The fentanyl challenge is described in the scientific community and elsewhere as the greatest challenge our country is facing.  Therefore, Dr. Nelson focuses on that now.  She is building the community to address the scourge, which she named “A Perfect Storm in Science.”  She is the only scientist collecting, preparing, and disseminating CDC and US Border Patrol data, which quantify and measure the impact of fentanyl in terms of U.S. deaths.  This enables a planned approach to conquering fentanyl by the scientific community.  Dr. Nelson used her previous experience in the American Chemical Society to build the needed fentanyl community.  She did this by organizing fentanyl symposia, which enabled the speakers to meet each other and present their research to the community.   Her frequent speaking engagements usually segue her experiences as Science Advisor for Breaking Bad into her activities against and current data on fentanyl.  Some graphs and data on fentanyl are at the Illicit Fentanyl Research tab of this website.

 

Dr. Nelson engages the chemistry community and serves professional societies and organizations, collectively described as work ensuring America's Scientific Readiness. In these activities, she focuses on science education and impacting science by considering its communities. This includes classroom innovations and correcting organic chemistry textbook inaccuracies, increasing ethnic and gender diversity (the Nelson Diversity Surveys) among highly ranked science departments of research universities, and improving the image and presentation of science and scientists to the public. Her impact on the image of science and scientists includes being science advisor to the award-winning AMC television show Breaking Bad and 2016 President of the American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society in the world.

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