ACS
NEWS
PRF Sets Up New Grants Program Fund initiates grants for beginning research, drops postdoctoral fellowships The Petroleum Research Fund of the ACS has announced a new experimental program, "Grants for Individual Fundamental Research in the Petroleum Field (Type G ) " (C&EN, Jan. 28, Part 1, page 78). At the same time, the "ACS-PRF Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Petroleum Field," two of which are awarded annually, have been discontinued since other agencies are now vigorously supporting postdoctoral programs. The new grants, known as starter grants, will go to qualified young academicians to support beginning research. The advisory board for PRF believes that the need for the new program stems from two current trends in colleges and universities:
• A greatly increased number of able young scientists with good research ideas are entering academic careers in institutions where they must depend on their own efforts to secure even modest funds for research. • The competition for research grants is so keen, and its outcome so unpredictable, that a young instructor may arrive at his first post with the problem of staffing and administering several research programs or, perhaps, he may be left without the basic necessities for doing research. Dr. Karl Dittmer, program administrator, reports that the PRF advisory board recognizes that many young instructors will welcome small starter grants made specifically to enable
them to do research with their own hands, and that such research can be highly productive during the period when a scientist is becoming oriented in his academic job. Basis for Eligibility. He lists conditions for the new grants as follows: (1) Grants will be given to scientists working in fields eligible for PRF support, who are in the first three years of membership on the regular teaching staffs of colleges and universities and who have no other outside research support at the time this grant is accepted. An applicant must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. to be eligible for this type of grant. However, his application may be submitted before his degree has been awarded. (2) Grants will be for $1500, are not renewable, and are intended primarily for supplies, apparatus, and analyses, to enable the grantee to perform research with his own hands. Of this sum, up to $500 may be allocated for the summer salary of the faculty member or for the salaries of student assistants. Except for field work, travel expenses will not be approved. (3) An applicant will state his in-
CIA Holds First Meeting in Washington The ACS Committee on International Activities, set up last June to study and recommend appropriate Society participation in international activities of interest to chemists and chemical engineers, has held its first meeting. Subcommittees were named to consider possibilities of promoting international activities among local sections, giving assistance with international educational projects, and cooperating with other interested organizations, such as UNESCO, IUPAC, and chemical societies overseas. On the agenda for further study are such topics as foreign lecture tours for American chemists and chemical engineers; hospitality for foreign chemists visiting the U.S.; possible sources of emergency 72
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funds for small amounts of research chemicals; and aid for foreign scientists and libraries in acquiring books and journals. Attending the first meeting were (left to right) Dr. Farrington Daniels, ACS Past-President; Dr. Arthur S. Roe, National Science Foundation; Dr. Robert R. Grinstead, Dow Chemical; Dr. Pauline Newman, senior patent attorney and patent counsel, FMC Corp.; Dr. Edward L. Haenisch, Wabash College; Dr. Robert C. Elderfield, University of Michigan; Dr. W. Albert Noyes, Jr., University of Rochester, editor of JPC and chairman of the committee; Dr. Robert E. Henze, ACS staff liaison; and Dr. Wallace R. Brode, consultant, and former Science Advisor to the Secretary of State.
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tention of carrying on research with his own hands and will provide information bearing on his existing opportunity to do so—the amount of his teaching responsibilities, the nature of the research facilities (laboratory space and instrumentation) available to him, and the amount of other research support of which he is assured and for which he is applying. He will give a brief indication of the nature of the work which he intends to do during the following year, biographical information, and references concerning his research ability. The application shall include a statement from a responsible officer of the institution waiving overhead charges for this grant. (4) At the end of the year the grantee will submit a financial report and a report of progress on his project with enough detail and background to allow a judgment of the value and appropriateness of the support given. (5) Applications received by July 1, 1963, will be evaluated for grants beginning Sept. 1, 1963. Application forms will be available after March 15, 1963, and may be requested from Dr. Karl Dittmer, Program Administrator, Petroleum Research Fund, American Chemical Society, 1155 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington 6, D.C. Other Grants Continue. PRF will continue to support the following types of grants: (A) ACS-PRF Grants for Fundamental Research in the Petroleum Field: grants-in-aid to support projects of fundamental research in the petroleum field. (B) ACS-PRF Grants for Fundamental Research in the Petroleum Field at the Undergraduate Level: educational grants given to selected staff members of undergraduate departments for research designed to stimulate student interest in graduate study and improve the qualifications of the grantee. (C) ACS-PRF Awards in the Form of Unrestricted Research Grants in the Petroleum Field: unsolicited grants to be made to outstanding scientists at or approaching the peak of their productivity. These grants are made in recognition of past accomplishments in fundamental research in the petroleum field and for the specific purpose of providing adequate funds to enable them to pursue to the fullest extent any investigation in the petroleum field of interest to them. (D) A C S - P R F International Awards in the Petroleum Field: 74
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grants to provide for the exchange of scientists and science students between American and foreign nonprofit scientific or educational institutions. (E) ACS-PRF Faculty Awards for Advanced Scientific Study in the Petroleum Field: grants to teachers in undergraduate departments designed to allow them to obtain a year of advanced study in the petroleum field at an institution of higher learning in the U.S.
ACS Council Voting for Director-at-Large Selection by the Council of a directorat-large to complete the unexpired term of President-Elect M. H. Arveson on the ACS Board is now under way. Candidates are Dr. William E. Hanford, vice president of research and development at Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp., and Dr. Byron Riegel, director of chemical research at G. D. Searle & Co. Dr. Hanford, a member of the ACS New York Section, is a past chairman of the Society's Division of Polymer Chemistry and a past councilor of the Society. He has served on the advisory boards of Chemical Reviews and I
