By Whitney Hale

The upcoming University of Kentucky Libraries Annual Dinner will recognize this year's Medallion for Intellectual Achievement recipient, chemist John Anthony, and will feature guest speaker, Alan C. Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. The dinner, which is open to the public, will be presented 7 p.m. Friday, April 13, at the Hilary J. Boone Center.

Alan C. Lowe, UK alumnus and native of Paris, Ky., has been the director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum since 2009. Lowe began his career with the National Archives where he helped assemble records to

By Kathy Johnson

University of Kentucky educators and others will be honored with teaching and public service awards today in UK's second annual Founders Day Award Ceremony at 4 p.m. in Worsham Theater in the UK Student Center.  Members of the campus and local communities are invited.  A reception will follow in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Cultural Center.

The university was created by legislative act on Feb. 22, 1865. While Founders Day has been celebrated in various ways over those years, the Founders Day Award Ceremony was established last year to recognize outstanding teaching, research and public service among faculty.

The Provost's Awards for teaching and service, the Sullivan Medallions for community service, the Sturgill Award for contributions to graduate education, and the Kirwan Prize for outstanding research will be presented

by Jonathon Spalding

“As soon as I got to the reception dinner everyone was just smiling,” said Adesuwa Ighodaro, the first recipient of the Paul G. Sears endowed scholarship in chemistry.

The scholarship, initiated in 2008, was created in honor of Dr. Paul G. Sears to assist undergraduates studying chemistry at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Sears earned his B.S. in Industrial Chemistry in 1950, as well as his Ph.D. in 1953 from UK, but the connection he has with the university doesn’t end there.

“My roots at UK run deep,” said Dr. Sears.

After working at Monsanto for a couple years, Dr. Sears returned to UK as a full professor where he eventually retired in 1990. For 28 years Dr. Sears influenced the lives of more than 7,200 undergraduates in more ways than just teaching the difference between electrons and neutrons.

While

By Allison Elliott

Mark Lovell, a researcher for the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and a member of the faculty in the UK College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry, has been named the Jack and Linda Gill Arts and Sciences Research Excellence Fund Professor in Chemistry.

Lovell, a native of Kentucky, holds a bachelor's degree from Berea College and completed his doctorate at UK. He served as a postdoctoral scholar at Sanders-Brown before accepting a permanent appointment to the university faculty.

"I am delighted that Professor Lovell is being recognized for his important contributions to

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

The University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences will host a trailblazing American diplomat next week to continue the college's Year of China initiative.

Former U.S. Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch will speak on “Leadership and Education in a Globalizing World: China’s Challenge” at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in Room 118 of the White Hall Classroom Building on UK's campus.

Bloch’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the "Passport to China: Global Issues & Local Understanding" course taught by UK sociology Professor Keiko Tanaka.

Ambassador Bloch, the first Asian-American ambassador in American history, has had a broad career in U.S. government service. She is currently president of the U.S.-China Education Trust, a nonprofit

By Erin Holaday Ziegler

Introductory chemistry, or CHE 105, strikes fear into the hearts of many University of Kentucky students.

As a gateway course to quite a few majors on campus, the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences provides a large service component to nonchemistry majors.

"Students change their majors because of chemistry; they do badly on the first exam and withdraw," said general chemistry director Stephen Testa. "As a chemistry professor, I feel bad about that. I don't want chemistry to be a dream crusher."

To help UK undergrads further grasp complex material, the department, following a national trend in chemistry higher education, is currently piloting a

by Erin Holady Ziegler

As one of the foremost experts on organic electronic materials and carbon solar cell design, University of Kentucky chemistry professor John Anthony enjoys creating materials in order to do things.

"What many people fail to remember is that everything in our lives, including ourselves, is made from chemicals," Anthony said. "My goal every day is to make my electronic materials stronger, lighter and more stable."

But sometimes Anthony, taking a pause from his work in the pragmatic and applied, likes to have a little fun.

Fun for Anthony involves acenes, a class of organic compounds that play a pivotal role in the development of the organic electronic materials that the College of Arts

by Erin Holaday Ziegler

University of Kentucky Chemistry Department Chair Mark Meier is noticeably enthusiastic when discussing the arrival of two new faculty members this fall.

Energy will be a central focus for new assistant professors Susan Odom and Doo Kim Young, as both have experience in energy and materials research and both will find a second home at UK's Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER), a multidisciplinary center whose energy research provides a focal point for coal and energy research in Kentucky.

According to Meier, most of the candidates were specifically interested in UK's chemistry department because of its close relationship with the CAER and 

by Jenny Wells

Burt Davis, longtime associate director for the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research's Clean Fuels and Chemicals Group, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from NASA – and has been named to the 2011 American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Fellows Program.

The NASA grant, "Relating FTS catalyst properties to performance," is a three-year proposal that is part of the Subsonic Fixed Wing program. Davis is the principal investigator and point of contact and researcher Gary Jacobs is a co-investigator.

