The Universe Revealed - Nobel Prize Talks

This evening, Organic chemistry professor Kasey Clear represented IU South Bend at The Universe Revealed lecture series which is a partnership between the Science faculty at IU South Bend and University of Notre Dame to explore diverse topics in science in an accessible way.  The talk was given at the Main Branch of the St. Joseph County Library in downtown South Bend and the topic was this year's Nobel Prizes. The event began with a brief historical introduction to the Noble Prizes and their creator, Alfred Nobel, given by IU South Bend biologist Deb Marr. Then, three of the six prizes were discussed: for chemistry, Clear discussed "click chemistry and biorthogonal chemistry" which are modular approaches to chemical synthesis; for physics, particle physicist Antonio Delgado of UNC talked about the mysterious phenomenon of quantum entanglement; and for medicine Director of the Genomics Core Group at UND, Michael Phrender, discussed human evolution and the genomes of extinct hominins.  At the sites below, you can watch a recording of the lecture (from which the still picture above of Clear was taken) and also learn more about the lecture series, in particular the time and subject of upcoming lectures.

Video recording - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t617vsPI3qg

Lecture series - https://universerevealed.nd.edu/

Connie Fox retires after 38 years

Connie Fox retired at the end of this summer after 38 years of service to IU South Bend - and 4 years as an undergraduate student.  Fox was our department's laboratory director who supervised the setup and troubleshooting of the freshman chemistry labs and was nearly single-handedly responsible for the maintenance and improvements to the lab manual for these courses for the past 25 years. She also taught prelab sections and lab sections for these courses as well as discussion sections for the lecture counterparts. In addition, Fox helped with the senior seminar class, department meetings, and was in charge of chemical inventory, ordering, and waste management. She was typically aided by a part-time staff member, most recently Brenda Beatty.

A brick honoring Fox will be installed in front of the Student Activity Center next week. Fox's long history with the university, deep knowledge of how our department works, and her keen mind made her the unofficial "head honcho" of the department as she remained constant while department chairs came and went in three-year terms. Using a ship analogy for our department, Fox was said to be the hull that held our program together. Fortunately, we are somehow managing without her this fall, but she is sorely missed, and it was a joy to dine with her last night in a reunion-retirement party.  Thank you for all that you have done for our department and campus.

Students present research at state-wide conference

The Indiana LSAMP annual conference was held in-person in IU Bloomington on Friday September 30th and Saturday October 1st, 2022. The conference was attended by higher education administrators, Indiana LSAMP leaders, staff, faculty mentors, and undergraduate student researchers across the state to build partnerships and interact in engaging sessions celebrating this year’s conference theme Celebrating Curiosity: LSAMP Scholars’ Journeys through Connection, Purpose, and Change.

IU South Bend was well presented by eight student researchers from the past year. Six of them participated in the LSAMP summer research program funded by NSF through the IN LSAMP grant awarded in 2016. Most are pictured above with our faculty and administrators. A total of 38 posters were presented by student researchers across the Indiana LSAMP alliance. There were five competitive student poster winners, and four of them were IU South Bend students:

   Second-place tie:       Precious-Gold Akpadija and Hiba Majeed

   Honorable mention:   Marcus Bailey and Emily Barrera

The students who presented are listed below with their mentor and the title of their presentation.  You can read their abstracts here: 2022 IN LSAMP Annual Research Conference - IN LSAMP

Precious-Gold Akpadija (Chemistry) with Dr. Kasey Clear
Effect of Guanidinium Content on the Anion Binding Capacity of Polyallyamine-Based Polymer Networks

Marcus Bailey (Biology) with Dr. Deborah Marr
Effects of the understory shrub Lindera benzoin (Spicebush) on maple and beech tree seeding abundance in an Old Growth Indiana Forest. 

Emily Barrera (Biochemistry) with Dr. Grace Muna

Electroanalytical Performance of Antimony Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

Amanda Feder (Biology) with Dr. Grace Muna
Developing a Sensitive Electrochemical Method to Determine Cortisol in Biological Samples

Antonio Garcilazo (Informatics) with Dr. Hossein Hakimzadeh 
iScheduler – Intelligent Academic Scheduling

Melyse Ishimwe (Biology) with Dr. Shahir Rizk
Structure- Based Design of PhuZ Mutants for Polymerization Analysis

Hiba Majeed (Biology) with Dr. Grace Muna
Investigating the Electroanalytical Performance of Bismuth-Antimony Film on Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

Lucas Robinson (Chemistry) with Dr. Shawn R. Campagna (U. Tennessee)
Synthesis and Computational Evaluation of Glucocorticoid Analogues for Elucidation of Structure Activity Relationships

Ashley Schoen (Clinical Lab Science) with Jordan Roach (U. Notre Dame)
Characterization and Thermal Decomposition of Aqueous Uranyl-Acac Compounds