Kasey Clear publishes research of napthoquinones

Professor Kasey Clear just published his second research article from his work here at IU South Bend. This research is a collaboration between IU South Bend, Rice University and several medical schools - one of which is the IU Medical School (in South Bend) where the lead author, Kenneth Olson, teaches and researches. The reaction shown above shows a naphthoquinone being reduced by hydrogen sulfide, or, from another point of view, shows a naphthoquinone oxidizing hydrogen sulfide. Naphthoquinones can affect the body in at least two notable ways through their redox chemistry: (1) They can bind to proteins by reacting with the thiol groups of cysteine residues on the proteins; this change in protein structure leads to a change in protein function. (2) They generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) like hydrogen peroxide which are strong oxidants. The article was published as "open access" so anyone can view it free of charge here.

LECO mobile lab helps with chemistry courses

Adjunct organic chemistry instructor, David Alonso (holding a printout in the left picture), arranged to have a mobile science lab come to IU South Bend for three days this week to help with our organic chemistry and analytical chemistry laboratory classes. For the past 12 years, Alonso has worked at LECO Corporation. LECO Corportation develops analytical instruments with a focus on elemental analysis and separation instruments. They have been in business, with headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan, since 1936 although originally they were named Laboratory Equipment Corporation. LECO Corporation has four different mobile labs that tour the country. Alonso and his colleagues, Scott and Bruce, brought the Separation Science Mobile Lab so that students in CHEM-C 343 (organic chemistry) and CHEM-C 310 (analytical chemistry) could use the state-of-the-art Pegasus GC-TOFMS instruments to analyze samples they prepared in class. GC (gas chromatography) separates the components of a gas mixture which are then identified by TOFMS (time-of-flight mass spectroscopy), essentially relying on how long it is takes heavy versus light gas particles to flow. It was a wonderful experience for the students in all the classes to see the step up in instrumentation from our teaching labs - and for Alonso's students to see their professor in his main employment. While many of our adjunct instructors are retired, just as many are working full time jobs in their main career.  Thank you, David, for making this happen. 

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

Professor Rizk gives update on sabbatical work

During the summer of 2022, Shahir Rizk was hosted by the Boroughs-Wellcome Fund (BWF) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina as part of his sabbatical. The project, funded in part by the BWF, centers on enhancing science communication skills in young scientists and reaching the general public with sound scientific information through art and storytelling. Rizk's project is a collaboration with Maggie Fink, 2019 IUSB alumna and NSF GRFP PhD candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Together, Rizk and Fink conducted workshops for graduate students and post-docs on how to communicate science to the public in a world of misinformation. In addition, they worked on illustrating protein structures and some sculpture pieces currently displayed at the BWF headquarters. The artwork is part of a popular science book that both Rizk and Fink are co-writing and co-illustrating. The book, which is scheduled for release in early 2024 (Harvard University Press) introduces a general audience to concepts of protein science using art and personal narrative. 

2022 Graduates and Awards

Congratulations to our graduates and award winners for 2022. Commencement was last evening at the Joyce Center on the Notre Dame Campus after a two-year break (2020 no ceremony; 2021 limited socially-distant ceremony on our campus). As always, we are very proud of our students. We wish our graduates the greatest success in their careers and further study. Please stay in touch with us and come back to visit. As for the award winners who remain to finish their degrees, we look forward to seeing you in the fall and hope the summer break gives you a chance to renew your enthusiasm and drive. Have a great summer everyone!

