About the Contributors
The original text was adapted by the following contributors:
Vishakha Monga, Associate Professor of Teaching, Department of Chemistry, University of British Columbia – Vancouver (UBC-V) BC, was born in New Delhi, India. She obtained her B.Sc. in Biological Chemistry from McMaster University in 1998 and her Ph.D. in Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry from UBC-V in 2004. She joined UBC-V as an Assistant Professor of teaching in 2010.
Throughout her career at UBC-V, Monga has worked with various Chemical Education Initiatives including being involved in designing new integrated laboratory courses for upper year undergraduate chemistry students and designing new virtual laboratory courses for first year engineering students. The inorganic chemistry course for chemical engineers (Chem 250) has seen several iterations under her tenure. This book is an effort to enhance the learning experience of students who take this course at UBC-V.
Robert C. (Bob) Thompson, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at UBC-V, was born and early educated in Windsor Ontario. He obtained a BSc in Chemistry and Physics at Western U. in 1959 and a PhD in Chemistry at McMaster U. in 1962. He joined the Chemistry Department at UBC as Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1963 and formally retired in 2001.
Chemical research conducted in the Thompson Laboratory spanned several areas of interest in physical inorganic and synthetic chemistry including strong acid chemistry, fluorine chemistry and coordination chemistry, coordination polymers and metal-organic framework materials with particular interest in magneto-structural correlations and the synthesis and characterisation of new molecule-based magnets.
Throughout his career at UBC-V, Thompson taught courses to first year science students, to chemistry students at all levels including graduate, and to chemical engineering students. He contributed significantly to chemistry courses and program curriculum development. In the early 90’s he was involved in the initial design and teaching of two new innovative first year programs at UBC, Science One and the Coordinated Science Program. He also designed and initially taught a course in Inorganic Chemistry for Chemical Engineering students (current Chemistry 250). Thompson was the Chemical Institute of Canada’s 1998 recipient of the Union Carbide Award, in recognition of his contributions to Chemical Education.
Abhishek Kumar Soni, a graduate student at UBC-V, with Prof. Grenfell Patey, was born in Allahabad, U. P., India. He completed his 5 year integrated BS-MS dual degree in 2017 from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India. He is also working as a graduate academic assistant for adapting this open source book for Chem 250. Future goals include getting a postdoctoral opportunity in the field of Chemistry and Biology. He wants to apply his knowledge of computing combined with the experiments to tackle the problems related to structure-based drug design and sustainable energy development. Ultimate career path is to work as an entrepreneurial scientist to bring innovative scientific projects into the market that can have a strong positive impact on society and worldwide.
Interest in chemical education led to his involvement in this project. He wants to contribute to the field of chemical education by incorporating his knowledge of teaching tools such as latex coding, H5P content and interactive H5P assessments. This project is the first step towards that goal.
