Hello students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends,
One of the fun things about chemistry is seeing the vigorous physical changes that happen upon chemical reactions (colors, shape changes, explosions, etc.).
As a part of our celebration of CSH’s 10-year anniversary, our faculty recorded some of their favorite demonstrations of chemical change, and recorded them. You can check them out here!
We are delighted to share that two of our faculty have received internal awards!
Dr. Ruben Parra, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry is the recipient of the 2021 URC Spirit of Inquiry Award
Here’s the award announcement:
“Ruben is an excellent example of the teacher-scholar: he was hired to do something unique at DePaul: teach and do research in the new field of computational chemistry. Computational chemistry research is of a theoretical nature, and highly mathematical. Chemical interactions at the molecular level are predicted or modeled using mathematical representations of chemical forces. Because the specialty was new, Ruben not only had to set up a productive research lab, but he also had to develop computational chemistry courses accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students.
This is where Ruben integrated teaching and scholarship with his students: Ruben set up his computational chemistry courses to include a major computational chemistry project. In a stroke of brilliance, Ruben realized that students would be especially inspired if their projects were original and unique, i.e., publishable. So as long as students did a careful and thorough series of computations, their work could lead to a co-authored journal article. Ruben has truly fused teaching and scholarship at DePaul.
Thus, Ruben met the challenge of creating something new at DePaul and has been enormously successful: seventeen of his peer-reviewed journal articles have been published with twenty-seven DePaul student coauthors (twenty undergraduate and seven graduate students).
One of the neat things about Ruben’s work is that his theoretical predictions can be tested by experimentalists, which allows Ruben to collaborate both within the University and more broadly, both nationally and internationally. One area of Ruben’s work in particular — studying a type of chemical bond involving the element hydrogen, known as ‘Hydrogen bonding’ – has been lauded and cited by the most active and influential chemists in the field. And Ruben has found ways to combine his study of H-bonding with modern and important new materials in the field of chemistry, such as nanotubes (made of elemental carbon, or metal oxides, or organic macromolecules), which have remarkable properties that could lead to lightweight and strong new materials and applications (fabrics, building materials, medical devices, ionophores, etc.).”
You can check out Dr. Parra’s publications here
He most recently published a paper with DePaul student co-authors in The Journal of Undergraduate Chemistry Research. The article can be found here.
Also, Dr. Graham Griffin, Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry, was the recipient of the 2021 QIC Excellence in Teaching Award
Congratulations to both Dr. Parra and Dr. Griffin!
As many of us are off from work on Memorial Day, we take this opportunity to get together with our friends and family to enjoy some tasty barbecue meals! Some of that delicious taste and aroma comes from the production of phenolic compounds from burning charcoal, in addition to the old faithful Maillard Reaction that occurs in meats. Make sure to marinate your meats to avoid the formation of heterocyclic amines! This infographic is a great one from http://www.compoundchem,com. You can find more about the chemistry of barbeque here.
Dr. Niedziela is serious about his BBQ and you can check the videos of his setup and work here.
Also check out our Instagram for more memorial-day-related infographics
The Catalyst 