Conwell, Esther M.

Prof. Conwell received her B.A. in Physics (1942) from Brooklyn College, her M.S. in Physics (1945) from the University of Rochester, and her Ph.D. in Physics (1948) from the University of Chicago. She was an instructor in Physics at Brooklyn College (1946-1951), a researcher at Bell Laboratories (1951-1952), and a staff member at GTE Laboratories (1952-1972). In 1972, Prof. Conwell joined the Xerox Wilson Research Center, where she was a Research Fellow from 1981 to 1998. In 1998, Prof. Conwell joined the University of Rochester, where she is currently a Professor of Chemistry and of Physics.

Prof. Conwell is the recipient of numerous honors and distinctions. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1980), the National Academy of Sciences (1990), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992). She received an honorary D.Sc. from Brooklyn College in 1992 and the Thomas A. Edison Medal of the IEEE in 1997. In November 2002, Discover Magazine listed Prof. Conwell as one of the 50 most prominent female scientists, and in 2005 she recevied a Dreyfus Senior Scholar Mentor Award. She was featured in the Rochester Museum of Science Exhibit "Who Makes Things Work" in Rochester in 2006, and she received the 2006 University of Rochester Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) announced on August 20, 2007 that Prof. Conwell is the winner of the 2008 ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences. The award recognizes one scientist each year who has significantly encouraged the education and professional development of women as chemists and chemical engineers.

Prof. Conwell's interests lie in the general areas of Chemical, Biological, and Condensed Matter Physics. She and her group have been doing research on electrical and optical properties of organic semiconductors, particularly conjugated polymers such as poly(phenylene vinylene), PPV, for some years. Recently they have extended that work to the study of transport along the base stack in DNA, also a polymer, of course. Transport of charges in DNA is important because (1) it may lead to mutations or carcinogenesis, and (2) if the transport is good, DNA could play a useful role in assembling very tiny circuits (nanocircuits), while doubling as wires. Measurements of conduction in DNA have led to controversial results, some characterizing it as an insulator, some as a metal, and still others as a semiconductor. Prof. Conwell believes the weight of evidence favors the latter. Because they are polymers, the conjugated polymers and DNA are essentially one-dimensional semiconductors. When a charge is added to a one-dimensional semiconducting chain, it lowers its energy by deforming the chain. The charge and the deformation move together as a kind of particle, a polaron. Prof. Conwell and her group have been calculating the properties of polarons and how they contribute to conduction in PPV and in DNA. More recently, they have been concerned with optical absorption and emission of DNA. They plan to work closely with Prof. Rothberg and his group, who are measuring these properties of DNA.