Dr. Melanie Reber and Dr. Christopher Newton, Assistant Professors in the UGA Department of Chemistry, have each received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their research. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. 

UGA Department of Chemistry Assistant Professor Dr. Amanda Frossard is the 2024 recipient of the Fred C. Davison Early Career Scholar Award. Established in 2015 and named in honor of the University of Georgia’s 18th President, this award recognizes outstanding accomplishment and evidence of potential future success in scholarship, creative work or research by an early career faculty member in the sciences.

The UGA Department of Chemistry will hold its 2024 Alumni Lecture and Awards Banquet on Friday, April 26, and the Golf Scramble a week later on Saturday, May 4. The events begin at 4:00 p.m. with the annual Alumni Lecture, featuring Prof. Catherine Murphy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in Room 1218 of the iSTEM-2 building. Following the lecture, the Awards Banquet will be held in the Magnolia Room at the Georgia Center. Social hour begins at 6:00 p.m., dinner is served at 7:00 p.m. and will be followed by the awards presentation.

While it is well established that atmospheric aerosols directly interact with solar radiation and indirectly alter cloud physical properties, there remains a sizeable uncertainty in aerosol influence on climate.¹ Challenges in constraining aerosol influence arise from their complexity at the individual particle-scale as well as the global-scale. At the particle-scale, aerosols may be internally mixed, being comprised of many different molecular species which alter the particle’s direct and indirect climate effects.

In the field of omics, while single omics techniques have proven adequate, it has been observed that using multiple omics techniques in conjunction yields more thorough and informative sample profiles. The rapid gas-phase structural separation of ion mobility-mass spectrometry is beneficial for high-throughput multi-omics.

As part of their ongoing commitment to outreach, the Newton lab from the UGA Department of Chemistry recently hosted Copper Callahan, a 2024 Governor's Honors semifinalist in science from Clarke Central High School in Athens. Dr. Newton had met Copper's high school teacher, Mr. Robert Pulliam, and discussed Dr. Newton's interest in providing outreach and mentorship opportunities for local students. Mr. Pulliam then suggested that the Newton lab could be helpful in aiding Copper in preparation for his upcoming Governor's Honors selection process.

Gold nanocrystals of controlled size and shape have tunable optical properties that enable new science.  Upon illumination with resonant light, these gold nanocrystals can not only scatter light but also generate plasmons (coherent oscillations of conduction band electrons).  These plasmons, in turn, can produce local electric fields and heat.  All these modalities mean that gold nanocrystals can serve as excellent contrast and imaging agents in aqueous matrices. In this talk I will describe the synthesis and shape control of these nano