 Freshman Chemistry Achievement Award
   Ryan Murphy

   Eric Nunez-Rodriguez
   Joel Rael
Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry 

   Lucas Robinson
Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry
   Abigail Doorn
Student Excellence Award in Biochemistry
   Natalie Fox

   Michael-Dean Laffin

Student Excellence Award in Chemistry
   Naseem Alfadhl
Joseph H. Ross Seminar Award
   Natalie Fox
George Nazaroff Scholarship
   Elizabeth Pask

   Joel Rael
Gretchen Anderson Pathways Scholarship
   Precious-Gold Akpadija

   Zahra Aljuboori

   Hannah Gregor

   Abigael Ngoumape
Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Scholarship
   Joel Rael

Welcome Adjunct Emily Stoler

Emily Stoler is the newest adjunct professor for our department. She began this spring semester teaching the freshman CHEM-C 102 Elementary Chemistry II course in the evenings. However, Stoler is not new to IU South Bend because she earned her Master of Business Administration from the Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics in 2021. Emily started off her education at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan by studying biochemistry and biomedical sciences. She then furthered her studies in analytical chemistry and earned an M.S. degree from the University of Notre Dame. Stoler's research at Notre Dame focused on developing a technique to measure metabolites in complex solutions such as bodily fluids using capillary electrophoresis coupled with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Stoler uses her background in both chemistry and business to help the IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame commercialize faculty research. In her spare time, Stoler enjoys playing with her dog and working in her gardens.

Hasan Alsaymary win best poster award

Biology major Hasan Alsaymary won the award for Best Poster in the Natural Sciences division of the 2022 Undergraduate Research Conference on Friday, April 22. Although he is a biology major, Alsaymary opted to work on some organic chemistry with Dr. Kasey Clear during the summer of 2021 under a SMART grant. His poster titled "Studying the association of membrane permeable fluorescent probes with anionic lipids" described (i) the preparation of liposomes used to test two fluorescent probes that essentially differed only in what was the source of the cation on the probe (a zinc ion or a guanidinium group); and (ii) the binding affinity of the two probes to the liposome membrane based on fluorescent readings. Alsaymary also won the Freshman Chemistry Achievement award in 2020. Congratulations on a super performance at the Undergraduate Research Conference!

The semester is almost over ...

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has long been known for how well its faculty members and staff get along, but our students are just as happy and friendly. A group of upper-level students brought cupcakes, cookies, and muffins to share with the faculty and staff this morning. They are pictured here in the conference room, NS 060, which is a common hangout and study room for our students. Good luck on your final exams next week! And thanks for the treats!

2022 Undergraduate Research Conference

Pictured above are the chemistry and biochemistry students who presented at this spring's Undergraduate Research Conference along with chemistry professor Dr. Grace Muna. It was a huge crowd and a very impressive set of presentations. Catherine Duselis and Steven Frye were very brave and opted for an oral presentation instead of a poster! Zeb Walizer also stepped out of his comfort zone by working on a biology project under Biology Professor Wilkes' guidance. It is a great way to the end the semester by seeing the results of our researchers' hard work. Thanks to everyone who participated whether by presenting or supporting our students.

BIOCHEMISTRY

Catherine Duselis · Steven Frye · (Rizk)
Oral presentation: Analysis of Dynamic Viral Tubulin Protein PhuZ and the Effect Certain Point Mutations have on Polymerization

Natalie Fox · Jessica Weaver · (Rizk)
Poster presentation: PhnD 177ND: Phosphonate Binding Protein Mutant

CHEMISTRY

Sabrah Alajmi · (Clear)
Poster presentation: Phosphate Removal from Water using Cross-linked Polymer Networks

Hasan Alsaymary · (Clear)
Poster presentation: Studying the association of membrane permeable fluorescent probes with anionic lipids

Naseem Alfadhl · Nick Thurin · Abigail Nolan · Elizabeth Pask ·  (Muna)
Poster presentation: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Project: A Correlation Study of Lead Levels in Contaminated Soil Samples with Source, Home Location and Age.

