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Heather Buckley and Florence Chardon were selected from a competitive group of applicants to receive the 2014 Kenneth G. Hancock Memorial Award. The award ceremony was held at the 18th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference on June 17 in Bethesda, Md.
Florence Chardon and Heather Buckley receive Hancock Awards at the 18th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. Pictured from left to right: David Constable (Director of the ACS GCI), Madeleine Jacobs ( ACS Executive Director and CEO), Florence Chardon, Heather Buckley, and Diane Hancock (wife of Kenneth G. Hancock). Photo Credit: Peter Cutts Photography.
Buckley is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Berkeley where she works with Professor John Arnold on non-platinum oxygen reduction catalysts for fuel cells. Her award was sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry.
"I was delighted to hear that Heather was a recipient of the Hancock Memorial award this year,” says Arnold. “Heather has worked tirelessly to promote green and sustainable chemistry at UC Berkeley and beyond.”
In addition to several publications on her research in Chemical Communications and J. Am. Chem. Soc., Buckley developed an green chemistry undergraduate lab for UC Berkeley’s general chemistry course which was published in J. Chem. Edu. Her enthusiasm for green chemistry extends to leadership in activities at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry, as well as working internationally to facilitate a Global Green Chemistry Network.
Arnold continues, “She has traveled across the globe to discuss her fine research work and to help build support for teaching and research in green chemistry. The award is a therefore a very fitting recognition of her hard work and dedication."
Buckley is finishing up her thesis now, and will be starting a post-doc at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry in in August.
Chardon recently graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. Her award was sponsored by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
Chardon interned in 2013 with Genentech, Inc., a biotechnology company in San Francisco Bay Area, where she researched solvent substitution for chromatography. Genentech scientist Stefan Koenig, explains:
"Florence participated in a summer internship to demonstrate removal of the hazardous solvents dichloromethane and hexanes from routine silica gel chromatography. By utilizing a 3:1 isopropyl acetate / methanol (or 3:1 i-PrOAc/MeOH) polar mobile phase with heptane, we were able to demonstrate a greener approach to the practical purification of complex organic compounds. This was a collaborative effort between the process chemistry and medicinal chemistry groups at Genentech that has now been published to share with the wider chemistry community (DOI: 10.1039/c4gc00884g)."
Currently, Chardon’s plans are to return to Genentech to do a 2-year Process Development Rotational Program covering different areas of process development. In the future, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry. “Green chemistry,” Chadon says, “has the potential to become one of the primary focuses in our generation.”
Congratulations to these outstanding young scientists!
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