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250th ACS National Meeting
Sep 4, 2015
Kevin Lim
In August 2015, NUS ACSSC was given the opportunity to send student representatives to attend the 250th ACS National Meeting in Boston. I decided to go for it as I was excited to have the chance to attend a large scientific conference (in fact one of the largest in the world) and present my work.
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On the first night, I put up my research poster in the session on Fundamental Research in Colloids, Surfaces & Nanomaterials under the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry (COLL). My poster presentation went relatively well. About 15 people viewed my poster during the 2-hour session, most of whom I managed to talk to and have some interesting discussions with.
During the rest of the conference, I attended talks and symposiums by pre-eminent chemists such as William Dichtel, Chad Mirkin, John Warner, and George Whitesides. Warner is one of the founders of the Green Chemistry movement and an author of the first textbook on Green Chemistry. His main take-home message was a call to action: chemists have a responsibility to find less hazardous and harmful ways of making chemicals, as we are ultimately the only ones with the know-how to make our world safer. For the uninitiated, Whitesides is pretty much a superstar in the chemistry world. He is one of the most prolific and highly-cited chemists, and some say the most successful chemist of our times. Whitesides’ Kavli Lecture outlined his approach to doing good science while getting funded. In short, scientists should make it their priority to tackle the problems that are relevant to society. Again, as with Warner’s talk, there was a strong emphasis on scientists’ duty to society.
​Networking also featured heavily at the Meeting. I met students from various graduate programs and attended a talk aimed at teaching students how to network. I also participated in a networking session with chemistry professionals from academia, industry, and non-governmental organisations. As it happens, I stopped by at a table with Mary Kirchhoff, Director of Chemical Education at ACS! It was cool to have a chance to talk to the ‘big boss’ of the student chapters.
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While there, I met chapter members from fellow international student chapters – there were 13 student chapters from 11 countries in attendance! I got a sense of how other student chapters were doing, which was useful to learn about as many of the chapters are only a year old, just as we are. While there was much in common in terms of the activities run (fundraising, social activities) and challenges faced (recruitment), there were rather unique initiatives (student conferences) and also differences in the focus of the chapters from different countries (academic, social, outreach, etc).
At the end of the conference, the ACS Undergraduate Programs Office organised an outing for all the Student Chapter representatives to watch a baseball game. I’m not much of a baseball fan and this was my first time watching a baseball game, but I did actually find it quite enjoyable. (For the record, the Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians. Go Sox!) And that marked the end of my 3 days in Boston. It was such a short time and it really zoomed by but I’m sure I’ll remember it for a long time to come. I learnt a lot, explored a lot, and had a great experience in Boston. I’m grateful to ACS for having provided a travel grant for International Student Chapter members to defray our travel expenses and I’m also very thankful to have met the many people I met on this trip. May our paths cross again sometime in future, perhaps at another National Meeting!