American Chemical Society President-elect Dr. Catherine Hunt will serve as keynote speaker at the 29th Annual Area Collegiate Chemistry meeting, April 29, at the UC.

Students and faculty from other colleges and universities will participate in this annual meeting, hosted by the UTM chapter of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society (SAACS). The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. with research papers presented by students from several area colleges. A banquet is planned at 1 p.m.

This year, three local sections of ACS - Kentucky Lake, Memphis and Nashville - are hosting an Industry-Academe Interaction for Green Chemistry program sponsored under auspices of an Innovative Projects Grant from the Local Section Activities Committee (LSAC).

Panelists will be Dr. Greg Mitchell, DuPont in New Johnsonville; Keith Butler, American Ordnance LLC, Milan Arsenal; Dr. Robin Rogers, University of Alabama; and Dr. James Mack, University of Cincinnati. Hunt graduated from Smith College with honors in chemistry. She received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Davis. As a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, she extended her working knowledge of nuclear magnetic resonance to biological systems.

Mitchell received his doctorate in synthetic organometallic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. After two years of postdoctoral work at Northwestern University, he accepted a position with DuPont Central Research and Development in Wilmington, Del. Rogers obtained both his bachelor’s degree and doctorate in chemistry at the University of Alabama. Currently, he is a Distinguished University Research Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Green Manufacturing at UA. Butler received his master’s degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Memphis. He began his career as a formulations chemist for Delta Foremost Chemical Co. in Memphis, before joining American Ordnance, the contracting operator for the Milan Arsenal. Mack is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. He is a physical organic chemist with research interests in the areas of solid state synthesis, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and host-guest chemistry. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College, he was a doctoral scholar at the University of New Hampshire. He earned his doctorate studying Diels-Alder reactions of fullerenes with various linear acenes. After completing his degree in 2000, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Boston College, developing rational syntheses of unique fullerenes and nanotubes.