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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

“IT’S GOOD to be home,” said Joseph S. Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society, as he helped kick off the 37th annual meeting of the National Orga-nization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists & Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) in Atlanta. For Francisco, who is a past-president of NOBCChE (pro-nounced No-buh-shay), that declaration is rooted in a rich history.

A tight-knit community of scientists and engineers of color, NOBCChE exists primarily to help its members—especially the young ones—achieve success in their careers. And Francisco has been part of the family for quite some time. “I could not have made it to my position as president of ACS without all your help,” he told an audi-ence of NOBCChE members during his keynote address.

Francisco, the second African Ameri-can to attain the ACS presidency, is also a professor of physical chemistry at Purdue University. He was at this year’s NOBCChE meeting, which ran from March 29 to April 2, to give a kick-off lecture in honor of the first ACS president of color, Henry A. Hill. “It’s important to know our history,” Fran-cisco said during the Hill Award Lecture, which is sponsored by the ACS Northeast-ern Section. Hill was “truly a pioneer” with

“an entrepreneurial spirit,” he added. Although the theme of this year’s

NOBCChE meeting was “Sustainability,” the message that Francisco delivered—one of encouragement to attendees to find professional inspiration in pioneers and role models such as Hill—was a thread that connected the conference’s many programs. More than 700 registrants par-ticipated in the meeting, which included teaching and career workshops, technical sessions, a scientific-exchange poster ses-sion, a career expo, and a science bowl and fair for middle and high school students.

One particularly inspirational event was the Percy L. Julian Award Lecture, delivered this year by Thomas O. Mensah, founder of Atlanta-based Georgia Aerospace Systems Manufacturing. This award, NOBCChE’s most prestigious honor, is given each year in memory of Julian, the world’s first African American to lead a research group at a major corporation. Embodying a similar pioneer-ing spirit, Mensah was recognized for his seminal contributions to fiber-optic technol-ogy and the telecommunications industry.

While working at Corning Glass Works, in New York, during the mid-1980s, Men-

sah devised a meth-od for rapidly manu-facturing high-qual-ity fiber optics—a glass drawing and coating process that earned him four patents. His innova-tions have enabled the production of

robust, homogenous fibers through which light can be transmitted efficiently.

Mensah’s work was so admired that he was hired away from Corning in the late 1980s by AT&T Bell Laboratories. Once at Bell Labs, he continued to innovate, devel-oping fiber-optic reels for guided missile systems and earning more patents. Today, he is the president of Georgia Aerospace, an advanced materials firm that makes products for commercial and military air-craft, as well as for homeland security.

“You can do something to help your coun-try,” Mensah pointed out to the audience, going on to say that chemists, in particular, should move into the field of green technol-ogy. An early proponent of high-speed rail, Mensah recently established Green Trans-portation Systems, a Florida-based subsid-iary of Georgia Aerospace. The new clean-technology firm is working on fabricating nanomaterials for use in windmill turbines, smart-grid sensors, electric vehicles, and high-speed transit systems. “We can revive our construction industry” in the U.S. with endeavors such as these, Mensah said.

At a luncheon following the lecture, NOBCChE Executive Board Chair Bobby L. Wilson said he was moved by Mensah’s entrepreneurial spirit, adding, “It gave me a greater appreciation for the people we’re giv-ing awards to.” Despite being an established professor of chemistry at Texas Southern University, Wilson added, “It even made me want to go out and start my own business.”

ANOTHER moving event at the NOBCChE meeting that paid tribute to role models and pioneers was the Winifred Burks-Houck Women’s Professional Leadership Symposium. This was the first year for this session, which was established because “we needed something that honors the female heritage of this organization,” said Talitha L. Hampton, a symposium co-orga-nizer and a development engineer at Merck & Co. Not only was Burks-Houck the first

CRIME LAB NOBCChE national meeting attendees participated in a forensics workshop, learning to use kits to test for drugs and to dust for fingerprints.

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For a list of science bowl and fair winners and to view a photo gallery from the meeting, go to www.cen-online.org.

