Hosted by: Alex Harris

Symposium to be held at Brookhaven National Laboratory to honor Late Senior Chemist Emeritus, Carol Creutz On the morning of Wednesday, October 29 a half-day symposium will be held in the Hamilton Seminar Room, Chemistry Building, 555 to honor the science contributions of Carol Creutz, who had a 41 year career in the Brookhaven Chemistry Department. Creutz was a leader in research on photocatalysis to convert solar energy to fuels, working in the DOE Solar Photochemistry program for most of her Brookhaven career. The symposium will honor Creutz's scientific contributions with presentations by several of Creutz's former collaborators and colleagues. Creutz was a leader in the study of molecular transition metal complexes, which have a rich and varied chemistry including the ability to catalyze important chemical reactions. Many such complexes also absorb visible light strongly, and some can drive chemical reactions to store the light energy as chemical energy. Such processes are similar to the photosynthesis of green plants, which uses sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into high energy sugars. Creutz was active in the worldwide effort to create an equivalent solar-to-fuels process for human needs. She particularly focused on both light-driven and chemical processes that caused the loss or gain of electronic charge in transition metal complexes, and which could use the resulting changes in oxidation state to reduce or oxidize other molecules. These 'reduction-oxidation' processes are central to many modern solar-to-fuels schemes. The symposium speakers will discuss research directions pioneered in Creutz's work and how they have been foundations for modern research in inorganic chemistry and solar-to-fuels conversion. Carol Creutz came to BNL as a Research Associate in 1972, proceeded through the ranks to tenured chemist (1978) and Senior Chemist (1989). She was also Chair of