Dr. Traficante obtained his Ph.D. in 1962 from MIT in the field of synthetic organic chemistry. For 10 years he was Director of the NMR Lab at MIT, and then held the same position at Yale University. Serving as the Director of Chemical Instrumentation at the National Science Foundation (NSF), he pioneered multi-nuclear instrumentation. He has built probes, reassembled spectrometers, and developed new software programs to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and the resolution of NMR spectra. He received a Letter of Commendation from the Chemistry Division when he left the NSF to return to teaching.