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NOBCChE INSPIRES YOUNG SCIENTISTS

Annual meeting of black chemists and chemical engineers features host of ROLE MODELS and pioneers

LAUREN K. WOLF , C&EN WASHINGTON

35WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG MAY 17, 2010

female national president of NOBCChE, but she was also the longest running presi-dent, holding office for 10 years.

Margaret E. M. Tolbert, senior adviser in the Office of Integrative Activities at the National Science Foundation, was the highlighted speaker at the symposium. She recognized Burks-Houck’s contributions to NOBCChE and spotlighted the accomplish-ments of a number of other black females in science, including Marie Daly, the first female of color to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry.

She also gave some encouragement to the female scientists in the audience. “Be patient—but only to an extent,” Tolbert advised. To attain the positions they seek, women need to be more direct, she con-tended. “You can have all the best ideas in the world, but if you don’t act on them, it doesn’t matter,” she said.

The symposium ended with a presen-tation of three new leadership awards. The undergraduate award went to Kari L. Copeland of the Uni-versity of Mississippi, the graduate award

was given to Shannon P. Anderson of Florida State University, and the professional award was accepted by Sandra K. Parker of Dow Chemical, who is the 2010 national confer-ence cochair for NOBCChE.

A surprise honor—the NOBCChE Presi-dent’s Award—was bestowed upon anoth-er woman in chemistry at a gala held at the close of the meeting. The award recognized Madeleine Jacobs, executive director and chief executive officer of ACS, who attend-ed the meeting as a judge for the science

fair this year, for her support of NOBCChE over the past several years. Jacobs said that she was “blown away” by President Victor R. McCrary’s announcement. “I am really honored to receive this recognition from NOBCChE, as it is an organization that I have admired and been involved with since I came to ACS,” she said.

DURING THE MEETING, at a state-of-the-organization breakfast, McCrary, who is also the business area executive for science and technology at Johns Hopkins University Ap-plied Physics Laboratory, announced a re-cent initiative that could bring NOBCChE, both physically and structurally, even closer to ACS. Established in September 2009, NOBCChE’s National Office Initiative aims to move the organization away from being event-driven to being program-driven. The

first step on this path is to create a national headquarters in Washington, D.C., which is also home to ACS.

“We are now making a transition and moving to the next level,” McCrary told C&EN. This business plan would generate paid positions for an executive director, as well as for program and finance directors, marketing specialists, and administrative staff. NOBCChE will move away from be-ing just an annual meeting and “become a 24/7 part of everybody’s life,” McCrary said.

One program already launched by NOBCChE is its Technology Education Part-nerships (TEP) program, which links major-ity educational institutions with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to catalyze research collaborations. TEP also aims to help enable the transition of students from minority undergraduate institutions to majority graduate institutions, encouraging

a greater number of people of color to pursue graduate degrees, McCrary said.

NOBCChE is also working to make its annual meeting science bowl competition a series of year-round events. Competitions would be held both at the spring national meeting and at similar meetings in the organization’s five regions during the fall, McCrary said, because “at the region is where the rubber meets the road.” Work-ing with middle and high school students more often and providing them with ever-present role models is a way to get them thinking about seeking a career in science and engineering. “If you wait for a student in his or her junior or senior year of high school to be attracted toward any of the sciences, it’s just too late,” he told C&EN.

McCrary is proof that a young scientist’s career can benefit from role models. “My

affiliation with NOBCChE actually started with my thesis professor,” he said. Wil-liam M. Jackson, one of the seven founders of the organization and then a chemistry professor at Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C., encouraged McCrary and fellow students to attend NOBCChE meetings. Some 30 years later, McCrary is now head of the NOBCChE family, after having worked at Bell Labs as a member of the technical staff and at the National Institute of Standards & Technology as the second-ever black technical division chief.

NOBCChE is one of two communities that have had a formative influence on his life. “ACS provides me with my profes-sional identity,” McCrary said. “NOBCChE provides me with my psychological iden-tity. And both are extremely important.”

The next NOBCChE national meeting will be held on April 19–22, 2011, in Houston. ■

FAMILY PHOTO This year’s NOBCChE executive board includes Wilson (top row, fifth from left) and McCrary (bottom row, fourth from left).