Accomplishments: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Jason Richards (Chemistry and Biochemistry), a doctoral student in the radiochemistry program, was awarded a first-place prize in the 2017 Innovations in Nuclear Technology R&D Awards sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's office of nuclear technology R&D. His award is in the open competition in the category of nuclear…
James Croft and Balakrishnan Naduvalath (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and a team of researchers recently published a paper, "Universality and Chaoticity in Ultracold K + KRb Chemical Reactions," in the journal Nature Communications. The team performed the first-ever quantum-mechanical simulation of the benchmark ultracold chemical reaction between…
Forty undergraduates recently were awarded scholarships through the office of undergraduate research's summer undergraduate research funding (OUR SURF) program. These scholarships support undergraduate research, scholarship, entrepreneurial, performance, or visual art projects in the summer months. A total of $39,000 in funding was…
Monika Blum (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently was profiled by the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Blum has been going to the ALS since she was a graduate student. She now is an associate research professor, working in professor Clemens Heske’s group, and oversees their…
Nemanja Novakovic (Sciences and Honors) is the 2017 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ undergraduate recipient of the Regents' Scholar Award. The award is bestowed upon one undergraduate student from each NSHE institution for their academic achievements, leadership ability, and service contributions. Each honoree receives a $5,000 stipend.
Novakovic is pursuing a double major…
Jacqueline Phan and her mentor, Ernesto Abel-Santos (both Chemistry and Biochemistry), placed second and won the People's Choice Award in the three-minute thesis (3MT) competition at the Western Association of Graduate School's (WAGS) 2017 conference, earlier this month. In November, under professor Abel-Santos’ mentorship, Phan placed first…
Daniel Mast and Bradley Childs (Chemistry) won awards in the 2016 Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), office of fuel cycle technologies.
Mast was awarded a first-place prize in the open competition in the category of nuclear science and engineering. His award-winning research paper, “…
Biochemistry professor Ernesto Abel-Santos and former postdoctoral scholar Amber Howerton were recently issued patent #9,079,935, which describes a novel compound designed to prevent Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections.
Frederic Poineau (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently received a three-year, $640,000 Nuclear Energy University Programs (NEUP) grant. The grant supports his work investigating the thermochemistry of used fuel zirconium cladding components chlorides as well as their activation products and residual radionuclide metal chlorides. The research…
Balakrishnan Naduvalath (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently published an article titled, "The Geometric Phase Controls Ultracold Chemistry," in the July 30 issue of Nature Communications. The research demonstrates a new interference mechanism in ultracold chemical reactions, one which has important technological…
Balakrishnan Naduvalath (Chemistry) coauthored a paper, Quantum Dynamics of CO-H2 in Full Dimensionality, that appeared in Nature Communications in March.
Ernesto Abel-Santos (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and his team have received a five-year, $3.25 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a more potent and stable drug to prevent clostridium difficile, or C. difficile. The grant is an R01, or research project grant, which is the original and historically oldest grant…