Dr. Rosemarie Szostak, Chemistry Department, Clark Atlanta University, is supported under a Career Advancement Award for Women Scientists and Engineers by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic, and Organometallic Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division to incorporate theoretical modeling into a program in the experimental design of zeolites and zeolite based catalysts. Dr. Szostak will join the Biosym Catalysis and Sorption Project, which is a partnership developing effective software for the solution of catalysis and sorption problems. Dr. Szostak will apply the newly designed methodologies to examine faulting in zeolite structures and to predict organic cations that will alleviate faults in zeolites. Zeolites are widely used industrial materials which have numerous applications including as catalysts, molecular sieves, and ion and gas separation materials. While zeolites have been studied experimentally for many years, the ability to theoretically predict their structures or properties is only now becoming possible. This Career Advancement Award will permit Dr. Szostak, a well respected zeolite experimentalist, to obtain the skill needed for her to apply theoretical tools to the understanding of these materials. By membership in the Biosym Catalysis and Sorption Project she will be able to integrate her experimental program with the most recent computational techniques.
