Investing in Top Faculty
Recruiting the Best: Xiaoyang Zhu
Excellence requires an investment—an investment of time and resources. To maintain
its stature in research and teaching, and to improve upon it, the Department of Chem-
istry and Biochemistry must hire the best to its faculty. Successful faculty recruitment
involves much more than salary incentives. Space modifications, equipment purchases,
departmental visits, and relocation costs all factor into the hiring of junior and senior
faculty members. As Assistant Director John Baxendale, the Department of Chemis-
try and Biochemistry, points out, the average cost to successfully recruit a junior level
faculty person is often in the area of $750,000; while recruitment of a senior level fac-
ulty person may require as much as $2 million in funds. Additionally, renovation costs
for laboratory space can range from $100,000 to $500,000. Successful recruitment of
a faculty candidate can take many months and involve multiple visits to the depart-
ment, meeting with faculty, students, and departmental and university administrators.
“Over 20 years ago, I chose to come to UT for graduate study because of its exciting, dynamic, and cutting-edge
chemistry research programs and because of its world class faculty. Now, I am coming back for exactly the
same reasons. It is such a wonderful feeling to be part of this first rate team, including many of the distinguished
professors who taught me, and all the aspiring, creative, and hardworking students like myself 20 years ago.”
Professor Xiaoyang Zhu, Louis Nicolas Vauquelin Regents Professor of Inorganic Chemistry
All of these efforts paid off for the department with the recent recruitment of Professor
Xiaoyang Zhu. In June of 2009, Professor Zhu came to the department from the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry
Continued on Page 33
Graeme Henkelman: Big Research on a Small Scale
Professor Graeme Henkelman is in many ways the typical shy science professor; very
quiet, absorbed in his work, and seemingly always running something through his
mind. But when I sat down with him recently to talk about his current research, he
became a different person. Suddenly animated and excited, his face lit up and he rose
slightly out of his seat to lean across his desk and explain to me what I quickly realized
is truly groundbreaking chemistry being carried out on a daily basis in his lab.
Nanotechnology is generally considered to be among the chemical and scientific
disciplines ripe for breakthroughs. Henkelman, as a nanoscientist, works with
chemicals on the nanoscale, or on an extremely small scale. “People have realized that
as you make things small, particularly on the nanoscale, there are some properties that
come out that are completely different than the bulk materials,” says Henkelman. For
example, as gold, a classically inert, nonreactive element is reduced to the nanoscale, it
suddenly displays reactive properties. These fundamental principles of nanotechnology
are being applied to real world problems.
Nanotechnology has potential applications in several fields such as medicine, electronics,
and biology, but Henkelman is interested in applying it to the development of new
and more efficient means of energy production, which is especially imperative in the
face of an impending energy crisis. Energy is all the result of a chemical reaction,
regardless of the energy type. Gasoline, electricity, and our body’s own ATP
Continued on Page 33
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