It was near this time last year when physical chemist Matt Marmorino (above left) began his Fall semester sabbatical to continue research in bounding the energies and other observables as well as learn some new material regarding quantum field theory in the hopes to extend his work to the relativistic realm. The first fruits of his work are just now appearing after first a semester of the work itself and then a semester of scientific review in the publication process. His manuscript in the Journal of Mathematical Chemistry compares two standard methods to find the lower bound of a system's ground-state energy and merges them into a single method to combine their advantages.
This Fall organic chemist Doug McMillen (above right) begins his research sabbatical. For the past several years McMillen has been filling voids in administration leaving him with less time for teaching and research. In Summer 2012 he resumed research by investigating new methods of oxidizing alcohols and other partially oxidized functional groups. He plans to use his year-long sabbatical to complete and publish that work and start new work using elemental iodine to oxidize alcohols. He also aims to develop collaborations and to prepare a research grant to support investigations of metal-catalyzed asymmetric oxidation of alkenes. We wish you a fruitful year, Professor McMillen.
