Summer Research with McMillen

Professor Doug McMillen used to be our full-time organic chemist, but over the years he has risen through the administration and now holds the title of Vice Chancellor. This spring was his last semester teaching organic chemistry for us - which he did graciously on top of his other duties to fill an unexpected vacancy. But chemistry will always be one of his passions and his dedication to chemistry and our students is clearly illustrated this summer as he mentors biochemistry major Brody Deming on a research project.  Deming is a junior in our department and is considering going to medical school after graduation.  He has nicely summarized their project for us:

Dr. McMillen and I are working on researching a greener way to oxidize alcohols to carbonyls. A lot of the reagents used in today’s chemistry can be harsh to humans and the environment. Examples of these reagents are potassium dichromate and pyridinium chlorochromate (PCC). Potassium dichromate and PCC are listed as carcinogenic and are very toxic to aquatic life. It is important to find greener reagents to minimize risk for the chemist and help the environment. In the past, McMillen has researched with N-iodosuccinimide with good results. It was found that the iodine in N-iodosuccinimide could be activated using a strong base. This poses a problem though because N-iodosuccinimide is expensive. We decided that this summer we would work on trying to find a way to activate I2 instead of N-iodosuccinimide since it would be cheaper. Thus far, the results are promising but we are trying to find a way to maximize yield.

Is There Ice Cream in Space?

The Biology Chemistry Club held an outreach event at the River Park Public Library yesterday evening to help launch the library's summer reading challenge. They made ice cream, talked about space, and let kids look at plants and rocks under the microscope. This was a huge success with more than 50 children participating. Each child took home their own painting of the moon. We are very proud that our students repeatedly volunteer to foster scientific interest in the next generation of students.

Awards and Graduates 2019

Professor (and Assistant Dean) Bill Feighery celebtrates with graduates Christian Moreno (BS Chemistry), Conor McGee (BS Chemistry), and Sandy Ho (BS Biochemistry) during this year's graduation ceremony. A few of our graduates are taking a year off before pursuing further education, but a couple are heading directly to graduate school and others are moving into industry. As always, our students excel in their coursework, research, and extracurricular activities and the department was able to hand out several awards at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Honors Convocation several days before.  Congratulations to all of our graduates and award winners!

Freshman Chemistry Achievement Award
  Molly Fox
ACS Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Award
  Christopher Mochel
Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry
  Anna McBeth
Student Excellence Award in Biochemistry
  Sandy Ho
Student Excellence Award in Chemistry
  Conor McGee
Joseph H. Ross Seminar Award
   Maggie Fink
Zeider Excellence in Biochemistry Scholarship
   Audrey Doue
Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Fellowship
   Ashley Catanzarite

IU South Bend hosts local Chemistry Olympiad

France is going crazy with chemistry this year. They are celebrating 100 years of IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) by hosting two international chemistry meetings. They have also declared nationwide that the academic year from 2018 to 2019 is the "year of chemistry" for university students down to primary school students in accord with UNESCO declaring 2019 to be the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. So what does this have to do with IU South Bend? It turns out that France is also hosting the International Chemistry Olympiad, which is where winners from the US National Chemistry Olympiad compete as a team against other nations. But to get to the national competition, local competitions first occur throughout the country. 

IU South Bend and Saint Mary's College alternate hosting the local competition for the Chemistry Olympiad; this year was our turn. Laboratory supervisor Connie Fox and assistant Brenda Beatty were contacted ahead of time to order chemicals, prepare solutions, and set up instruments for today's competition.  The high school students spent the morning taking a written test and then after a break for lunch put all of their problem solving skills to work in the laboratory for chemical synthesis and analysis. 

Free ACS Membership for BS Chemistry Graduates

Our department offers three degrees: BS Chemistry, BS Biochemistry, and BA Chemistry. The Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry is certified by the American Chemical Society (ACS) which holds national and regional meetings, supports student chapters at colleges and universities, publishes the weekly magazine Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), records and provides chemical information through its Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), and supplies a fountain of resources for chemists in school and in industry. This year, the ACS is offering a free three-year membership to our graduates of the BS Chemistry degree. Congratulations to all our graduates!

Spring Semester Research Presentations

[Top Left] Chemistry major Abigail Praklet has been working with analytical chemist Dr. Muna for several years and will graduate this semester. On April 11, she presented her final research at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) on the campus of Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. Her project was the development of a Sensitive Stripping Voltammetric Method for Detecting Lead in Water and Soil. Praklet’s research was funded by a SMART Summer Research Grant and IUSB work study funds.

[Top Right] Pierre Emmanuel N’Guetta gave an oral presentation as a member at the 134th Indiana Academy of Science Annual Meeting on March 30 in downtown Indianapolis. Although he is a biology major, N’Guetta’s research Engineering a Biosensor for the Herbicide Glyphosate was conducted over several semesters in Dr. Rizk’s biochemistry laboratory. N’Guetta remarks that giving presentations helped develop “confidence in myself as a scientist and I was also able to showcase the great education I received here at IU South Bend. Research is definitely my passion and IUSB really allowed me to discover it.” 

[Bottom Left] Hunter Richman, another chemistry major, presented a poster at Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Washington, D.C. in late February. His poster Understanding the Kinetics and Thermodynamics of Post-synthetic Ligand Exchange in Cu(II) Metal-organic Cages described the research he conducted last summer at the University of Delaware. Richman enjoyed this opportunity to present his worked and he learned a lot from attending other poster sessions and several lectures from scientists and inventors.

[Bottom Right] Finally there was a team poster presentation last Friday at our annual Undergraduate Research Conference from the students of the fall 2019 CHEM-C 486 Biological Chemistry Laboratory class: Expression and Purification of Adenosine Deaminase and Mutants Associated with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency. The work was done over the course of the semester by Ahmad Alsahfi, Sayvon Esper, Winnie Ihano, Anna McBeth (pictured left), Hunter Richman, and Caitlin Schulz (pictured right),

New IR and UV-Visible Spectrometers

This spring the department introduced two new spectrometers to our student laboratories. The Jasco FT/IR-4700 is a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer that can probe the vibrational modes of samples. It comes with a single reflection ATR attachment for easy study of liquids. We also have two gas cells that are compatible with the instrument. IR spectrometers are used extensively in the sophomore organic chemistry courses but they see use in other advanced courses as well. We also added a third UV-visible diode array spectrometer (Cary 8454) from Agilent Technologies and upgraded both the software and operating systems for our other two diode array spectrometers. These instruments are heavily used in the junior/senior biochemistry laboratory course and also in our two biochemistry research labs.