Princeton University

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Spotlight

Name: Edward Rock.

Position: Supervisor in Building Services. Overseeing 10 janitors who conduct afternoon cleaning of offices and graduate student apartments. Responding to evening emergencies such as a broken pipe or a clogged toilet.

Quote: “I’m here after hours to bail people out if they have a problem. I enjoy being able to help.”

Other interests: Taking walks with his German shepherd.

Briefs

Steven Bernasek, professor of chemistry, has been named the recipient of the Arthur W. Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry.

The award, sponsored by the Occidental Petroleum Corp., honors Bernasek’s “excellence in research in surface chemistry, particularly in surface reaction dynamics and surface modification chemistry, and in educating generations of young chemists,” according to the citation.

Bernasek will be presented with the award at the American Chemical Society national meeting on March 28. There also will be an Adamson Award symposium at the meeting in his honor, with invited and contributed talks in the area of surface chemistry. It is being organized by his former students, Marjorie Langell, a 1979 Ph.D. recipient who is a professor of chemistry at the University of Nebraska, and Liang Chu, a 1990 Ph.D. recipient who is an associate professor of environmental health sciences at the State University of New York at Albany.

Bernasek is an experimental chemist with research interests in the area of surface chemistry and chemical physics. His research is concerned primarily with the dynamics of heterogenous reactions, and the chemistry of heterogeneous catalysis, electronic materials and corrosion inhibition.