On second thought, that headline could be a bit misleading. The truth is that Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered caesium in 1860 and named it for the sky-blue lines in its emission spectrum.
But our own Natalie LaFranzo has been named Caesium. IUPAC, as part of its International Year of the Periodic Table festivities, has honored younger chemists from around the world with their own elements. It seems fitting to us, who know her, that she takes pride of place as just about the most active element there is. (Francium has not been assigned yet.)
Natalie LaFranzo is Caesium
Natalie is a passionate, professional scientist who has successfully bridged the worlds of interdisciplinary chemistry and business at an early stage in her career and has been instrumental in developing a new category of multivariable genomic assessment as a key step in developing precision medicine. Combining her deep interdisciplinary knowledge in chemical biology with outstanding business leadership and inherent project leadership skills, Natalie continues to play a leading role in transforming the field of molecular diagnostics and immuno-oncology.
We know Natalie as past chair and key vitalizing influence in our local section Younger Chemists Committee, past Chair of the section, and ongoing “force for good” at the section and national ACS level. To complete the picture of Natalie as a devoted scientist, note that she is wearing her lipid bilayer necklace.
“Computers and the physics of complex biological systems”
