Past head of American Chemical Society keynotes at YSU QUEST April 3

Donna J. Nelson, professor of Chemistry at the University of Oklahoma who served as a consultant on the TV show “Breaking Bad,” gives the keynote address at the annual Quest Forum for Student Scholarship Tuesday, April 3, on the campus of Youngstown State University.

About 400 YSU students will make presentations on nearly 300 research projects during the full-day event in Kilcawley Center. Presentations run the gamut from engineering designs and study abroad reports to musical scores and poetry readings. Awards will be given for the best projects and presentations.

For more information, visit /quest/.

Nelson, past president of the American Chemical Society, specializes in organic chemistry, which she both researches and teaches. Nelson has focused on five primary topics of research, generally categorized in two areas, Scientific Research and America's Scientific Readiness. Within Scientific Research, Nelson's topics have been on mechanistic patterns in alkene addition reactions and on Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube (SWCNT) functionalization and analysis, yielding the first COSY NMR spectrum of covalently functionalized SWCNTs in solution. Under America's Scientific Readiness, she focuses on science education, which includes classroom innovations and correcting organic chemistry textbook inaccuracies, on ethnic and gender diversity (the Nelson Diversity Surveys) among highly ranked science departments of research universities, and on improving the image and presentation of science and scientists to the public. Nelson also served as a science advisor to the AMC television show Breaking Bad.