Department of Chemistry: Alumni News

November 2005 Visitors of the Department Chemistry

The Department of Chemistry had three visitors last November with each of them giving a talk on their respective research interests to junior and senior undergraduates as well as graduate students. These were Dr. Rigoberto Advincula, Dr. Enrico Purisima, and Dr. Edward Tiekink.

Dr. Rigoberto Advincula came in 10 November and had a graduate school recruitment talk for the University of Houston where he is an Associate Professor. His research interest is on materials chemistry including organic and polymer synthesis and ultra thin films fabrication and analysis. He gave the advantages of studying in Houston and he also gave his philosophy in training graduate students. An Ateneo chemistry alumnus, Francis Ted Limpoco (Ch '91, CE '93 and MS Chem '00) belongs to his group. Afterwards, he gave a seminar on three of his research projects.

Dr. Enrico Purisima is an Ateneo Chemistry alumni (Ch '77). He taught at the department for two years before going for his doctorate in Chemistry at Cornell University where he finished in 1986. He is currently Group Leader of the Computational Chemistry and Biology Group of the Biotechnology Research Institute, National Research Council Canada. He is also an adjunct professor at McGill University. His research focuses on computer-assisted molecular design, bioinformatics, etc. He first had a discussion with students and faculty regarding Ateneo research interests and the problems faced in doing science in the Philippines. This was followed by his seminar on computational chemistry as applied to drug screening. Dr. Purisima also gave an oral presentation during the Philippine Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PSBMB) held at the Ateneo de Manila from 02-03 December.

Dr. Enrico Purisima giving a talk in the recent PSBMB convention

The last visitor, Dr. Edward Tiekink, is a regular visitor of the Department. He also came last June and in 2003. He is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at The University of Texas at San Antonio. He was originally from Australia but transferred to the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prof. Tiekink had an alumna, Cathleen Michelle "CM" Dee (Ch '03), working under him when CM was an exchange student at NUS. Prof. Tiekink gave a seminar on Structural effects on Crystals. He also promoted his new book on Crystal Engineering.

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