Upcoming Events
Ashley Bowers MS Final Oral Anderson Group
Department of Chemistry, Rice University
(VanVeller)
Chemists are fascinated by metalloenzymes and their chemistry. The reactivity and selectivity of enzyme processes would be powerful practical advances if harnessed in designed transition-metal catalysts. But designing enzyme-like catalysts from scratch has proven exceedingly challenging. Substrate selectivity in polyfunctional environments and highly reactive intermediates incompatible with the bulk aqueous media are properties that are typically too complex and challenging to replicate in simplified, designed systems. Our own efforts have taken advantage of diverse concepts, such as molecular recognition, biomimetic assembly, and structure–function relationships to pursue new methods for site-selective chemistry.
Timothy Egner Final Oral Venditti Group
Molecularly imprinted nanoparticles (MINPs) for recognition and sensing of bioactive drug molecules.
Likun Duan Final Oral Zhao Group
Abhishek Kadam Final Oral Stanley Group
Come learn strategies for writing successful grant proposals from a panel of expert grant writers, including our own Dr. Robbyn Anand!
Zhuoran Wang Final Oral Pruski Group
Justin Mark Final Oral Exam Kovnir Group
William Bradley, Final Oral, Kraus Group
Kasuni Boteju Final Oral Sadow Group
The University of Texas at Dallas
(Zaikina)
The discovery and characterization of novel intermetallic compounds is important for broadening the understanding of structure-property relationships of magnetic materials. Our current research interests in superconductivity and unusual magnetism rely heavily on the intimate relationship between structure and physical properties. Likewise, the determination of anisotropic physical properties from high quality single crystals is vital in probing the intrinsic electrical and the competing magnetic interactions to understand the chemistry and physics of these materials. The discovery of novel magnetic and electronic properties in low-dimensional materials has led to the pursuit of hierarchical materials with specific substructures. Low-dimensional solids are highly anisotropic by nature and show promise in new quantum materials leading to exotic physical properties not realized in three dimensional materials. In this talk, I will highlight the crystal growth, characterization, and properties of germanides and stannides and layered antimonides and the potential for compounds in reduced dimensions.
Georgia Institute of Technology
(Lee)
Abstract
he highly dynamic nature of metabolites and their abundances makes metabolomics a powerful endpoint of the ‘omics’ cascade, yielding a molecular profile that is closest to the physiological phenotype. Metabolomic profiles are therefore sensitive to subtle perturbations observed in early disease stages or disease progression, which may be difficult to detect at the proteome or transcriptome levels. Human diseases are multi-factorial in nature, and studying small parts of their associated molecular changes is generally insufficient for understanding the full spectrum of disease phenotypes.
The metabolome is the total collection of biologically-active small molecules with molecular weights lower than about ~1.5 kDa in an organism. This includes endogenous molecules that are biosynthesized by metabolic networks in “primary metabolism”, specialized “secondary metabolite” signaling or defense molecules, molecules derived from diet or environmental exposures (the exposome), and molecules derived from the biosynthetic interactions with associated microbes (the microbiome). Metabolomics can either be “targeted” to a set of known compounds, for example certain lipids, or “non-targeted”, which attempts to detect and relatively quantify as many metabolites as possible.
The vast chemical diversity of the metabolome (lipids, sugars, amino acids, etc.), and its wide dynamic range (mM to fM) implies that no single analytical method can adequately profile all metabolites in one metabolomics experiment. Along these lines, the “fusion” of mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is emerging as one of the most powerful avenues to increase metabolome coverage. Nested separations that work in a time frame compatible with mass spectrometry, such as those performed by ion mobility, are also playing a key analytical role in metabolomics as a way of increasing peak capacity, and identifying metabolites through ion mobility collision cross section measurements. Further, localization of metabolites at the tissue level with imaging mass spectrometry experiments, allows linking their abundance with changes observed in biofluids. In this seminar, I will highlight progress along these various fronts, with emphasis on the detection, screening and treatment of complex diseases such as prostate and ovarian cancer, and cystic fibrosis.
Paige Hinners Final Oral Lee Group
Smita Patnaik Final Oral Sadow Group
