Welcome back! Chemistry and Biochemistry WQ Events Coming up.

Hello Students, Alumni, and Friends! Welcome to 2020!

We are very excited for the new year and several events that are coming up soon. First, we will be having a CHE Lab Open House on the 3rd and 4th floors of McGowan South On Thursday, January 16th from 12-2 pm. Labs will be open and have faculty or students in them to chat about the research they do. This is a great time to learn about research in the department and think about groups you might be interested in joining.

Secondly, If you are a first-year student interested in research, also check out the “Rising STEM Scholars” Program open house Friday January 17th in McGowan South 103 at 1 pm.

Finally, if you are interested in Studying abroad, Dr. Grice and his BIO collaborator Dr. Bystriansky will be having info sessions this coming Monday and Tuesday about their study abroad program to Spain. See the flier below:

Study Abroad Infosession Jan 11th

Drs. Kyle Grice (Chemistry) and Jason Bystriansky (Biology) are running their study abroad program this coming spring and summer. If you want to learn more, come to the infosession on January 11th from 6-7pm in McGowan South 104. Applications to the program are due by February 1st through the Study Abroad Website.

Research Connections Across the Globe

We wanted to highlight how the faculty in the Department of Chemistry have collaborations in research and teaching that span many different levels. These connections include those within the department as well as connections to other parts of the university, to Chicago, to the US, and even to the world. Let’s start with research collaboration on the national and global level and work our way back down to the local levels.

DePaul chemistry has a broad impact that extends well beyond our Lincoln Park campus! Below are just a few of the highlights of national and international research collaborations that DePaul chemistry faculty have been involved in.

• Dr. Kyle Grice has several active collaborative research projects. Working with Dr. Alfredo Angeles-Boza from UConn, and collaborators from other institutions such as Brookhaven National Laboratory, he recently published a paper in the journal Inorganic Chemistry studying potential CO2 reduction catalysts by IR-SEC (Infrared-Spectroelectrochemistry) and bulk electrolysis (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b02384). He is also working with Prof. John Keith from the University of Pittsburgh on developing catalysts for CO₂ reduction (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236115001477).

 

• Dr. Grice is also co-developing a research-based study abroad program to Spain with Dr. Jason Bystriansky of the DePaul Biology Department. Details of the program will be discussed in a future Catalyst post.

 

• Dr. Caitlin Karver recently published the synthesis and optimization of triaminopyrimidine compounds as inhibitors of caspases involved in inflammation (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960894X16310538). Several of these compounds have been shipped to collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. There they will be tested for the activity in blood samples from patients with inflammatory conditions like Lupus.

 

• Dr. Wendy Wolbach is a geochemist interested in studying environmental changes associated with meteorite impacts and mass extinctions. She searches for forms of elemental carbon in sedimentary rocks dating to the time of known impacts and extinctions by chemically isolating and quantifying elemental carbon in various forms: soot and charcoal (from fires triggered by an impact) or nanodiamonds formed in target rock from the pressure of impact. Sedimentary rocks can come from within or near a known crater or, if the impact was large enough to wreak global havoc, from anywhere that sediments accumulated at the time. In pursuing this research, Dr. Wolbach collaborates with teams of field geologists spread across the globe, including the United Kingdom, The People’s Republic of China, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Russia, Netherlands, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and Chile!

Study Abroad Short Course in Spain, 2017

We hope everyone is as excited about the research lab open house coming up on Thursday as we are! Speaking of research, Dr. Grice from our department and Dr. Bystriansky from Biology are running a research-intensive Study Abroad short-course program designed for science students in the Summer of 2017. The program involves taking classes in SQ2017 that amount to 8 credits, and preparing for a research trip to Spain in the summer. The trip itself is in the summer for 2 weeks, from July 6 to July 23  in Cadiz, Spain. We’ve attached an announcement flier here, and you can learn more by contacting Dr. Grice or Dr. Bystriansky or by going to one of the info sessions they will be holding.