Week 10

This week’s seminar was Sandalwood: More than Just a Pleasant Smell.  The speaker was Jeffrey A. Turk, an organic chemist.  He did his undergraduate work at Cleveland State University and his graduate work (MS & PhD) at the University of Cincinnati.  After his postdoctoral work he went on to do some work for C.B. Research and Development (now Adesis, Inc.) developing small molecule drug, and also some work for International Flavors and Fragrances creating new aroma chemicals.  The speaker was good, the presentation was interesting and easy to follow.

Our presentation last Thursday was brought to us by Jeffery A Turk, assistant professor of Chemistry at Amherst College. His presentation was about Sandalwood and the need for making synthetic fragrance molecules for the benefit of saving on natural resources, expanding the palette for fragrance companies, and greater biodegradability, functionality, and sustainability of current molecules being used.  I liked Turk’s style of teaching; he used many different  media (black board, props, PowerPoint) to help us understand his presentation.

This week’s seminar was done by Dr. Jeffery Turk, chemistry professor at  Alma College.  His presentation was about sandalwood and is aroma.  First, Dr.

The seminar that was held on November 12, 2009 was titled “Sandalwood: More than just a pleasant smell” by Jeffery A. Turk.  Jeffery Turk is the current assistant professor of chemistry at Alma College since 2006. He received B.A. at Cleveland State University and Ph.D. and MS at the University of Cincinnati. He has participated in a lot of research, especially in the area of organic chemistry. One interesting research that he has participated in was that he worked as a research scientist at International Flavors and Fragrances creating new aroma chemicals.

Our last guest speaker for this year, Jeffrey A. Turk works in odor chemistry a field of chemistry closely related to flavor chemistry. Before he entered into the world of fragrance chemistry however, he wanted to make drugs at a pharmaceutical company, describing the concept as “romantic.” Later he worked with scents at International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), a company manufacturing and creating flavors and fragrances for a year and a half before he decided that he wanted to work with students.