Last modified: Tuesday, February 15, 2011
IU Bloomington chemist Flood honored by Royal Society of Chemistry
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb. 15, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Bloomington chemist Amar Flood is the first recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Cram Lehn Pederson Prize, the society recently announced.
Flood will receive a £2000 ($3200) award and present an award lecture at the Sixth International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry meeting in Brighton, England, this July. Flood also will be expected to give two more lectures in England before returning to the United States.
Sponsored by the RSC journal Chemical Communications, the Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize recognizes "significant, original and independent work in supramolecular chemistry by emerging investigators," according to a statement released by the society.
The prize is named for the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winners Donald Cram, Jean-Marie Lehn, and Charles Pedersen, who first demonstrated the properties and usefulness of "crown ethers," cyclical molecules of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The cycles, despite having no charge, usually bind positively charged metal ions, and do so quite handily. The three Nobelists are generally credited with having founded the fields of macrocyclic and supramolecular chemistry, fields Flood now inhabits.
Flood and his students have been developing their own cyclical, ion-binding molecules, but their molecules bind chloride -- a negatively charged ion -- a difficult accomplishment. The most recent version of their molecule can even be made to release the chloride with the flick of a UV-light switch.
"Flood is fast becoming an anchor in our relatively new Materials Chemistry division and is one of our rising stars in supramolecular chemistry and nanomaterials," said David Giedroc, Chemistry Department chair.
Giedroc's department voted to grant Flood tenure in September (2010).
To speak with Flood, please contact David Bricker, University Communications, at 812-856-9035 or brickerd@indiana.edu.
