A member of the American Chemical Society since he was a college student, Dennis Chamot has a deep interest in chemistry and, especially, outreach to chemists as working professionals. Now serving his final term on the ACS Board of Directors, the Burke resident has worked as a chemist at Dupont and now at the National Research Council. He is this week's People Profile.
How long have you lived in the Burke area and what brought you here? Over 20 years. I’ve lived in Northern Virginia since 1974 and what brought me here was work.
Education: Undergraduate, I went to what was called at the time the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in New York City, now called Polytechnic University. Then went for a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in Champaigne-Urbana, Ill. After that, I went to Delaware to work for Dupont, and after a few years there I went to the University of Pennsylvania and got an M.B.A. from the Wharton School.
Describe your current job. There are three honorific organizations: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Very prestigious to be elected to these organizations. And then there’s the working arm, the National Research Council. So, technically, I work for the National Research Council, but it’s all one big organization … the major function of the organization is to provide objective, credible technical advice primarily to the federal government, and through that, to the people of the United States.
Activities/interests/hobbies: Well, I do have a granddaughter, and a couple of children, and they live in the area. I enjoy some of the facilities that are available in Washington, like going to the museums, movies and the like. We use the library system in Fairfax County because my wife likes to listen to books on tape. Burke Lake Park is a very nice place to walk around in when the weather is nice.
How did you become involved with the American Chemical Society? I started off as a student affiliate when I was an undergraduate, and when I graduated and went to graduate school I joined as a full member of ACS. Particularly when I started working at Dupont I got involved with the local section … several people involved in that society had become active at the national level. I got appointed to a group called the Member Advisory Board, which was charged with figuring out how the society could do more and be more welcoming to its younger members. One of the recommendations we made was that they form and official Younger Chemists’ Committee at the national level, which I later got appointed to. At about that time, in the early ‘70s, there was strong economic downturn which affected the chemical industry more than most did, to the point where significant numbers of chemists were being laid off. I was not one of them but it bothered me to see what was going on and I had a lot of friends and contact who were very unsure of the future. About that time a small group of us worked to form a new national division of the ACS called the Division of Professional Relations, DPR. We got that off the ground and I was a member of its first executive committee.
What do you hope to accomplish serving on the ACS Board of Directors? Several things. I’ve been on the board now about four years. One of the main goals I’ve had, within the American Chemical Society, my primary interest was in the professionalism area or the professional relations area, which dealt with the problem of chemists as people and as employees, rather than as a specific branch of chemistry. That’s been my primary focus throughout my ACS career ... I’ve continued to have an interest in making sure that as the ACS has grown and continues to grow, still maintains its focus as a membership organization. That it doesn’t just become an information business with a little membership society on the side.
Favorite restaurant or place to hang out? One of the restaurants is La Bergerie in Alexandria … Duck Cheng’s for Peking Duck, specifically, in Annandale.
Community concerns: Traffic. We’re not as concerned anymore about new housing construction, since it’s pretty well built up now, but you still have outlying construction so the traffic going through Burke continues to grow.
What is the last book you read? One of the recent books I read was about a Sicilian detective. The reason we read that was because one of the local TV stations [MHz] on Sunday night broadcasts police detective stories from other countries, and they’re very, very well done. It’s called “International Mysteries.” One of them was Detective Montalbano in Sicily. So we recently got the English translation of three of the novels involving Detective Muolto Bano, and they were very enjoyable.
What interested you in chemistry and what kept you interested? It’s fascinating. Chemistry is an area that most people either love or hate. For those who hate it, I think, is often because their early experiences are bad. It’s very tough to teach freshman chemistry and make it interesting, because there’s so much to learn and it’s so different from all the other things that they understand … like a lot of other kids, I had a chemistry set when I was a kid, I would grow crystals. I just found it very interesting.
If you could go on a road trip anywhere in the U.S., where would you go? What I’d probably like to do is take a van and go across the northern part of the country to Washington state and then down into Northern California and San Francisco. I also like New England very much.
Personal goals: I’d like to be rich, so I’m buying lottery tickets.
— Lea Mae Rice