Dr. Donna Nelson to Keynote OSTA Conference

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OSTA is please to announce Dr. Donna J. Nelson as the featured speaker to keynote the 2014 OSTA Fall Conference November 1st at UCO in Edmond.

Dr. Donna Nelson, is a professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma. Nelson was born in Eufaula, Oklahoma, a small town known for its Native American influences. Her father was the only physician in the town. She earned her bachelor of science degree in chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, obtained her PhD in chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin with Michael J. S. Dewar, and did her postdoctorate at Purdue University with Herbert C. Brown before joining the University of Oklahoma. She was a Faculty Fellow in the OU Provost’s Office 1989-1990, a Visiting Professor at MIT 2003, and assistant to American Chemical Society President Dr. Ann Nalley, 2005-2007.

Dr. Nelson’s current research pertains to nanoscience, communicating science to the public, and scientific workforce development and she frequently speaks on the interrelationship of these topics. She has over 100 publications. She has received many honors, including American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow, ACS Israel Award, ACS Nalley Award, Oklahoma Chemist Award, Fulbright Scholar, National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Leadership Award, Women’s eNews “21 Leaders for the 21st Century,” AAAS Fellow, Guggenheim Award, National Organization for Women “Woman of Courage” Award, Ford Foundation Fellowship, Oklahoma Outstanding Professor Award, Minority Health Professions Foundation Hall of Fame Inductee, Sigma Xi Faculty Research Award, NSF Special Creativity Extension, and many keynote talks. She has spoken at hundreds of national meetings of professional societies and organizations, US Congress Capitol Hill briefings, teleconferences, universities, and radio and TV programs, such as the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour.

Her chemical research involves functionalizing single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which has applications in energy research and technology development. Recently her group showed that both covalent functionalization and complexation of organic molecules to SWCNTs causes nearby protons to be shifted downfield in the NMR.

She advises television programs, such as Breaking Bad, in order to further the universal goal of presenting accurate science to TV audiences. In accord with this program, in 2011, she organized the highly-popular Hollywood Chemistry symposium at the Anaheim ACS Meeting and Science on the Screen symposia at the Denver ACS Meeting, for ACS President Nancy Jackson. According to her Wikipedia entry she participated in the “Geek of the Week” program of David Saltzberg, by visiting the set of The Big Bang Theory in March 2013 and again in March 2014. In the 2011 Ig Nobel Awards, she gave a 24/7 presentation on her SWCNT research, in which she gave a technical talk appropriate for scientists to describe the work in 24 seconds, followed by 7 words which would clarify the work to all laypeople. The seven words were “SWCNT analyses should be shaken, not stored.”

Her scientific workforce development research entailed surveys of faculty race/ethnicity, gender, and rank in “Top 50” departments in each of 15 science and engineering disciplines. Comparing her faculty data vs NSF PhD and BS attainment revealed that women and minorities are much less represented among professors than among degree recipients. Her faculty data are complete populations, rather than samples, so they accurately reveal the small number or absence of underrepresented groups and compare across disciplines.

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