Hello and Happy New Year! On behalf of the Board, I would like to welcome you to the ACS Maryland Local section.
I am honored to serve as the Chair of this section for 2026 – 2027. This year also marks a milestone for ACS as it celebrates its 150th year anniversary.
I would like to welcome our new members of the Executive committee: Larissa D’Souza (Chair-elect), Christine Chin Choy, Nelu Marginean and PJ Mitchell (Alternate Councilors) and Chris Avanessian (Member-at-Large) and would like to thank the members who have stepped away from the Executive committee: Jiangnan Peng (Immediate Past Chair) and Shital Vaidya, Sunil Konath and Noelle Neff (Alternate Councilors) for all their contributions and work over the past year.
Looking ahead to 2026, my goal is to increase and strengthen member engagement by empowering our committees, introducing new initiatives, and finding ways to bring our community together through increased outreach efforts. I am excited to announce the offering of two new Teaching awards to our members starting this year. One award will be to celebrate a chemistry high-school teacher and the other will be to recognize a college Chemistry teacher/professor. More details on the awards, deadlines and description will be shared on this website shortly. Another initiative I am pleased to announce is the introduction of an annual poster session to encourage college students who are a part of the MD Local section to showcase their work to the membership of this section.
I look forward to seeing many of you at our local events, public outreach programs and meetings!
Sincerely,
Sunita Thyagarajan
Chair, Maryland Local Section
American Chemical Society