Hamilton College Associate Professor of Chemistry Karen Brewer has been awarded a $36,500 grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences. The grant is for her proposal "Materials Chemistry Project Laboratories for Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry." This project will introduce x-ray powder diffraction as a technique for the characterization of a wide range of inorganic materials into the laboratory curriculum for the course "Inorganic and Materials Chemistry 265." The Special Grant Program in the Chemical Sciences funds "projects that propose to advance the science of chemistry in innovative ways" and is "intended to seed the initial phases" of a project."
Brewer earned a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and came to Hamilton in 1989. She teaches undergraduate courses in advanced and intermediate inorganic chemistry and general chemistry.
Professor Brewer's collaborative and interdisciplinary research focuses on the synthesis and luminescence properties of rare earth (lanthanide) sol-gel derived materials. Along with her collaborators, Professors Ann Silversmith (physics, Hamilton College), Daniel Boye (physics, Davidson College) and Ken Krebs (physics, Franklin & Marshall College), Brewer and her students synthesize materials including silica-based glasses and gels containing rare earth ions and chelated complexes with the aim of enhancing the materials' fluorescence properties as studied by fluorescence and laser spectroscopy.
In December Brewer also received a $50,000 Petroleum Research Fund/American Chemical Society grant for her research project, "Rare Earth Calixarene Complexes in a Sol-Gel Matrix: Synthesis and Luminescence."
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., was established in 1946 by chemist, inventor and businessman Camille Dreyfus as a memorial to his brother Henry, also a chemist and his partner in developing the first commercially successful system of cellulose acetate fiber production.
In creating the Foundation, Camille Dreyfus directed that its purpose be "to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances around the world." Since its first years of activity, the Foundation has sought to take the lead in identifying and addressing needs and opportunities in the chemical sciences.
