This year, more than 340 students from 37 schools in Greater Houston participated in the Chemistry Olympiad local competition in March. Among the top section-wide performers, 14 students were nominated and joined the 3-part national competition held at the University of Houston on April 7th.

The Greater Houston Section is proud to sponsor 46 gift card awards given to section-wide and school-wide top-performing students. We are pleased to see rising students' great interest in chemical education. We welcome more high school students to take part in this annual event.

On Saturday, April 26th, a plastics-themed Earth Day Celebration was hosted by the Houston Health Museum with exciting activities to accompany the “Recycled Creations Exhibit”. ACS-GHS facilitated the event and many volunteers provided hands-on activities and background information on plastics recycling to the visitors. The volunteers included people from Dow Chemical, University of Houston, University of St. Thomas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and several high schools. Thanks to all of our volunteers for your invaluable time and hard work to make the event fun and educational for visitors.  

ACS Greater Houston Chapter had another successful year of Chemists Celebrate Earth Week at the Discovery Green Earth Day in Downtown Houston! With a steady flow of visitors throughout the entire event, we were able to share and demonstrate information on this year's theme of glaciers and their role in creating a more sustainable world. Huge thanks to our 2025 Outreach Volunteer of the Year Kiresha (Reese) Johnson for organizing the day, and to our event volunteers for helping make this a phenomenal event!

A heartfelt thank you to Dr. R. Yagmur Yegin, PhD. for delivering a powerful and inspiring seminar yesterday evening as part of the American Chemical Society Greater Houston Section (ACS-GHS) Seminar Series hosted at the University of St. Thomas (TX).

With around 40 attendees, Dr. Yegin’s talk on food sustainability, waste reduction, and science-driven solutions resonated deeply especially with our audience. She skillfully connected scientific innovation with real-world social issues like global hunger and environmental preservation, sparking meaningful conversations long after the session ended.

Dr. Yegin’s remarkable journey from earning her Ph.D. at Texas A&M to her postdoctoral research at MIT, makes her a true role model in STEM. Her accolades include numerous awards, patents, and publications in sustainable materials and food safety. We are incredibly grateful to have hosted her!

Congratulations to Amiee L. Modic for being named the recipient of the 2025 James Bryant Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching by the American Chemical Society! The purpose of this award is to recognize, encourage, and stimulate outstanding teachers of high school chemistry in the United States, its possessions or territories, at the national level. The award was presented as part of the annual National Awards ceremony at the ACS Spring 2025 Meeting in San Diego, California.

L to R: Lisa Houston, Jane Gray, Amiee Modic, Roxie Allen at the ACS Spring 2025 National Awards Reception

Amiee is a chemistry teacher at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart and an active member of the Greater Houston ACS section, serving on Education and Outreach committees (including NCW and CCEW), and promoting chemical education opportunities in the Greater Houston area and beyond.

The Greater Houston Section is proud to recognize Kiresha (Reese) Johnson as our 2025 Outreach Volunteer of the Year!

Kiresha Johnson has been the Greater Houston section’s CCEW coordinator for the past 7 years. Every year since 2018, except the two Covid years of 2020 and 2021, this amazing volunteer organizes an exhibition booth at the Green Mountain Energy Earth Day at Discovery Green in Downtown Houston to educate the public about Chemistry with kids’ activities designed around the year’s CCEW theme and goodie bags for the kids with ACS CCEW merchandise. We are able to make quite an impact, thanks to her efforts, with several hundred visitors to the ACS-GHS booth every year.

This year's Global Women's Breakfast event, sponsored by the Women Chemists Committee, was a success! Approximately 10 people women attended - we networked and had many lively discussions over breakfast at La Madeleine. The organizers has prepared note-cards on the table with thought-provoking questions related to equity and the challenges faced by women in science. Anecdotes were shared, and we brainstormed some ideas of things we could do and improve. We decided we’d like to do additional, regular breakfasts and make memes or simple cartoons that can draw attention to the issues inhibiting equity.

For future events, we hope to encourage an even broader range of members attend to share additional valuable perspectives.

The 2025 GHS Executive Board, volunteers, and interested members attended a hybrid meeting on the morning of January 11th at the University of St. Thomas to review the section's strategic goals and annual plans, assign committee chairs and volunteers, and ensure a smooth transition between board members in new positions. We once again have big plans for 2025, and can't wait to share them with our members!

San Jacinto College South held its Annual STEM Expo on November 14, 2024. About 500 students participated. ACS-GHS representatives Dr. Hongyi Wang and Mrs. Obiageli Nwosu conducted experiments based on electrochemistry, colligative properties and molecular transport for students 2nd grade to 8th grade.

A hearty thank you goes to Dr. Connie Gomez, the Department Chair, Physical Sciences, and Interim Department Chair, Life Sciences San Jacinto College (South Campus), and Mr. Jeff Robison, Chemistry Lab Coordinator, San Jacinto College (South Campus) for all their help with arranging the event.