The Chemist Volume 93 | Number 1
ISSN 1945-0702
Editorial: Alexander G. Zestos, American University <azestos@theaic.org> Nayiri M. Kaissarian, Montgomery College <nmkaissa@theaic.org>

In this issue of The Chemist, we shine a light on recent advances from our Chemical Pioneer award winners and other contributions. Highlighting the theme of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), we include contributions from all over the world and four different continents (Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and North America). We deem it especially important to emphasize great scientific advances from regions of the world that have been underrepresented in the fields of science.

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the field of Chemistry has made many strong advances. One major change that the pandemic has brought is that the 2021 American Institute of Chemists (AIC) Chemical Pioneers Symposium was held as a virtual event on May 6, 2021 from 12:00 – 2:30 PM. Among the honorees was Prof. Jonathan L. Sessler, the Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin. Prof. Sessler was also recently inducted and named as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jonathan L. Sessler’s work, “OxaliTEX-Pt(IV): A case study in medical inorganic chemical lead development”, details the development of a drug in advanced stage preclinical development. This drug conjugate was invented and developed by Dr. Sessler and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin and MD Anderson Cancer Center. The article provides a broad overview of the texaphyrin drug conjugate program licensing to the IQ Global group.

This issue also includes work by Amayreh et al. on low-cost, small-scale, and environmentally friendly galvanic cells. This work shows that simple electrochemical tools can be constructed on an affordable budget with everyday materials outside of the laboratory. Abdulrahim et al. characterized a seed oil of Luffa aegyptiaca with FT-IR and several other antioxidant analyses to show that biosurfactants can protect against oxidative degradation in allied products.
 
A review on multi-ferrocenyl systems by Ghosh et al. focuses primarily on the synthesis, properties, and application of multi-ferrocenyl systems, which have many potential applications in multielectron redox catalysis, electron storage devices, and as redox switchable molecules such as miniaturized molecular switches and sensor devices. Chen and Pretty discuss the selection of influential factors on fume hood evaluation. Several important surveys were conducted that showed that thermal challenge and inside clutter are influential factors, which are vital to reducing greenhouse gas emissions during field tests and for computational simulations of hood evaluation performance as well.

Tawari and colleagues detail hollow-fine-fibre membranes used for collapse pressure and pressure drop analysis. They showed that cellulose acetate (CA) hollow fine fibre membranes were used for water flux performance in brackish water desalination. Lastly, the Kulkarni group depict a novel synthesis method of α-methylene cinnamic acid using sodium hydroxide as a catalyst under microwave irradiation, which could have vast implications for organic synthesis.

Sincerely,
Alexander G. Zestos, Ph.D
Editor, The Chemist