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Collaboration is the word of the moment for C&EN. We recently came back from another ACS national meeting, this time in Orlando, and it was very satisfying that not only had C&EN organized so many successful events but, importantly, we partnered with many other groups and organizations to bring them to life.
In collaboration with ACS on Campus, we hosted a pub trivia quiz to celebrate the International Year of the Periodic Table (IYPT). A hundred participants took their best shot at a selection of questions inspired by the 118 elements that currently populate the iconic table. The event was fun, full of obscure facts, and loads of debate and banter. Here’s a teaser we made for those who can’t resist testing their periodic table knowledge.
We also partnered with Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) to deliver a “Power Hour breakfast”. This is an informal session launched by GRC back in April 2016 and designed to “discuss challenges women face in science and issues of diversity and inclusion.” Besides a room full of people committed to doing their bit for diversity in the chemical sciences, we were delighted to host ACS’s past president and Georgia Institute of Technology professor Elsa Reichmanis and Exxon Mobile’s retiree Michele Thomas as guests and moderators. The dynamics in the room were great and the conversations rich and vibrant.
We struck yet another collaboration with ACS Division of Small Chemical Business to stimulate conversation about what it means to be an entrepreneur and for meeting attendees to learn more about the start-up landscape in the chemical sciences. For this, we invited a selection of founders of some of the fledgling companies that had made it into C&EN’s 10 Start-Ups to Watch to take part in a panel discussion. It was interesting to hear about their motivations to become entrepreneurs and what drives them – and their businesses – to succeed.
Then there was the Q&A with our Priestley medalist, an event designed to support ACS award programs and to give attendees the opportunity to mingle and interact with the winners, – and of course, get their copies of C&EN signed! This turned out to be our best attended booth event this year – and perhaps ever – but it was no surprise given the 2019 winner was no other than 2003 Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless. The queue for signatures and photographs was so long that it took about 2 hours to restore normality around the ACS booth.
And that wasn’t all. We hosted a Q&A with Emory University professor and now C&EN columnist Jen Heemstra, held interviews with researchers at NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division, and more. If you are interested you can watch some of these on our Facebook page. For C&EN’s coverage of best science and other highlights of the ACS Spring meeting in Orlando please, go here.
And now we look ahead to the next ACS national meeting, which will be in San Diego at the end of August. Our most prominent event will be C&EN’s Talented 12 symposium, where we’ll be presenting the class of 2019.
Every year, C&EN’s Talented 12 program recognizes early career chemists who are working to solve critical challenges in the sciences and, by doing so, pushing the boundaries in their fields.
Our call for nominations from the community has concluded, and we have beaten all previous records with 43% more nominations than in 2018. More than 30% came from outside of academia, and an excess of 25% originated outside the US. I’m looking forward to working with our sponsor, Thermo Fisher Scientific, to make this Talented 12 event the most memorable yet.
As you’ve seen here, C&EN Media Group works with advertisers and partners on exciting collaborations like these – and more – throughout the year. From product launches, to annual programs like C&EN’s Talented 12 that highlight great achievement in our industry, contact us at any time to learn more about collaborating with our teams.
by Bibiana Campos Seijo | Editor-in-Chief and VP of C&EN Media Group | @bibianaCampos
