news of the week Il
II
BUSINESS
M
IN
l_| M
M
I I I
M
M
I
ASIA
DOW IN CHINA New R&D center will employ 600 people by 2007 UP-AND-COMING Shanghai is emerging as the Chinese R&D hub for chemical and pharmaceutical companies.
D
OW SAYS IT WILL BUILD AN
R&D and information technology (IT) center in China, although the location has not been decided. The facility is expected to employ 600 people by 2007.
Within a year, the new center will employ about 2 0 0 I T professionals, Dow officials say. R&D work will follow; the focus, however, is unclear. Kay Yau, Dov/s head of media relations in Asia, says the R&D center will support Dow's "customer application development needs in Asia." The chemical giant, headquartered in the U.S., employs 5,000 people in an R&D capacity worldwide, she says. Dow operates several manufacturing sites in China that make polystyrene, polyol, and epoxy resins, among other products. It employs 1,600 people there, out of a total 46,000 employees worldwide. Sales in China
AWARDS
RICHARD ZARE WINS 2005 WOLF PRIZE Award cites his seminal contributions to physical and analytical chemistry TANFORD UNIVERSITY CHEM-
S
istry professor Richard N . Zare has been selected to receive the 2005 Wolf Foundation Prize in Chemistry for "his ingenious applications of laser techniques for identifying complex mechanisms in molecules and their use in analytical chemistry" The $100,000 prize will be presented on May 22 by the president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, at a special ceremony at the Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem. Asked for his reaction to the honor, Zare, 65, tells C&EN, "I am thrilled to be selected but also mindful that so many others
Zare 8
C&EN
/ JANUARY
31 , 2 0 0 5
are also well deserving—so it is humbling." The Wfolf Prize jury notes that in making "seminal contributions" to the theory and practice of both physical and analytical chemistry Zare has "profoundly influenced developments in these two areas of science. He is an outstanding spokesman for science [and] has worked relentlessly and successfully for chemistry on the national and international stage." Zare's research "has taken chemistry to its limits," according to the Israel-based Wolf Foundation. He has used lasers to probe the details of how elec-
amount to $1.6 billion, making it Dow's third largest market after the U.S. and Germany But Dow has yet to implement a major investment project in China. The company has quietly given up on a plan, announced in the mid-1990s, to build a world-scale petrochemical complex in northeast China. Last December, the company announced that it was studying the feasibility of a coalto-olefins project with Shenhua Group (C&EN, Jan. 3, page 12). Several multinational firms are setting up R&D facilities in China, mostly in Shanghai. Rohm and Haas announced plans to open an R&D center there this year with an eventual staff of 225 people. O t h e r companies that are planning or already operating R&D centers in Shanghai include General Electric, Honeywell, Degussa, Hitachi Chemical, Toray Industries, and Unilever (C&EN, March 24,2003, page 13).-JEANFRANCOIS TREMBLAY
trons distribute themselves in atoms and molecules and thus dictate their chemical properties. And he has applied high-resolution and ultrasensitive physical techniques to both chemical and biochemical analysis. Zare's work has generated an impressive collection of new spectroscopic tools for investigating chemical dynamics and studying biochemical processes. Zare's contributions to the field include the angular analysis of photodissociation fragments, laser-induced fluorescence and chemiluminescence to probe internal state distributions, multiphoton ionization in molecular beams, and two-step laser mass spectrometry The foundation says Zare "has pursued the themes of very efficient separation and ultrasensitive detection to their chemical limit, namely the single molecule." He has also demonstrated optical trapping of single molecules.-RON DAGANI HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
