Chemistry professor's oxygen studies rewarded

By: Pooja Shah

Posted: 10/16/08

Chemistry professor Kenneth D. Karlin has received two awards affiliated with the American Chemical Society (ACS) for his study of the structure and reactivity of molecular oxygen binding to copper and iron complexes.

Karlin is the sixth chemist to receive the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry, which will be presented to him at an ACS symposium in March 2009.

He has been cited for the creative use of ligand design and low temperature solution approaches in the synthesis of elusive molecular oxygen-derived complexes of copper and heme copper.

Karlin has also been recognized by the Sierra Nevada section of the ACS with the 2009 Sierra Nevada Distinguished Chemist Award.

He will be visiting the University of Nevada, Reno next year to receive his award and give two lectures about the topics of his research.

Karlin, who joined the Hopkins chemistry department in 1990, began his current topic of research 30 years ago when he began his academic career at the State University of New York at Albany. After 12 years there, he was invited to come teach at Hopkins.

"When I had the opportunity to move here, it seemed like a very good situation," Karlin said. "It was an opportunity for me to do more, to have more students and to have more activities."

Over the years, Karlin has seen the chemistry department change and improve. He attributes this change to better research facilities that were the result of successes by people in the department, a younger, more invigorated faculty and an overall higher quality of students. Karlin has taught Introductory Chemistry almost every other year since he came to Hopkins, including last year.

Karlin said that his primary motivation for teaching is, and has always been, the opportunity to inspire his students.

"I do enjoy teaching, though it can be overwhelming," Karlin said. "I enjoy that you get some interaction with the students. You get to see some students struggling, and others doing incredibly well, and you hope that you can impart some enthusiasm about chemistry to them, though that doesn't always happen."

Karlin's excitement for his own current research was sparked when, as a senior undergraduate at Stanford, he attended seminars led by a well-known chemist who was working with oxygen and iron compounds. Although Karlin did not pursue this area of research in graduate school, he decided later to return to it after he secured an academic job with the opportunity for independent research.

"Scientists can be interested in so many different topics," Karlin said, "but it's when you find something that feels right, that you pursue it [in research]. It's kind of luck, based on what you're exposed to."

A possible implication of Karlin's current research may be the use of oxygen as a potential energy source. According to him, oxygen is the ultimate energy source since biological systems such as the body breathe in oxygen and convert it into chemical energy. If scientists could discover how to treat oxygen, copper and iron in exactly the right way, they would be able to convert the chemical reaction into electrical energy.

"It's not about creating energy," Karlin said. "It's about allowing it to be used. Air is plentiful, oxygen is cheap. If we can harness it more efficiently than we do now, that would be useful."

Although he is flattered to be awarded by the ACS and recognized by his peers, Karlin believes that much of his work will remain the same.

"The greatest pleasure is to be respected and recognized by your peers," Karlin said of the Cotton Award for which he was initially nominated and then voted for by members of the ACS. "It's a pat on the back from the people I care about getting a pat on the back from, but it won't change anything in terms of the research. It won't improve it, and it won't really give me any money."

Karlin will still be teaching undergraduates, for whom he had the following advice.

"It's a really good idea for people interested in physical sciences or medicine to do undergraduate research and to seek it out. There are many opportunities here at Hopkins, in many many departments. Some students don't realize [that] it doesn't cost you money to go to graduate school in physical sciences because you get a stipend. It's very easy to go on to higher education in chemistry. It takes individual assertiveness by students to meet professors and find out if there might be opportunities.

As an undergraduate, Karlin was generally more interested in chemistry than biology, a tendency that eventually became his life's work.

"My father was an academic and I was from the start leaning in that direction. Through college I tended to like chemistry more than biology. [I] went to graduate school in chemistry and happened to pick inorganic chemistry. It's kind of what you feel feels right, and luck or chance in terms of what you get exposed to. Because certainly scientists can be interested in many different topics, but if you find things exciting or interesting, once you learn, get into something deeply, you pursue that [and] you follow that," Karlin said.

When asked about what he plans to do with the $5,000 monetary prize that is part of the Cotton Award, Karlin said that he plans to use it to buy dinner for his colleagues at the ACS symposium in March.