Donna Nelson

Donna J. Nelson is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma. Nelson specializes in organic chemistry, which she both researches and teaches. Nelson served as the science advisor to the AMC television show Breaking Bad. She was the 2016 President of the American Chemical Society (ACS) with her presidential activities focusing on and guided by communities in chemistry. Nelson's research focused on six primary topics, generally categorized in two areas, Scientific Research and America's Scientific Readiness. Within Scientific Research, Nelson's topics have been on collecting, compiling, and disseminating CDC statistics revealing fentanyl death numbers and rates, on mechanistic patterns in alkene addition reactions, and on single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) functionalization and analysis, yielding the first COSY NMR spectrum of covalently functionalized SWCNTs in solution. Under America's Scientific Readiness, she focuses on science education and impacting science by considering its communities; this includes classroom innovations and correcting organic chemistry textbook inaccuracies, on ethnic and gender diversity among highly ranked science departments of research universities, and on improving the image and presentation of science and scientists to the public.