Scientists at last week’s first ever European Chemistry Congress announced a new nonprofit organization called Molecular Frontiers, which will be based in Boston and will promote the public understanding of molecular science, according to an article in Chemical and Engineering News. The group will focus its efforts on enticing young students to enter these fields of study. For the group, ‘molecular science’ includes a wide range of fields, from nanotechnology and synthesis and catalysis, to biotechnology and molecular biology. And its scientific advisory board has an impressive array of scientists from the US, Europe and Asia, include Harvard’s George Whitesides and MIT/Whitehead’s Susan Lindquist. MIT’s Shuguang Zhang is the group’s secretary.

The group is just starting and its website is still quite bare, but they have plans to launch an interactive website for youngsters and run a contest for kids between 12 and 18 to submit the best question about molecular science. It’s not clear to me yet just how effective a website and contest will be in educating school-age children about the importance and coolness of molecular science…they’ll have to think hard about how to design a science website that will pull kids away from Youtube and MySpace.