American Chemical Society President-elect William F. Carroll Jr. will serve as keynote speaker at the 27th Annual Area Collegiate Chemistry meeting, April 24, at the University of Tennessee at Martin's Boling University Center.

A presentation by Dr. Paul T. Anastas, Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, and Dr. Berkeley W. Cue, former Pfizer Global Research and Development vice president, also will highlight this year's event.

Students and faculty from more than 10 colleges and universities will participate in this annual meeting, hosted by the UT Martin chapter of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society (SAACS). The meeting will get under way at 9 a.m. with research papers presented by students from several area colleges. The participating schools include: UT Martin, Union University, Murray State University, University of Arkansas, Emory University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arkansas State University, the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers University, Austin Peay State University, Lee University, Tennessee Technological University, Lambuth University, Bethel College and Paducah Community College.

Dr. Carroll currently is vice president, Chlorovinyl Issues for OxyChem and works on public policy issues and communications related to chlorine and PVC. He is adjunct professor of chemistry at Indiana University, and teaches polymer chemistry there. Carroll holds two patents, and has numerous publications in the fields of organic electrochemistry, polymer chemistry, combustion chemistry and physics, incineration, plastics recycling and chlorine issues.

Anastas has responsibility for issues including climate change, Green Chemistry, oceans, sustainability, mercury, air quality, water and ecosystems, toxics and environmental indicators.

Prior to joining the White House in October of 1999, he served as the chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Anastas is best known as the "Father of Green Chemistry" having coined and defined the term in 1991.

Cue joined Pfizer in 1975 and retired in 2004. In 2000, he was appointed to the Science Advisory Board at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In 2003, he was elected to the Green Chemistry Institute Governing Board and in 2004, he was elected to the board of directors of Bend Research in Bend, Ore.

The ACS is the largest scientific organization in the world, with more than 160,000 members.

For more information, visit: http://www.utm.edu/saacs/accm.html or contact UT Martin SAACS adviser Dr. S.K. Airee at (731) 587-7454.