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CONTACT: Joseph Schlenoff, (850) 644-9625; <schlen@chem.fsu.edu> April 24, 2008 FSU TO UNVEIL STATE-OF-THE-ART NEW CHEMISTRY BUILDING Two-and-a-half years after first breaking ground, Florida State University has scheduled a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of a $72-million Chemical Sciences Laboratory that will offer expanded educational and research opportunities for decades of faculty members and students. Members of the news media are invited to attend the event, which will begin: FRIDAY, MAY 2 Among those scheduled to attend the event and available to answer questions about the new building are FSU President T.K. Wetherell; W. Ross Ellington, FSU’s associate vice president for Research; Joseph Schlenoff, chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Harold Kroto, FSU’s Francis Eppes Professor of Chemistry and a co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. *** TOUR OF BUILDING AVAILABLE TO MEDIA *** A complete tour of the Chemical Sciences Laboratory will be offered to members of the news media at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 1. If you wish to take the tour, please call (850) 644-4030 to reserve your spot. To help mark the building’s grand opening, the chemistry department will host a scientific colloquium featuring some of the most pre-eminent names in chemistry and biochemistry. The public is invited to attend the following free lectures on Friday, May 2, in the Chemical Sciences Laboratory’s first-floor auditorium: 2 p.m. -- “Architecture in NanoSpace.” As chemistry and physics at one borderline and chemistry and biology at the other begin to become indistinguishable, multidisciplinary research is leading to the fascinating “new” overarching field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. In his lecture, FSU’s Kroto, a co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his co-discovery of the carbon nanostructure buckminsterfullerene, will discuss how ingenious strategies for the creation of molecules with exactly specified structures and functions are being developed; in essence, molecules that “do things” are now being made. In fact, Kroto says, nanoscience and nanotechnology are not new at all, but appear to be the “frontier chemistry” of the 21st century. 2:45 p.m. -- “Powering the Planet: The Challenge for Science (and Especially Chemistry) in the 21st Century.” The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Daniel G. Nocera, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will discuss how rising living standards of a growing world population will cause global energy consumption to increase dramatically over the next half-century. However, he points out, the additional energy needed is simply not attainable from long-discussed sources such as nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. 3:30 p.m. -- “Chemistry and Astronomy: Unification of Sciences.” Chemistry, the science of atoms, molecules and matter, and astronomy, the science of stars, galaxies and the universe, are deeply related in two ways, says Takeshi Oka, a professor emeritus of chemistry and astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago and the Enrico Fermi Institute. First, nuclei of heavy atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, which make chemistry (and biology) so rich, all are produced in the core of stars. Second, stars are produced from molecular clouds, and efficient chemistry is essential for star formation. In his lecture, Oka will discuss this second process, in which the molecular ion H3+ plays the central role as the universal proton donor (acid). # # # |