Tags: Special Seminar


New Windows Into The Secret Lives of Cells

From the 17th through the 19th century, beautifully artistic drawings of living specimens were inextricably linked to biological discovery. However, for much of the 20th century, optical microscopy took a back seat to the powerful new fields of genetics and biochemistry. Starting in the 1980s, the tables started to turn again, thanks to the widespread availability of computers, lasers, sensitive detectors, and fluorescence labeling techniques.…


Multi-Dimensional Separations for Bacteria Identifications and Investigations of Antimicrobial Resistance

Bacterial infections are a major global health concern, with an estimated 1 in 8 deaths attributed to bacterial infections in 2019 alone. When a patient with a suspected infection arrives in a clinical setting, the first step to developing a treatment strategy is to identify the causative pathogen, followed by determination of antimicrobial therapeutics that are appropriate and effective. The challenge for both these essential steps is the…


Making Sense of Reaction Mechanisms: Developing Assessment Tools for the Learning of Organic Chemistry

Reasoning about underlying mechanisms of observed chemical phenomena lies at the core of scientific practices.1 To prepare for work as scientists and engineers, students should engage in scientific and engineering practices such as developing and using models to predict and explain phenomena, and constructing arguments from evidence.1-5 One way to engage students in these practices is through three-dimensional (3D) learning; 3D assessments…


Characterizing Students’ Engagement with Empirical Data

Engaging learners in science practices and sensemaking exposes learners to the uncertainty inherent in science and gives them opportunities to ‘practice’ the practices. I have accomplished this in two ways. The first way is by embedding these practices in assessments and class discourse. Class activities and assessments offer students experimental data and prompt them to generate and evaluate models, explanations, and arguments. For example,…


Research Seminar: Dr. Emmanuel Echeverri-Jimenez

Dr. Echeverri-Jiménez is a candidate for the newly created tenure-track faculty position in Chemical Education as part of the President’s Interdisciplinary Faculty Hiring Initiative in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Echeverri-Jiménez has a Ph.D. in Chemistry Education from North Carolina State University and a Masters in Organic Synthesis and Computational Chemistry from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He is a…


Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity (SURO) Symposium

The Department of Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity (SURO) program will present its final symposium on Friday, August 4, 2023 at 10 am in STEM-2 Room 1218. Below is a list of the student presenters and the times their presentations will start. Everyone is invited, and we especially encourage the groups that hosted SURO students to attend.      


Flashcards—Their Use in Chemistry

Increasing numbers of students are using electronic flashcard engine to study for basic chemistry content like names and symbols of the elements, names and formulas of polyatomic ions, and one-step transformations. We used a survey to compare two electronic flashcard engines–Quizlet and Anki–and determined which engine the research team should use to create electronic flashcard decks for students to utilize. The survey results shows that more…


BEYOND SURFACE Facilitates Electrocatalytic Reactions of Renewable Carbons

There has been growing interest to drive chemical reactions via the direct use of renewable electricity to address sustainability challenges. The success of the approach rests on the use of the right materials to efficiently catalyze electrochemical reactions. Thus, there have been intense efforts to engineer catalyst materials whose surface contains the desired active sites. Despite the success, there is still much room for improvement in the…


Unlocking the Power of Group 16 (and 17) in the Solid State

Solid-state materials chemistry focuses on metals and cationic substitutions, particularly those in oxide ceramics. Relative to oxides, chalcogenides and mixed anion systems have been relatively underexplored. The Macaluso Research Group aims to uncover the structural and electronic role of Groups 16 and 17 elements in solid-state materials. We employ laboratory X-ray diffraction, synchrotron and neutron scattering to elucidate local and average…


Crystal Growth from Exploratory Synthesis to Functional Device Fabrication

Single-crystalline materials play a crucial role in the modern semiconductor electronics industry and fundamental science. The ability to grow large single crystals with high purity and low concentration of defects allows us to build new types of devices such as high-resolution semiconductor radiation detectors. Another important application of crystals is fundamental research, where crystal growth enables rapid screening of phase diagrams,…
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