Benny C. Chan

Abstract

The traditional approach to teaching college chemistry, which includes in-class lectures and expectations of hours of individual study, often acts as a roadblock for underrepresented students seeking a career in science . Traditional thermoelectric materials, which include bismuth tellurides and selenides, can act like heat pumps in cooling systems when jolted by an electrical current. Benny C. Chan has applied his love of problem-solving to change the structures of both. Through an interdisciplinary approach to research, he has helped fill gaps in chemistry education as well as in the published crystal structures of thermoelectric compounds. Chan, an inorganic chemist and chair of the Chemistry Department at the College of New Jersey, studies how adding elements to bismuth telluride compounds might disrupt their structures and change their thermoelectric properties. Students in his lab have published the structures of a wide variety of chemical compounds, including organic compounds that had been overlooked