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Martin Walker

	Stowell Hall 305 Department of Chemistry SUNY Potsdam Contact

Martin Walker is an assistant professor of chemistry at SUNY College at Potsdam in northern New York State where he teaches organic chemistry, along with some general chemistry and a course on Sustainable Manufacturing. He grew up in Newcastle, England and received a BSc (Hons) degree in chemistry from the University of Bristol, England. After graduation he went to Fine Organics Ltd in the north east of England, where he worked in R&D, developing manufacturing processes for fine chemicals (pharmaceutical intermediates, etc). In 1992 he moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, where he worked as a research associate for polyOrganix, Inc, also developing processes for fine chemical manufacture. He received his PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, working on pericyclic reactions in the research group of Prof. James B Hendrickson. He held teaching positions Johnson State College in Vermont and at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, USA before moving to Potsdam.

The research in the Walker Group focused on green chemistry, trying to develop viable industrial processes that can provide chemicals without damaging the environment. To that end, they have been working extensively on the Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction. They are also involved in research projects on exochemistry and use of fluorous biphasic systems.

Martin is a frequent contributor to chemistry articles in Wikipedia, and an advocate for the use of social networking tools to teach chemistry

Martin is organizing the NERM 2008 symposium on Green Chemistry

He is also an invited speaker in the Chemistry Enthusiasts Program where he will share his excitement about the new methods for chemistry-related communication using tools such as wikipedia.