental Research; Journal of Molecular Structure Theochem; and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. He is a co-author of the textbook Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics, published by Prentice-Hall.
Professor Francisco has received numerous national and international honors for his academic accomplishments. He was recently awarded an Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award by the German government, as well as being appointed a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna, Italy. He has been appointed to and served on committees for the National Research Council, National Science Foundation, American Chemical Society, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Chemistry occurring in the atmosphere is responsible for local and regional air pollution and plays a significant role in global climate change. Understanding chemistry in the atmosphere at a molecular level is central to developing effective strategies that can remediate the environmental consequences. Atmospheric reactions that occur in the gas- phase, and the various classes of these reactions that describe chemical processing in the atmosphere will be examined. A new class of reactions that involve radical-molecule association complexes will be discussed in particular their unique stability and photochemistry and new fundamental chemistry that are changing traditional perspectives of atmospheric reactions. This talk will also discuss current challenges in understanding reactions of gases at the interface between air and aerosols. Probing the kinetics and mechanisms at the molecular level of these processes will be discussed.
Two scientists, F. S. Rowland and M. Molina, shared the Nobel Prize in 1996 for showing that the release of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere of Earth destroys the ozone that provides a shield from the transmission of ultraviolet radiation to the surface of Earth. This lecture will review the chemistry behind chlorine’s catalytic destruction of ozone and will also put in perspective research from our group that laid the foundation for the design of new materials to replace chlorofluorocarbons – replacements that could have benign atmospheric and environmental consequences. While traces of these gases on Earth contribute to global warming, on Mars these gases could heat up the atmosphere to make it more Earth-like. This talk will focus on both the new subject of planetary engineering as well as the chemistry involved. New chemistry exploration on Mars will also be discussed.
All lectures are free and open to the public
