My name is Dr. Rachael S. Hall. I’m the Director of Education, Outreach, and Diversity for the Center for Selective C-H Functionalization.
I'm a chemist, educator, and communicator with a PhD in chemistry, who grew up on a farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I was a quiet, intense, curious kid who became a (not as) quiet, intense, curious adult. I moved to Middle Tennessee to study chemistry for my BS in hopes of becoming a high-school chemistry teacher. There I fell in love with the process of science and decided to go on to the MS program, doing bench work along with education research. Then I moved to NC for my PhD work and joined a synthetic-biology group, connecting with the vast network of people doing and/or communicating science to improve myself as a scientist and communicator. Now I am managing EOD programming for CCHF at Emory University. Feel free to get in contact with me, explore the highlights of my education and career so far, or check out my blog for outreach activities!
I am a scientist interested in the effective communication and facilitation of the learning of science. Through my training in science and education, I aim to share my enthusiasm for science and encourage others' interest in science. I am looking to secure a position where I can put my chemical knowledge to good use, while simultaneously developing my skills in knowledge translation and public engagement.
Click here for my full CV.
Classroom and lab teaching
I have several years of teaching experience, starting with supervised elementary classroom teaching during UG. Then during my MS, I taught physical science, honors and regular general chemistry, and organic chemistry labs, as well as guest lecturing in honors and regular general chemistry as well as organic chemistry. During my PhD, I taught organic chemistry lab, biotechnology lab, as well as chemical biology lecture. I received several teaching awards at both institutions.
I also worked on a project helping to create VR labs for organic chemistry one. Click here to access those videos.
Formative and summative assessment and instrument development
During my MS, I worked in instrument development to capture meaningful interactions in the organic chemistry lab for my research, as well as to capture other important data. In my current position, I evaluate the EOD programs for CCHF as well as develop new instruments to capture our programs for internal review as well as to our funding agents.
Project management
I currently manage the EOD projects as well as the relationships with all the stakeholders. I set timelines and manage budgets as well as the participants and works to make the projects a success.
Informal science outreach
I’ve been involved in informal science since UG. I developed several activities to explain my research during my PhD and worked on several broader efforts for that (examples listed in my portfolio). In my current position, I have been able to develop several more activities and participate in more festivals.
Inventory and waste management
As part of my PhD at different points I was in charge at of maintaining our chemistry inventory, properly storing our chemicals, as well as proper storage of our waste and submission to our Environmental Health and Safety Office.
Instrument management
During my PhD I maintained several of our instruments. Specifically I worked very closely with our HPLC and FPLC systems and performed regular maintenance on them.
Small-molecule synthesis
During my UG, MS, and PhD research, I synthesized several small molecules, usually in a few steps with known chemical methods. My UG and MS work focused mostly on methods development to perform cross-coupling reactions and various condensations in ionic liquids and/or microwave reactions. For my PhD research, it was mostly phosphorylations and amidations to make substrates for study with enzymes.
Analytical method development
Most of my PhD reactions were on a very small scale and with newly created molecules, so I had to develop new assays and LC methods to separate and analyze them.
Molecular biology techniques, protein purification, and cell culture
During my PhD, I cloned genes of interest into plasmids in E. Coli and directly into yeast chromosomes and grew the resulting cell lines for molecule or protein production.