Lucas Robinson · (Muna)
Poster presentation: Investigating the Electroanalytical Performance of Bismuth-Antimony Film on Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

Emily Barrera · (Muna)
Poster presentation: Electroanalytical Performance of Antimony Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

BIOLOGY

Lina Marchi · Zeb Walizer · (Wilkes)
Poster presentation: Survey of Dynein-2 Components in Ciliated Protists

Muna and Rizk receive teaching awards

Congratulations to both Professors Grace Muna and Shahir Rizk who were just awarded Trustee's Teaching Awards for outstanding and innovative work in education. Muna is our analytical chemist responsible for our advanced coursework in analytical chemistry and chemical instrumentation. She also contributes heavily to the general chemistry program through lecture and laboratories. Muna recently published an article in the Journal of Chemical Education about incorporating mini research projects in advanced laboratory courses.  Rizk also incorporates research into his advanced laboratory course for biochemistry majors. He is responsible for that course and two advanced biochemistry lectures, but also contributes to our service courses for the health science majors. Muna and Rizk are outstanding teachers and a great asset to our department in many ways, but particularly in that they mentor several students each year in research which give our students a competitive edge when applying for jobs and graduate school.

Alumnus returns to give talk on industrial chemistry

Dr. David Keller, a chemistry graduate from IU South Bend decades ago, gave a talk today on Overcoming obstacles in formulation analysis through analytical chemistry-vehicle issues from the perspective of an industrial chemist. Keller is an analytical chemist with expertise in chromatography and electroanalytical chemistry who works as a director at Charles River Laboratories, the Michigan branch of a world-wide pharmaceutical company that started in Virginia in the 1950s. Keller is pictured next to our old atomic absorption spectrometer which was an instrument he used in his upper-level chemistry courses. It was replaced in 2013 with our microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometer which has similar capabilities. Keller's talk was planned for the senior seminar course (of just 12 students), so it was amazing to have an extra 44 students attend. You can find out more about the company visit at https://www.criver.com/ 

Professor Rizk receives grant for scientific literacy

Professor Rizk was just awarded a generous grant from the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund to promote science literacy through the arts. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund supports education and research in biomedical sciences to improve human health. This grant will support Rizk's efforts in bringing public awareness to climate change and human health through the art and science of protein structures. Rizk, along with IU South Bend graduate Maggie Fink (currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Notre Dame), will plan and hold a series of talks and workshops this summer and fall to increase public awareness and restore trust in science. This work is a continuation of the outreach efforts started by Rizk and Fink through their science communication blog: www.foldingmoonlight.com (Instagram @foldingmoonlight).  Congratulations Professor Rizk! 

Professor Clear Publishes Research

Professor Clear just published research this month in the peer-reviewed journal Free Radial Biology and Medicine.  This work is the result of a massive collaborative effort across three states (Indiana, Arkansas, Texas) and multiple institutions. The article title may look intimidating, but biochemistry majors have seen Coenzyme Q in the electron transport chain where it shuttles electrons in the inner mitochondrial membrane after they are dumped there by NADH or FADH2. And oxidation of H2S essentially means that hydrogen atoms are being removed and/or oxygen atoms are being added to change H2S into something else. Clear has bustling research group, especially this past summer where he mentored three students each supported by a different agency: SMART grant, LSAMP grant, and the Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Research Fellowship. If you are interested in research in organic chemistry, Clear is the one to talk to.

Research Scientist Visits Our Senior Seminar Class

Dr. Bonnie Jaskowski Huge, a research scientist at the University of Notre Dame, visited our senior seminar class (CHEM-C 301) this semester.  She is well-known to our faculty because she earned her undergraduate degree (B.S. Chemistry) from our department before moving to Notre Dame to earn her doctoral degree.  Each student in this class must write a report and give an oral presentation, so Dr. Huge gave a presentation to serve as an example.  Her talk was titled "Electrophoretic Fractionation of Microbiota prior to Metagenomic Sequencing" and described how her team uses the different surface charge on different types of pathogens to separate types of pathogens so that genome sequencing on a microbial population is simplified by making separate runs on samples of single species rather than a single run on a sample of multiple species.  We are looking forward to a lot of great talks from the students later this semester.  Thanks, Dr. Huge, for coming to help our students!