Faculty attend education conference at summer's end

 

The 25th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education was held at the University of Notre Dame this summer. Department chair Gretchen Anderson, associate professor Grace Muna, assistant professor Shahir Rizk, laboratory supervisor Connie Fox, and adjunct professor Merilee Britt eagerly took advantage of the close locale. The conference started on Sunday, July 29 and ended on Thursday, August 2. 

During the conference Dr. Marya Lieberman of Notre Dame, who gave one of the plenary lectures, invited instructors teaching undergraduate analytical chemistry courses to participate in a project to analyze pharmaceutical drugs distributed in developing nations to test their quality. Muna's analytical chemistry class (CHEM-C 310) will analyze levofloxacin using HPLC this semester as part of the project to give her students a chance to do real life application of analytical chemistry.

Rizk (pictured below) gave a presentation titled "Transitioning students from the classroom to the world; creating better prepared and more engaged scientists" based on current, and planned, efforts many in our senior-level biochemistry courses (CHEM-C 484, 485, 486). While success in the classroom for four years is great, it is success for the rest of one's life in the real world that truly matters. Whether students graduate from IU South Bend to pursue graduate school, medical school, industry, or some other endeavor, we hope that we are giving them the tools to succeed.

 

 

Summer research with Muna

Professor Grace Muna is the analytical chemist of the department. She shares with Professor Rizk the uncanny ability to keep her lab occupied year-round with undergraduate research students, which is a very difficult task because coursework typically pulls students away during the fall and spring semesters. This summer she has three students working with her on projects combining electrochemistry and nanochemistry.

Stacey Jean-Baptiste (pictured middle) is a biology major and LSAMP scholar. She is working on developing a sensitive method to detect homocysteine in biological samples by electrodepositing gold nanoparticles onto a glassy  carbon electrode to modify its surface. Gold nanoparticles are expected to catalyze the oxidation of homocysteine. Thiol-containing amino acids, such as homocysteine, play crucial roles in key physiological processes; homocysteine levels have been linked to a number of health disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, developing a sensitive method to measure homocysteine in biological samples such as urine is important for prevention and treatment of these diseases.

Another biology major, Joel Green, (pictured left) came on board just three weeks ago. He stopped by to chat with Stacey and he took so long that Dr. Muna thought she should put him to work. She asked him whether he would be interested in research and he was up to it. Joel is working on the same project with Stacey, however, he's modifying gold (not glassy carbon) electrodes with gold nanoparticles and testing their performance on the catalytic oxidation of homocysteine and cysteine. This allows the group to do a comparison study to see which modified electrode outperforms the other in terms of selectivity, sensitivity and stability.

Chemistry major Joseph Williamson (pictured right) was continuing the ongoing work of developing a portable method to detect lead in water. He was testing whether bismuth nanoparticles on glassy carbon electrodes can be stabilized by a nafion polymer (based on Teflon) to enhance their long term stability. Joseph recently moved back to his home state, and will be continuing his education at University of Arkansas in the fall.

Summer research with Rizk

The biochemistry lab of Professor Shahir Rizk (pictured second from the right) is rarely quiet during the academic year – and it is even busier this summer with three undergraduate research students. Biology major Pierre-Emmanuel N'Guetta (pictured far right) is continuing work on a project to develop a biosensor for glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp. He began the project last year with the help of a SMART grant, and now he has a protein-based fluorescent biosensor that can detect micromolar amounts of the pollutant. He is currently trying to use this biosensor to test for glyphosate in soil samples.

Biochemistry major Winnie Ihano (pictured far left) is funded by the LSAMP program. Her goal is to express and purify mutants of the human enzyme adenosine deaminase. This enzyme is important in the degradation of the nucleotide adenosine. Individuals with mutations in this enzyme suffer from Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID), a fatal disease that leaves its victims susceptible to all kinds of infections. Winnie is generating recombinant forms of these mutants found in SCID patients and trying to isolate them in order to characterize them in the lab.

Biology major Chris Stewart (pictured second from the left) is also working on adenosine deaminase. His work, funded by a SMART grant, is concerned with engineering antibody fragments that can bind to the active form of the enzyme. By recognizing the active form of the enzyme, we hope that these antibody fragments can be used to convert the less active mutants found in SCID patients into active enzymes with the hopes of reversing the effect of the disease (at least in the test-tube).

