BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Executive Committee
Zafra Lerman
President
Zafra Lerman is an American chemist, educator, and humanitarian. She conducted research on isotope effects at Cornell and Northwestern Universities in the US, and the ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. From 1986 to 2010, she chaired the American Chemical Society's Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights. She has been successful in preventing executions, releasing prisoners of conscience from jail and bringing dissidents to freedom. She has received over 40 awards for her work in education, human rights, and science diplomacy, including the 1999 Presidential Award from U.S. President Clinton, the 2005 Nyholm Prize for Education from the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the 2015 Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the 2016 Andrei Sakharov prize for human rights from the American Physical Society (APS), and the 2016 Peace and Justice award from the UN NOVUS Summit. She was honored three times by the U.S. Congress with speeches about her work in 2002, 2004 and 2013. Her work has been featured on many national and international television and media outlets.
Ann Nalley
Vice President
Ann Nalley is a Professor of Chemistry and Clarence Page Endowed Chair in the Department of Chemistry, Physics and Engineering at Cameron University, a position which she has held since 1969. She earned a Bachelor of Science Degree at Northeastern Oklahoma State University, a Master's Degree in Analytical Chemistry at Oklahoma State University, and a Ph.D. in Radiation Chemistry from Texas Woman's University. She served as the President of the American Chemical Society (the largest scientific society in the world) in 2006. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among her many awards are the 2015 ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences and induction into the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.
Lynn Hogue
Secretary
Lynn Hogue has more than 40 years of experience in chemistry education. She is retired after 17 years as the Associate Director of Miami University’s Center for Chemistry Education. While at the Center, she also was the director of its teacher and student programs and was a lead instructor for more than 50 funded National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Petrochemical Refiners Association, and Ohio Board of Regents programs. She is co-author of 14 teacher resource books. Lynn is a widely traveled guest lecturer and workshop presenter at the national and international levels.
Emma Zajdela
Treasurer
Emma Zajdela is a Ph.D. Candidate in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her research focuses on developing mathematical models to understand and predict complex social phenomena, particularly to understand how conferences catalyze scientific collaboration which will be used to help with the collaborations formed at the Malta Conferences. Emma previously served as Treasurer of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics student chapters at University of Illinois Chicago (2017-2018) and Northwestern University (2021-2022).
Members of the Board
Moh El-Naggar
Moh El-Naggar is the Robert D. Beyer Early Career Chair in Natural Sciences at the University of Southern California. He received his B.S. degree from Lehigh University, followed by a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 2007. In 2010, El-Naggar received a Department of Defense Young Investigator Award, from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In 2012, he was named one of Popular Science's ‘Brilliant 10’. El-Naggar was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President Obama in 2014. His research focuses on biotic-abiotic interfaces with relevance to bioelectronics and renewable energy.
Mort Hoffman
Morton Hoffman has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Chemistry of Boston University since 1961. His Ph.D. was from the University of Michigan; he did postdoctoral research at Sheffield University in England with Professor George Porter (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1967). He has published nearly 200 articles and book chapters in the peer-reviewed chemical literature in the areas of physical-inorganic chemistry, free radical and electron transfer reactions, photochemical conversion and storage of solar energy, and radiation chemical processes. He served as the Chair of the Northeastern Local ACS Section (2002) and the ACS Division of Chemical Education (2005). He is the recipient of the ACS Volunteer Service Award (2007) and numerous awards for his contributions to chemical education. He has served as the Treasurer of the Malta Conferences Foundation since its incorporation in 2011 all the way to 2020.
Stanley Langer
Stanley Langer was responsible, inter alia, for international relations at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), London for almost 39 years and now runs a small consultancy, Science for Development. He served as the RSC’s representative on the ACS’s International Activities Committee for several years. He was also Secretary to the RSC’s IUPAC Committee and was Secretary of the UK’s delegation to the IUPAC General Assembly, as well as having been a Titular member and Secretary of IUPAC's CHEMRAWN Committee. Stanley has been actively involved in the Malta conferences since their inception in 2003.