Special Issue Preface pubs.acs.org/JPCB
2013 Southeastern Regional ACS Meeting. Nanochemistry and Spectroscopy: Symposium Honoring Mostafa El-Sayed a premier journal in all aspects of biologically related physical chemistry, encompassing biomolecules, biomaterials, spectroscopy, theory, and chemical and dynamical processes in solution, colloids, and polymers. The Journal of Physical Chemistry is a fitting place to celebrate the symposium honoring Professor ElSayed’s diverse impact in areas spanning clusters and nanoparticles to photosynthesis and nanomedicine. Although we hope that this issue captures some of the science that Professor El-Sayed helped to shape, not even his more than 670 publications (and counting) could describe his true legacy, namely, the more than 50 postdocs and 70 students he has trained and the many more colleagues at UCLA, Georgia Tech, and throughout the world whom he has mentored. Luckily, some of his greater scientific family was able to express their gratitude to Professor El-Sayed, as nearly every symposium participant shared a personal story about how he touched their life and made them not only a better scientist but also a better person. Sharing this appreciation together with the new science in this symposium was the perfect birthday gift to Professor El-Sayed, who was accompanied by his daughter Lyla El-Sayed-Serino, a successful chemical engineer herself. Please enjoy these papers submitted in honor of Professor El-Sayed’s ongoing legacy.
Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed is the Julius Brown Professor in School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He also holds the title of Regents Professor, which is the highest academic ranking that State of Georgia can bestow on the distinguished faculty members at its universities. Professor El-Sayed has been a pioneer in physical chemistry for over half a century. He started his independent scientific career in 1961 at the University of California at Los Angeles where he made important contributions to the properties of the lowest triplet state of molecules with a rule named in his honor, to multiphoton ionization and dissociation spectroscopy, to timeresolved Raman spectroscopy, to the rate of energy redistribution in the transition state, and to the structure and stability of mixed gaseous clusters. His group furthermore pioneered our current understanding on the molecular mechanisms of the proton pump Bacteriorhodopsin photocycle, a topic that interestingly started with a student’s qualifying exam and is still one of Professor El-Sayed’s main research interests. After 33 successful years at UCLA, Professor El-Sayed moved to Georgia Tech in 1994 and began a new phase of his career in cutting-edge research. Since his arrival, he has been instrumental in building a top-tier department. Furthermore, with tremendous courage, Professor El-Sayed embarked on a completely new research path at the age of 61. He shifted his research totally into the then newly emerged field of nanoscience and became a pioneer and advocate for nanoscience. His group advanced the fundamental understanding of nanoscience in terms of ultrafast electron−hole dynamics in semiconductor nanoparticles, shape-controlled nanoparticle synthesis, stability and self-assembly of metallic nanoparticles, and optical and nonradiative properties of assembled metallic nanoparticles. In addition to fundamental science, his work also has had direct impact on technological applications of nanoscience in many diverse fields such as nanocatalysis, nanosensors, and especially nanomedicine. The latter includes groundbreaking work on plasmonic photothermal cancer therapy, carried out partly in collaboration with his son Ivan, a head and neck oncologic surgeon at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. In honor of Professor El-Sayed’s 80th birthday, his Georgia Tech colleagues organized a two-day symposium as part of the 2013 Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta, GA. Participants included many of Professor El-Sayed’s former students and postdocs from both UCLA and Georgia Tech, his past and current colleagues, as well as many contemporary leaders in physical chemistry and nanoscience in particular. This issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B highlights the broad range of topics presented at this meeting. JPC split into JPC A and JPC B during Professor El-Sayed’s 24 year tenure as Editor-in-Chief. The motivation for the split was the explosive growth of JPC under his leadership as single weekly print issues became so large that they could not be mailed without damage. In recent years, JPC B has grown to be © 2014 American Chemical Society
Christy F. Landes Stephan Link Rice University
Paul H. Wine Z. John Zhang Georgia Institute of Technology
Special Issue: Spectroscopy of Nano- and Biomaterials Symposium Published: December 11, 2014 14009
dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp509740z | J. Phys. Chem. B 2014, 118, 14009−14009
