Although Bill Fateley passed away in 2009, he is still remembered as a larger-than-life figure in the spectroscopy community. Bill was a 1965 winner of the Coblentz Award and was highly regarded for his scientific contributions, but also loved by many people for his humor, his generosity, and for never taking himself too seriously (and some may have thought he was a bit of an ornery cuss, and Bill was ok with that too). At Bill's memorial service at Kansas State University, many speakers spoke of Bill's quick wit and his unmistakable laugh. Nearly everyone had examples of how he had provided personal support. Whether it was a material gift (a beautiful handmade clock) or a simple positive word when one was needed, Bill was always helping and encouraging people throughout his life. Perhaps Bill's biggest impact was his contributions to the social fraternity of international Spectroscopy in the pre-LinkedIn, pre-Facebook world. His long years of service to Pittcon, serving as Conference President in 1971, and to the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, serving as Editor of Applied Spectroscopy for 20 years, were a benefit to us all.

    Another lasting component of Bill's legacy was his encouragement for students to attend professional conferences and meet their peers. He made it a goal to introduce young scientists to the "people" in the field and to get them personally involved. Fostering this interaction was important to Bill; perhaps as much as it was for the Science. His efforts included sending his students to many international conferences. If need be, he even went as far as to bring the social interaction center (disguised as a mobile spectroscopy lab) directly to the conference. Bill's commitment to encouraging students to attend conferences, meet and interact with their colleagues and contribute to the field of Spectroscopy, has produced a whole new generation of spectroscopists. His efforts also have greatly enriched the groups and societies that Bill championed so strongly. This is the legacy that we hope to continue with the establishment of this award.

    The William G. Fateley Student Award is administered by the Coblentz Society.   Awardees are selected from the recipients of the Coblentz Student Award by mutual agreement of the Student Affairs Committee and the Fateley donor group.  William G. Fateley Student Awardees most closely embody the spirit of Bill’s desire to promote the science and society of spectroscopy.  All members are invited to nominate a student worthy of recognition for a Coblentz Student Award by virtue of their interests in vibrational spectroscopy during the open window for nominations.  This nomination makes the student a candidate for the William G. Fateley Student Award at the same time.

Regards,

Contributions to the Fateley award endowment are currently being solicited. Please contribute by either using the Google donation button below or by contacting the Coblentz Society treasurer.

2011 William G. Fateley Student Award

Rohith Reddy, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Rohit Bhargava

    Rohith Reddy is a Bioengineering graduate student in the Chemical Imaging and Structures Laboratory, headed by Professor Rohit Bhargava at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His research interests include design of novel instrumentation and imaging technologies for infrared spectroscopy. His current research is focused on creating and enhancing mid-Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging techniques for biomedical applications. His work also presents important advances in using FT-IR imaging for tissue type identification and cancer detection in prostate and breast tissue. Previously, he obtained his B.Tech and M.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. In his doctoral work he has so far published 5 peer reviewed papers, 1 book chapter and filed 1 patent. As a graduate student he has won the FACSS student poster award in 2007 and 2009, the Bioengineering Student Award (2010) and Graduate Student Achievement Award (2009) at the University of Illinois and co-authored the bronze medal winning paper at Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2007 held at London.

2010 Inaugural William G. Fateley Student Award

Ali Eftekhari-Bafrooei, Temple University, Ph.D. 2010, Professor Eric Borguet

    Ali Eftekhari-Bafrooei received his M.Sc. degree in Physical Chemistry from Sharif University in Tehran, Iran where he studied surface reaction mechanisms. He traveled to the USA to join Professor Borguet’s group at Temple University in 2005 and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Stephen Leone at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During his PhD he studied the vibrational spectroscopy and dynamics of interfacial water using vibrational sum-frequency generation (SFG). His experiments were the first to reveal how the ultrafast vibrational dynamics of water at a solid interface (H₂0/Si0₂) can be slowed down, a consequence of the reduced number of neighbors. Furthermore, he used dilute solutions of HDO in D₂0 to decouple the 0-H stretch and observed a frequency dependent vibrational relaxation of this mode. The redshift of the 0-H stretch in SFG spectra with increasing charge at the silica surface suggested a correlation with the strength of the hydrogen bond network. This provided a connection between the spectroscopy and dynamics of water at a charged interface, and existing theoretical models for vibrational dynamics of bulk hydrogen bonded systems. In addition, he has contributed to a variety of studies where vibrational SFG has been critical in determining the structure of self assembled monolayers and their effect on processes as diverse as neuronal cell growth and electronic device fabrication.