Spring 2014 in the Northeastern Local Section of the American Chemical Society with @pidgirl & @pidguy

The context of this blog post originally appeared in my May 2014 PID Analyzers, LLC Monthly Newsletter

I've seen several friends and acquaintances at various recreational and other community activities around town and they are amazed at the amount of *stuff* I've been doing lately-of course they are seeing it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. I have to admit, I'm impressed by it too. This particular cluster of American Chemical Society activities began on March 29, 2014 with our STEM Journey: Space Lab to Zero G joint event with the Cape & Islands Council of the Boy Scouts of America at Cape Cod Community College. Jack and I were on the Organizing Committee for this event whose planning began last August. It evolved into an astronaut themed event after we booked the two astronaut keynote speakers. We came up with the idea at one of our early committee meetings after determining that an astronaut speaker would bring in the public. It is apparently difficult to get astronauts to speak at events since the demand is so great. The Boy Scouts were able to book Captain Dan Burbank, a Cape Cod native. Jack was able to book Dr. Byron Lichtenberg using the following in: they'd met twice; once at at a cocktail party and the second time at a family cookout at a mutual friend's back in the 1980's-talk about real social networking! Here is the event program stay tuned for the complete write up from the event. Here is a nice post event write-up we got from Wicked Local Cape Cod.

With my Chemistry Ambassadors and Astronaut Keynote Speaker: Dr. Byron Lichtenberg

Here I am at ACS ERC Showcase East presenting pidguy's True Story of Nova Biomedical: A 1970's Start-Up

April 9,2014 was the American Chemical Society ACS Entrepreneurial Resource Center Showcase East 2014: A Business Pitching Contest, held in Waltham, MA. Jack and I were also on the Organizing Committee for this event which "featured the chemistry, management teams, and value propositions of 18 exciting chemical start-ups that are looking for investments and/or strategic partners.  The companies offered a broad range of chemistries involving materials, scientific instruments, therapeutic candidates, diagnostic devices, and cleantech products" according to my co-organizer, Ken Polk. The presentations were streamed live on You Tube and you can access the recordings here. 

The daytime portion of the ACE ERC East took place at the Hilton Garden Inn and the spectacular reception and evening program was hosted by our friends at Nova Biomedical, who have the most amazing staff and really know how to put on an event. The second event in this series is the ACS Entrepreneurial Resource Center Showcase West, which will take place on Thursday August 14, 2014 during the ACS Fall National Meeting in San Francisco. To learn more about participating in this event as a contestant, potential investor or interested commercial partner, please contact me.  

Since winning an R and D 100 award last November, we have continued our work with arsenic in food and water utilizing our hydride generation/gas chromatography/ photoionization HG/GC/PID technique which has a much wider application than we originally expected. Most metals and metalloids form hydrides. We have been able to detect all the metals and metalloids that we have tried (>20). Jack expects that we can detect all of the metal hydrides at ppb levels. This is a technique which could compete with AA but be

more sensitive. Interested in learning more? We've got data we can share. We will be presenting application specific variations of this work at two upcoming conferences: American Industrial Hygiene Conference and   Exposition in San Anto

nio, TX on June 4, presentation title: 

A Modified Analytical Method for the Determination of Arsine at Low ppb Levels by HG/GC/PID and at theAmerican Chemical Society Fall National Meeting August 13, 2014 in San Francisco, CA on the Agricultural and Food Chemistry Program Track: New analytical method for low level detection of arsenic in food and beverages

We managed to squeeze in a trip to the Museum of Science Boston on April 13, 2014 for Chemists Celebrate Earth Day (pictured above) and crossed back over the river to Boston University  to see my sister,Anne Bastianelli (pictured below), who was conducting mock interviews with young chemists and offering them her feedback as a human resource professional at the ACS Northeastern Local Section Younger Chemists Career Symposium.

 

The last of the big events that Jack and I organized this April was for the Cambridge Science Festival on Friday evening April 18, 2014 hosted by The Broad Institute  and sponsored by the Northeastern Local Section of the American Chemical Society and PID Analyzers, LLC. I'd gone in and pitched the idea last October to the festival organizers of having an *educator only* event, a chemistry workshop for teachers. They thought it was such a great idea that we got to kick-off the festival with our event and the organizers added five more *educator only* events to the 2014 festival lineup! We flew in my friend, Dr. Al Hazari, to conduct the workshop and participate in the public outreach event the following day. Al and I began formulating this idea back in Indianapolis in September at sci-mix.  Read more about this event on my blog.