The ACS Fellows Program was created by the ACS Board of Directors in December 2008 "to recognize members of ACS for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the

“I didn’t want to rush into the next step after undergrad so I took some time off,” Payne said. “Then, I sort of came to the point where I wanted a plan for the rest of my life.”

Knowing that she wanted to continue to study chemistry but also wanting to foster her other life passions, Payne picked UK and started her graduate work in 2000.

“I was an avid rock climber and I knew I could be close to the Red River Gorge,” she said. “I also rode horses as a kid and had been to Lexington several times, so I had some familiarity with the area.”

At UK, Payne quickly found a mentor in faculty member John Anthony.

“I wanted to do synthetic organic chemistry but I was not interested in the biological applications of the field, which seem dominant” she said. “With Dr. Anthony, I found out

Dr. William D. Ehmann, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, has been elected to the Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Bill received a B.S. degree (1952) with honors and an M.S. degree (1954), both in chemistry, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He went on to receive a Ph.D. degree in radiochemistry in 1957 from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and carried out postdoctoral work (1957-58) at Argonne National Laboratory under a National Research Council/National Science Foundation Fellowship. He joined the Department of Chemistry at UK in 1958 and was a Fulbright Research Scholar (1964-65) at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. In addition, he has held visiting faculty appointments at Arizona State University and

Scout Diagnostics, a company targeting early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, recently received matching funds of $435,600 to support developing a laboratory test to detect and confirm Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages. Scout was formed in 2006 by University of Kentucky chemistry professors and Sanders-Brown Center on Aging researchers Mark Lovell and Bert Lynn, along with CEO John Beran.

The funds were awarded through Kentucky's competitive SBIR-STTR Matching Funds program, through which the state matches federal SBIR-STTR awards received by Kentucky companies and those willing to relocate to Kentucky. The STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) award

Four University of Kentucky students have been recognized by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program for 2011. Juniors Philip Houtz, of Winchester, Ky., and Taylor Lloyd, of Union, Ky., have been named Goldwater Scholars and will receive scholarships worth approximately $7,500 per year for up to two years of undergraduate study. Additionally, two other UK seniors, Andrea Ramsey, of Paducah, Ky., and Jason Rexroat, of Nicholasville, Ky., have received honorable mention recognition from the esteemed scholarship program.

Philip Houtz and Taylor Lloyd are among 275 students nationwide awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship this year. This year's Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,095 mathematics, science and engineering

University of Kentucky chemistry professor Allan Butterfield's work in neurochemistry and Alzheimer's research is renowned.

But Butterfield's work goes beyond the lab; his support of undergraduate and graduate research at UK is celebrated throughout campus and the Commonwealth, with every research grant and doctoral diploma awarded.

Butterfield served as UK alumnus Tanea Reed's PhD advisor during graduate school.

"He saw my potential and made me a better graduate student by making me a critical thinker," she said. "Dr. Butterfield was a wonderful mentor who was always very encouraging and supportive.  Even though I have since graduated from UK, Dr. Butterfield still plays a role in my career as a mentor."

In a seemingly perfect blending of talents, Butterfield has been appointed as chair of the

Ph.D. Student

By Sarah Vos

photos by Mark Cornelison

On a recent Monday afternoon, Miranda Lange filled four small dishes, each containing a small rectangle of paper, with a buffer solution and set them on a rocking platform to gently wash an antibody away. The papers, really a membrane of mesh-like nitrocellulose, were covered with proteins extracted from the brains of transgenic mice, some of which have the mouse-equivalent of Alzheimer disease.

When the experiment is finished, Lange, using sophisticated proteomics methods, should be able to identify which of the brain proteins have suffered the most from oxidization. And in the case of the Alzheimer’s brain, oxidation is bad. 

Lange, a fourth year graduate student at the University of Kentucky, has worked mainly on projects involving Alzheimer’s. In a previous

Ph.D. Student

By Brian Connors Manke

Don’t be fooled by her last name. The most important color to chemistry graduate student, Lisa Blue, is definitely green. 

When Blue was starting college at Missouri State as a pre-med student, she stayed for a summer session to get a chemistry course out of the way. Get it done and over with – like ripping off a Band-Aid. 

Simple enough – but then came the unexpected. For the first time in college she was thoroughly challenged. She had to truly work at chemistry, and for a student with the drive and inquisitiveness that Blue possesses that was enough to get her hooked. 

A master’s at Missouri State followed, as did a stint working at the Blackmon Water Treatment Plant in Springfield, Mo. – a job that impressed upon her the issue of clean water. “I was fascinated with this

One-on-one teaching assistance is hard to come by in math and science courses, where many students struggle to understand balancing equations, solving for variables, and applying formulas. To address the problem, Benny G. Johnson, Sr., and Dale Holder joined forces, merging chemistry, computer programming and teaching philosophy to create Quantum Tutors, the first artificial intelligence tutoring program for the sciences.

“We thought it would be beneficial to explore developing software that closely approached what real people — good teachers or tutors — do when they work with students, rather than making students complete long lists of questions like a standardized test,” said Johnson, a University of Kentucky alumnus and president and CEO of Quantum Simulations, Inc.  

In the past,