Education
B.A. in chemistry, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1967)
Ph.D. in chemistry, Pennsylvania State University (1972)
Research Interests
My research interest is process improvement chemistry, since that is the type of work I did in the chemical industry before I came to Salve Regina. When I was working in the chemical industry in the 1970s and early 1980s, "process improvement" meant taking a process for producing a chemical product on an industrial scale and improving it so that the economic cost of the process is lower. This is still a motivation for process improvement, but another motivation involves making the procedure "greener" or more environmentally friendly. One could do this, for example, by reducing or eliminating solvents and other agents that could ultimately pollute the environment.
Personal Statement
I chose to major in chemistry as an undergraduate and become a chemist because I am interested in the world that I am a part of. As a chemist, this means looking "down" at the chemical makeup of matter. The tremendous strides that humans have made in the study and use of chemistry have been accomplished by the application of the human ability to apply reason to scientific experiments. If there is a "down" that can be investigated by scientific experiments, is there also an "up" that is accessible to reason, but by definition cannot be studied by scientific experiments? Or are we to only look "down" and act as if the "up" of reality does not exist? An education at Salve Regina, regardless of the major chosen, should begin or continue the lifelong quest to apply reason to both the "down" and the "up" of reality.
CV