Atwood Named Chair of Department of Chemistry

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Jim D. Atwood, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo, has been named chair of the Department of Chemistry.

Atwood, a UB faculty member since 1977, conducts research in inorganic and organometallic chemistry.

His interests lie in reactivity and mechanistic studies of organometallic complexes. His research group studies complexes whose reactions mimic important steps in catalytic reactions and electron transfer between organometallic centers.

The work is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

A recipient of the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, Atwood also has served as a Humboldt Research Fellow and a fellow with the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Program of Cooperation in Homogeneous Catalysis involving Cornell University and the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow.

Author of 120 scientific papers and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Coordination Chemistry, he also has authored and edited several textbooks on inorganic chemistry.

In 1996, he was selected to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from Southwest Missouri State University, where he received a bachelor's degree. He received a doctorate from the University of Illinois.

Atwood lives in Amherst.