Department of Chemistry

Jacob Petrich

Physical, Biophysical, Analytical Chemistry

Understanding fundamental chemical processes such as hydrogen atom transfer.
Investigation and development of light-induced antiviral and antitumor agents.
Understanding ligand binding in novel hemeproteins.
Exploiting nonnatural amino acids to study protein structure and dynamics.
Recently we have become involved in developing sensitive devices for the detection of environmental contaminants, in particular for use in food safety and health applications. We have most recently developed, patented, and licensed a technology based on fluorescence detection for use in the real-time identification of contaminated meat products. Until now, food inspection has been carried out either by eye on isolated samples or by time-consuming biochemical laboratory procedures. Our device simply applies good physical/analytical chemistry ideas to this enormously practical and important problem. We are currently working on developing techniques to detect in real-time factors related to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) - that is, factors related to mad cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or related diseases.