In addition to his research with these three students, Rizk has been busy with other projects. He attended the first Regional Cottrell Scholar meeting in April at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, at the invitation of St. Mary’s chemist Dr. Kathryn Haas, a recent Cottrell Scholar who had previously taught at IU South Bend for a year before teaching at St. Mary’s College. The Cottrell foundation supports chemistry, physics, and astronomy professors who are developing innovative research and teaching programs at their institutions through their Cottrell Scholars Program. The meeting included former Cottrell scholars and members of their research groups as well as hopeful future Cottrell Scholars (such as Rizk).The meeting included presentations and roundtable discussions on research and teaching methods. Rizk had the chance to present a poster on his research in protein engineering and his teaching strategies that use discussion sections to introduce STEM majors to current events in science policy and new research developments through assigned readings and guest lectures by practicing scientists from academia and industry. Rizk was invited to submit a full application for the Cottrell Scholar program in July and we wish him success in this endeavor. 

Summer research with Marmorino

No goggles for these students. Chemistry majors Conor McGee and Christian Moreno are spending the summer working on quantum mechanical problems with Professor Matt Marmorino. Their work is a combination of theory and computation - not a single chemical will be harmed in their research. Instead they'll be making good use of Mathematica to run number-crunching programs that they are very busy writing.

McGee is funded by the Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Scholarship which is awarded each summer to just one chemistry or biochemistry major. He is testing (on the hydrogen atom) some old, but underutilized, techniques to calculate bounds to the energy and position moments for atoms and molecules. These techniques require information that is typically not available for traditional trial wave functions, but Conor is introducing an adjustable defect into the wave functions that, while reducing the quality of the wave function, allows for atypical information about the system to be calculated and utilized. If the approach works well on the hydrogen atom, then it should also work on more complex atoms and molecules too.

Moreno's work  is supported by one of several Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation  (LSAMP) grants provided to STEM students at IU South Bend. He is testing simple quantum mechanical models to duplicate the known trends (such as atomic radius, ionization energy, and ground-state electron configuration) in the periodic table. The hydrogenic model, which ignores electron-electron repulsion is too simple to reproduce the trends; but the commonly-used Hartree-Fock method, which incorporates repulsion, is too complex for the beginning science student to fully appreciate and lacks a [rigorous] simple orbital interpretation.  Moreno is testing a model based on first-order perturbation theory that partly mimics the hydrogen model in simplicity, but incorporates at least some of the repulsion to reproduce the periodic trends. He's hoping that he doesn't need to deal with the repulsion in its full glory, because that is quite a task.

Outreach to Discovery Midde School

Last Friday, Professor Grace Muna went to Discovery Middle School in Granger to advertise science to the children. She was accompanied by some of her past and present research students Stacey Jean-Baptiste, Keon Jones, and Joseph Williamson. Muna and her team let the children perform several mini experiments, but one of their favorites was the production of worms using "worm goo" and "worm activator" available from Steve Spangler Science. The worm goo is an aqueous  solution of sodium alginate (a carbohydrate polymer found in seaweed) and the activator is just aqueous calcium chloride (used in pickles). The calcium displaces the sodium and with its greater charge (2+ not 1+) is able to bind strands of polymer together so that they lengthen and thicken to produce a precipitate of sorts that looks like gooey worms! 

Awards and Graduates 2018

While it is just the end of another year for many students, it is the end of journey for others. Whether they are off to graduate school, medical school, industry, or a gap-year of relaxation and soul-searching, our chemistry and biochemistry graduates are preparing to embark on a new adventure outside of IU South Bend - and most likely outside of South Bend itself. While we certainly congratulate all our graduates for their success, we would like to highlight those graduates - and their non-graduating classmates - who earned special recognition this year by winning awards and scholarships. Last night was an enjoyable time as Professor Gretchen Anderson (as Chair) announced our department's prize winners at the Honors Convocation of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Each student then each received a certificate acknowledging their achievement on stage from Professor Bill Feighery (as Associate Dean).

 

Freshman Chemistry Achievement Award
  Audrey Doue
ACS Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Award
  Abigail Praklet
Student Excellence Award in Biochemistry
  Michele Costantino
  Khai Pham
Joseph H. Ross Seminar Award
  Khai Pham
Zeider Excellence in Biochemistry Scholarship
  Caitlin Schulz
George V. Nazaroff Scholarship
  Sandy Ho
  Conor McGee
Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Scholarship
  Conor McGee
RC Med Review Research Fellowship
  Sandy Ho

Professor Rizk receives teaching award

Assistant Professor Shahir Rizk was hired in 2015 to help with our expanding biochemistry chemistry. His sharp research skills and natural charisma quickly attracted a team of student researchers that seems to work non-stop. But if there was any doubt that his teaching abilities were are as sharp as his research skills, they've been put to rest because last week it was announced that Rizk was awarded a Trustee's Teaching award for, what else, excellence in teaching. While Shahir is well-known in the department for teaching junior-senior level biochemistry lecture and laboratory, he also teaches students in their first semester (freshman general chemistry discussion) and their last semester (chemistry senior seminar). Congratulations, Rizk!