Chemistry remains at the forefront of society’s past, present, and future. We are currently living through a seemingly continuous COVID-19 pandemic in addition to other infectious diseases such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV), monkeypox, and several others. The depletion of natural resources such as oil, gas, coal, fossil fuels, and others have led the race towards clean, green, sustainable, and renewable energy sources such as hydrothermal, geothermal, solar, wind, nuclear, and others. The safety, efficiency, and feasibility of these alternative sources are primarily determined by engineers and chemists alike. Chemistry is often referred to as “The Central Science” because it is at the intersection of the physical and life sciences and integrates several fields of knowledge through high impact research and relevant studies. Several subdisciplines such as electrochemistry are incredibly diverse as they encompass several fields such as sensors, catalysis, batteries, electroanalytical, and many more.

We are proud to announce that Prof. Robert Savinell from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and Prof. Kara Bren from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Rochester have been named our Chemical Pioneer awardees for the year 2023 at the AIC Annual meeting in May of 2023. Their contributions to The Chemist are currently planned to be included in a subsequent issue.

In this issue of The Chemist published by the American Institute of Chemists (AIC), we explore several research topics relevant to all forms of chemistry. We begin this issue with a contribution from Dr. Thad Le-Vasicek, who details the development of catalysts immobilized to magnetic nanoparticles. The study ultimately shows that increasing the recovery of the magnetic nanoparticles decreases the loss of recycled enzyme activity illustrating the importance of optimizing particle recovery to increase the retained activity of recycled catalysts, which has been shown to be a crucial parameter for the industrial use of enzymes to magnetic nanoparticles.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy reading this issue and wish you a safe and prosperous New Year.