2006 Board of Directors:

Chair: Richard J. Rosso
Chair-Elect: Eugene Brown
Former Chair: Sasan Karimi
Secretary: Joe Landesberg
Treasurer: Phil Mark

Directors at Large:
Alison Hyslop
Ralph Stephani
Paris Svoronos
Luis Vargas

The following is my final report as the 2006 Chair of the Long Island Subsection of the New York Section of the American Chemical Society. I would like to report that, once again, we had a productive and successful year.

Primarily, our activities involved seven invited speakers covering a variety of topics in chemistry. A summary of these talks is attached at the end of this document. Emphasis was placed this year on bringing speakers outside of the immediate area as well as speakers from the immediate area, who were faculty early in their career. When possible, name, affiliation, title, and abstract for each guest speaker were posted in the Indicator. They were also announced broadly to our members via e-mail. In addition to the talks, the annual Francis Sterrett Environmental Symposium was held at Hofstra University with the title NPS Pollution “What’s in Your Sump.”

We continued the experiment of moving the occasional symposium from our home base of Hofstra University to other institutions in an attempt to attract new members and further increase the size of our participating base. Specifically, the April 6 and Dec 8 seminars were held at Nassau Community College. An attempt was made to utilize St. John's University as well, but rooms proved to be difficult to obtain on ‘short notice.’ Our monthly board meetings were held on the last Thursday of each month at Hofstra and the seminars were generally held on the first Thursday of each month.

Other events of note include the Seventh Annual Chemistry Challenge which was again held at Queensborough Community College. The Chemistry Callenge is a chemistry student competition, where teams of three or four from local institutions compete with one another by answering previously generated multiple choice questions in the area of general and organic chemistry. Four undergraduate institutions participated this year, including Hofstra, St. John’s, Nassau Community College, and Queensborough Community College with about 100 people in attendance total. Dinner was provided and gift certificates from Barnes and Noble Booksellers were presented to all participants. The endeavor was financially supported by the Student Government at Queensborough Community College and the LIACS. Frank Romano did an excellent job of emceeing the Challenge.

The Seventeenth Annual High School Awards was co-chaired by myself and Dr. Ralph Stephani from St. John’s University. The program was made financially possible with funding from OSI Pharmaceuticals. Once again, this program was a resounding success with 87 awardees from 65 different high schools in the Long Island area. The dinner for the event was held on June 1, 2006 at St. John’s University. In addition to awarding the attending students with their plaques, we also honored the Nichols Foundation 2005 High School Teacher Awardee, Rebecca Isseroff. An excellent presentation was given to the audience by Ged Parkin from Columbia University.

The Annual Holiday Networking Partywas held on December 7, 2006 at Nassau Community College. About 75 people attended, including students from Queensborough Community College and St. John's University. Dr. Sasan Karimi presented an very interesting talk on Chemistry and Art. Elections were held at this event. The new Chair of LIACS for 2007 is Dr. Eugene Brown from the Department of Chemistry, Nassau Community College. The new Chair-Elect is Dr. David Sarno from the Department at Queensborough Community College. Soraya Svoronos and Luis Vargas were elected to serve as Directors at Large and Joseph Landesburg was re-elected as Secretary.

It was both an honor and pleasure to serve as the 2006 Chair of the LIACS.

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard J. Rosso
2006 LIACS Chair