Check out the flier, and pass this info along to those who might be interested!
oSTEM meeting this Friday
Research and Publications
With Autumn quarter ending, we move into winter break. Winter break is a great time to get involved in research. Many faculty are around until mid December and its a good time to get trained without also having classes at the same time. We have 14 research-active faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Faculty profiles can be found here and anyone listed as “Assistant Professor”, “Associate Professor”, or “Professor” has a research group. We have a wide variety of research interests. Take a look and reach out to faculty via email. Every quarter is different in terms of who has room in their laboratory. For example, Drs. Griffin and Vadola are currently accepting students. Even if a professor isn’t accepting students in a quarter, there is always turnover as students graduate and move on to other opportunities.
Research can be slow, but eventually the goal is to share our work with the global science community through presentations and publications. Peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals are the way that most research is published, often with student co-authors.
In 2021, our faculty published several papers and we would like to highlight a few here (in alphabetically order by professor last name):
Dr. Grice published two papers with DePaul student co-authors in 2021. One on CO2 reduction to methane, and another on a computational study of a strained organic molecule.
Dr. Griffin, in collaboration with Dr. Vadola, published a paper on the photochemistry of organic molecules that were synthesized in Dr. Vadola’s lab.
Dr. Kharas has been publishing papers on Chemrxiv, an open-access pre-print server where you can publish works before they are peer-reviewed to get feedback. These papers involve syntheses and polymerization reactions performed by DePaul students.
Dr. Wolbach published a really interesting collaborative geochemistry paper on how a historic city in modern Jordan was destroyed by a cosmic airburst.
So take a look at faculty research and reach out to faculty you are interested in working with! All students are welcome to do research, no matter their major. Some faculty might want students to have taken certain classes to have specific background experience, but many will take students even in their first year at DePaul!
Meet and Greet this Thurs 11-12
Join us on Thursday either in person in Levan 307 or on zoom for a Meet and Greet. We will introduce the faculty and staff and also briefly talk about research as well! Here’s the link
Join Our Department Discord Server!
Just a reminder that we have a departmental Discord server, where we can chat synchronously and asynchronously. We started it during remote learning in 2020, but want to keep it going. Come join the conversations!
Here’s an invite link: https://discord.gg/gYT8Juk
Read the community guidelines, then introduce yourself in the introductions section, and you’ll be given access to the the channels in the server.
All DePaul majors are welcome! We also have alumni on the server, so its a great way to connect with former students as well.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry!
Every year the Nobel Prizes are announced in early October. Today, the prize for chemistry was announced. This year, two chemists share the prize for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis. Asymmetric organocatalysis involves generating chiral products selectively and efficiently. If you’ve taken organic chemistry I (CHE230), then you’ve seen R and S chirality (kind of like how your right and left hands look the same but are non-superimposable mirror images), and that is exactly what asymmetric organocatalysis installs in molecules. Even with the same connectivity, two different isomers (and R and an S isomer) can have very different biological activities. This is because your body is inherently chiral as well!
Here’s the announcement: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2021/summary/
oSTEM Chapter starting back up
Hello Chem and Biochem students, faculty, staff, and friends,
The oSTEM chapter is starting back up in person. oSTEM works to create a supporting community and empower LGBTQ+ students in STEM (of any major) at DePaul.
Here’s the flier:
Welcome Back!
Hi Chemistry and Biochemistry course students of all majors, alumni, and friends!
We are back in the fall quarter, and everyone is getting settled into their schedules. Remember that today is the last day to drop a course from your schedule and not have it show up on your transcript. (Here’s the Academic Calendar for the year, it’s good to put important dates on your calendar: https://academics.depaul.edu/calendar/Pages/default.aspx
Remember to keep in touch with your academic advisor about things, and also use your Instructors’ office hours for help! If you are in a class that has a Supplementary Instructor (SI), check out their sessions too.
We will be having events this quarter, including a “Meet and Greet” and probably a lab open-house. Keep your eyes open here and for info from your instructors.
Also, we still have a discord server going for communications in addition to this blog, our twitter, facebook, and instagram.
Join the Discord server here if you haven’t joined already! Follow the instructions upon joining and you will be given access to the community channels.
We have channels with opportunities such as grants, scholarships, and research experiences, as well as channels for chatting about all sorts of things (chemistry and non-chemistry!).
A post will follow later today with info on how to get involved in research if you are interested. We will also send out info about to join Chemclub soon as well!
Stay Connected with Discord!
Hello Students and Alumni of the department,
One of the things we created during the pandemic was a Discord server to connect with students, alumni, faculty and staff. We plan on keeping it going as a way to engage asynchronously with each other. Join here if you haven’t joined already! Follow the instructions upon joining and you will be given access to the community channels.
We have channels with opportunities such as grants, scholarships, and research experiences, as well as channels for chatting about all sorts of things (chemistry and non-chemistry!).
We hope to see you there. All majors as welcome, as are alumni!
Chemistry demonstrations for the CSH 10-year anniversary celebration
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!
Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Awards!
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!
The Catalyst 