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The 10th Annual Riley O. Schaeffer

When: Fri Oct 20 2017, 3:15 pm

Where: SMLC Room 102

Dr. Riley O. SchaefferDr. Riley O. Schaeffer

Dr. Riley O. Schaeffer

This lectureship was established in 2008 in honor of Professor Riley Schaeffer through contributions from UNM faculty, past students of Professor Schaeffer at Indiana University and UNM and friends and external colleagues. Professor Schaeffer began his academic career at Iowa State University in 1952 as an Assistant Professor and he became Associate Professor with tenure in 1956. In 1958 he was recruited to join the faculty at Indiana University where he became Professor in 1962. After a highly productive career at IU, including a stint as departmental Chair, 1967-1972, he accepted the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wyoming in 1976. He was recruited from that position to UNM where he served as Department of Chemistry Chairperson from 1981-1987 and he retired from UNM in 1992. Under his able leadership as Chair, Prof. Schaeffer guided the hiring and mentoring of a number of new faculty who have gone on to highly productive careers. Professor Schaeffer has also had a distinguished research record that includes critical discoveries in the synthesis, reactivity and structure analysis, via x-ray diffraction and NMR methods, of boron hydrides and carboranes. Professor Schaeffer received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; he is an AAAS Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Britain.

Past Recipients:

  • 2008 – Professor, Carlos Bustamante, University of California-Berkeley
  • 2009 - Professor, Larry G. Sneddon, University of Pennsylvania
  • 2010 – Professor, Tobin J. Marks, Northwestern University
  • 2011 – Professor, Harry B. Gray, California Institute of Technology
  • 2012 – Professor, Peter R. Ogilby, Aarhus University
  • 2013 - Professor, Edward I. Solomon, Stanford University
  • 2014 – Professor, Marcetta Darensbourg, Texas A&M University
  • 2015 – Professor, Thomas J. Meyer, University of North Carolina
  • 2016 – Professor, John F. Hartwig, University of California, Berkeley

MalloukThomas E. Mallouk

2017 Recipient Thomas E. Mallouk

Thomas E. Mallouk is Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Physics, and Engineering Science and Mechanics at the Pennsylvania State University.  His research focuses on the synthesis of inorganic materials and their application to solar energy conversion, catalysis and electrocatalysis, nano- and microscale motors, low dimensional physical phenomena, and environmental remediation.  He is the author of over 400 publications, including a few good ones.  He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Associate Director of the Penn State MRSEC, the Center for Nanoscale Science

“Assembly and Disassembly of Layered Materials”

Layered solids – which have strong bonds in two dimensions and weaker links in the third - are interesting building blocks for materials and devices because they potentially offer control over structure at the molecular level. Our research in this area began with the question of whether such compounds could be built up one layer at a time in controlled sequences on surfaces. This was possible by using either molecular precursors, in the case of metal phosphonates, or exfoliated sheets derived from lamellar microcrystals. Many layered oxides consist of negatively charged sheets interleaved by exchangeable cations. These oxides are particularly amenable to exfoliation (and to other topochemical reactions) by simple ion-exchange and acid-base reactions. Recently we have found that van der Waals solids such as graphite, hexagonal BN, and MoS2 can also be intercalated and exfoliated without incurring damage to the sheets by means of acid-base and redox reactions.