2013 Southeastern Regional ACS Meeting. Nanochemistry and Spectroscopy: Symposium Honoring Mostafa El-Sayed a premier journal in all aspects of biologically related physical chemistry, encompassing biomolecules, biomaterials, spectroscopy, theory, and chemical and dynamical processes in solution, colloids, and polymers. The Journal of Physical Chemistry is a fitting place to celebrate the symposium honoring Professor ElSayed’s diverse impact in areas spanning clusters and nanoparticles to photosynthesis and nanomedicine. Although we hope that this issue captures some of the science that Professor El-Sayed helped to shape, not even his more than 670 publications (and counting) could describe his true legacy, namely, the more than 50 postdocs and 70 students he has trained and the many more colleagues at UCLA, Georgia Tech, and throughout the world whom he has mentored. Luckily, some of his greater scientific family was able to express their gratitude to Professor El-Sayed, as nearly every symposium participant shared a personal story about how he touched their life and made them not only a better scientist but also a better person. Sharing this appreciation together with the new science in this symposium was the perfect birthday gift to Professor El-Sayed, who was accompanied by his daughter Lyla El-Sayed-Serino, a successful chemical engineer herself. Please enjoy these papers submitted in honor of Professor El-Sayed’s ongoing legacy.
Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed is the Julius Brown Professor in School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He also holds the title of Regents Professor, which is the highest academic ranking that State of Georgia can bestow on the distinguished faculty members at its universities. Professor El-Sayed has been a pioneer in physical chemistry for over half a century. He started his independent scientific career in 1961 at the University of California at Los Angeles where he made important contributions to the properties of the lowest triplet state of molecules with a rule named in his honor, to multiphoton ionization and dissociation spectroscopy, to timeresolved Raman spectroscopy, to the rate of energy redistribution in the transition state, and to the structure and stability of mixed gaseous clusters. His group furthermore pioneered our current understanding on the molecular mechanisms of the proton pump Bacteriorhodopsin photocycle, a topic that interestingly started with a student’s qualifying exam and is still one of Professor El-Sayed’s main research interests. After 33 successful years at UCLA, Professor El-Sayed moved to Georgia Tech in 1994 and began a new phase of his career in cutting-edge research. Since his arrival, he has been instrumental in building a top-tier department. Furthermore, with tremendous courage, Professor El-Sayed embarked on a completely new research path at the age of 61. He shifted his research totally into the then newly emerged field of nanoscience and became a pioneer and advocate for nanoscience. His group advanced the fundamental understanding of nanoscience in terms of ultrafast electron−hole dynamics in semiconductor nanoparticles, shape-controlled nanoparticle synthesis, stability and self-assembly of metallic nanoparticles, and optical and nonradiative properties of assembled metallic nanoparticles. In addition to fundamental science, his work also has had direct impact on technological applications of nanoscience in many diverse fields such as nanocatalysis, nanosensors, and especially nanomedicine. The latter includes groundbreaking work on plasmonic photothermal cancer therapy, carried out partly in collaboration with his son Ivan, a head and neck oncologic surgeon at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. In honor of Professor El-Sayed’s 80th birthday, his Georgia Tech colleagues organized a two-day symposium as part of the 2013 Southeastern Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlanta, GA. Participants included many of Professor El-Sayed’s former students and postdocs from both UCLA and Georgia Tech, his past and current colleagues, as well as many contemporary leaders in physical chemistry and nanoscience in particular. This issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B highlights the broad range of topics presented at this meeting. JPC split into JPC A and JPC B during Professor El-Sayed’s 24 year tenure as Editor-in-Chief. The motivation for the split was the explosive growth of JPC under his leadership as single weekly print issues became so large that they could not be mailed without damage. In recent years, JPC B has grown to be © 2014 American Chemical Society
Christy F. Landes Stephan Link Rice University
Paul H. Wine Z. John Zhang Georgia Institute of Technology
Special Issue: Spectroscopy of Nano- and Biomaterials Symposium Published: December 11, 2014 14009
dx.doi.org/10.1021/jp509740z | J. Phys. Chem. B 2014, 118, 14009−14009
