2025 Graduates and Awards

Congratulations to all of our graduates and award winners. We are a quarter of a way into this century and it seems bizarre to this [old] blog writer that most of these students have no experience of the 1900s. This is the next generation that will determine the future of both humanity and the world.  Out with the old and in with the new!  It has been a rough year for many students - whether transitioning from high school to college, overcoming health issues, holding a part-time job, or shouldering family responsibilities while studying. You all are amazing for succeeding under these challenging conditions. We hope you'll have an enjoyable summer, whether relaxing or seeking adventure.

Organic Chemistry Achievement Award*

   Liam Burke

   Joseph Malkovsky

Analytical Chemistry Achievement Award*

   Hannah Gregor

Senior Excellence Award in Biochemistry*
   Hannah Gregor

Joseph H. Ross Award for Outstanding Oral Presentations
   Zahra Aljuboori

   Alissa Sonnenberg

Gretchen Anderson Pathways Scholarship
   Alissa Sonnenberg
   Jared Chapin
   Mackenzie Reasor

Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Scholarship
   Kristen Miller

   Nikki Sweet

George Nazaroff Scholarship
   Kristen Miller

   Nikki Sweet

*This award is made possible by donors to the IU South Bend Chemistry Department Fund. 

Publication in the New Journal of Chemistry

This paper is a collaboration between researchers at IU South Bend and Murray State University. IU South Bend coauthors are our organic chemistry professor, Dr. Kasey Clear, and chemistry major Taylor Boyd-Becker who was awarded a SMART summer research fellowship. The work involved a versatile route to synthesize ionic liquids derived from carbamates (also known as urethanes) using CDI (1,1′-carbonyldiimidazole), a less hazardous alternative to isocyanates and phosgene. CDI is a very interesting molecule (see the image above) which uses a carbonyl group (C=O) to link two five-membered aromatic heterocycles. Ionic liquids are very interesting because they are liquid at room temperature (we aren't talking about melting something like table salt) and they have almost no vapor pressure (they are non-volatile). The ionic liquids prepared were also characterized in terms of density, viscosity, conductivity, and thermal properties. Future work will study the ability of these materials and their polymeric forms to absorb carbon dioxide as a possible method of carbon capture to combat combustion emissions.

Hybrid bronzes with Professor Jaffe

This past fall, our inorganic chemistry professor, Dr. Bill Feighery, spent his research sabbatical working in the laboratory of Dr. Adam Jaffe at the University of Notre Dame. Just yesterday, Jaffe came to IU South Bend to give a talk on "hybrid bronzes" for our senior seminar class. Bronze is a metal alloy of copper (Cu) and tin (Sn), but the only similarity of hybrid bronzes to the metal bronze is that both are shiny. Bronzes are basically layered metal oxides that are doped with additional atoms to alter the electrical and optical properties of the material. Similar to how the properties of nanomaterials can be fine-tuned by varying the size of their nanoparticles, the properties of these bronzes (and semiconductors, in general) can be fine-tuned by varying the concentration of doping atoms. Hybrid bronzes have even more complicated structure by introducing organic layers separating the metal oxide layers. The layers may interact through hydrogen bonding or even through direct bonding when atoms of the organic molecules replace oxygen atoms of the metal oxides. In just a few weeks our students will be giving their own presentations on current literature topics.

STEAM night for Kennedy Academy (K-5th grades)

Just this past Thursday evening our College hosted a STEAM night in Northside Hall for the youngsters of Kennedy Academy. Our department was represented by Professors Muna, Clear, and Marmorino with much to display:

• Acid-base titrations with pinkish-purple phenolphthalein
• Testing the acidity and basicity of household products with cabbage juice
• Demonstrating ocean acidicification with dry ice, water, and cabbage juice
• Green-Red-Yellow transitions for a basic glucose solution due to indigo carmine
• Density tower of sugar solutions with different food coloring
• Illustrative Periodic Table with samples of elements and simple compounds

The children had a good time and showed a lot of interest in these activities. Some other hits at the event were an origami table where kids learned to fold a frog; various physics demonstrations including a geyser; and receiving a free yoyo with an image of a "spherical cow" (from the Physics department, of course).

Can a story plot carry more weight than a data plot?

One man's garbage is another man's treasure - and one man's lie is another man's truth. How can you bring someone around to your viewpoint? Maybe you shouldn't try unless you are also willing to change your stance. It is often said that people believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts, so that arguments focusing on data may be less fruitful (for both parties) than other approaches. That's not to say you should debate with lies, of course. Instead, a friendly discussion of a fictional situation may allow for a less confrontational conversation. The science-fiction realm of Star Trek, for example, explores real-life scientific, social, ethical, religious, medical, and environmental issues in the context of fictional worlds - often with fictional races - which makes an analysis of the issues less personal between two parties by bringing in a fictional third party.

At the Public Library of Science (PLOS), microbiologist Maggie Fink and biochemist Dr. Shahir Rizk discuss the issue of combatting disinformation in a friendly, humble manner using "story plots", much like a Star Trek episode, rather than "data plots" that scientists are trained upon. We encourage you to read their thoughtful post which also touches on their conversations with flat-Earthers.

Rust Belt Science podcast

Earlier this month Professor Rizk and adjunct instructor Fink launched a podcast called Rust Belt Science sponsored by the University of Notre Dame, where Fink works as a Science Communication Postdoctoral Scholar. Their entertaining "conversations dive into how science connects to art, culture, mythology, and all other aspects of our daily lives."  Their podcast already has four episodes:

   (1) Meet the hosts

   (2) AI weirdness with Janelle Shane

   (3) Do you have to be smart to do science?

   (4) The ecology of everything with Deb Marr

You can find the podcasts here at RSS.com or on the University of Notre Dame's YouTube channel. Please check them out if you need some audio companionship while exercising - or if you just want to learn about science from these expert science communicators.

Marmorino's interactive tutorials for quantum mechanics

For many years, Professor Marmorino has been developing and using Mathematica to create tutorial programs that allow students to explore quantum mechanical phenomena in our upper-level CHEM-C 362 Physical Chemistry of Molecules course. There students explore the two-dimensional particle in a box, particle on a ring, the Bohr correspondence principle with the harmonic oscillator, the action of linear operators on functions, the non-linear variational method for a particle in one and two wells, the linear variational method for a hydrogenic atom, the bonding and anti-bonding molecular orbitals for the hydrogen molecular ion, hybrid orbitals, and the Hückel molecular orbital method. The image below shows the four molecular orbitals of cyclobutadiene generated as just part of the Hückel molecular orbital program.

Most recently, Marmorino has developed a new program to illustrate the time dependence of stationary states, and binary linear combinations of these, for a particle in a box.  Without the time dependence of wavefunction, it is hard to appreciate the wavefunction's "waviness" that is familiar to us in our classical experience of moving ocean waves. The program also allows one to investigate the transition from one stationary state to another and how this depends on the system's transition dipole moment. This program is available to the public through the Chemical Educator, which also published Marmorino's corresponding article on how various aspects of time dependence can be illustrated and investigated using the program.