Congratulations to Dr. Todd Harrop of the UGA Department of Chemistry, who has been selected to receive the 2021 UGA Graduate School Outstanding Mentoring Award in the Life and Physical Sciences. This student-driven award recognizes excellence in a variety of mentoring functions to encourage and reward innovation and effectiveness in mentoring graduate students during their educational experience.

Oxiranes are a class of cyclic ethers formed in abundance during low-temperature combustion of hydrocarbons and biofuels. While rate coefficients for the formation of 2,3-dimethyloxirane are reported extensively, subsequent reaction mechanisms of the cyclic ether are not. As a result, chemical kinetics mechanisms commonly adopt simplified chemistry to describe the consumption of 2,3-dimethyloxirane, which may introduce mechanism truncation error – uncertainty derived from missing or incomplete chemistry.

The University of Georgia Department of Chemistry (chem.uga.edu) invites applications for a tenure track faculty position in bioinorganic chemistry, beginning August 1, 2021, at the level of Assistant Professor.

Reactive molecular dynamics (RMD) is a branch of molecular dynamics in which chemical reactions can be simulated. This is made possible by a special group of force fields (e.g. ReaxFF) which allow for dynamic bond orders to be calculated as a function of bond distance. RMD simulations are particularly useful in situations where experiment would be too difficult or expensive to justify without some indication of success. They can also serve to help elucidate reaction mechanisms for reactions in which the chemistry is not well defined.

Tetrapyrroles serve as a class of small molecules that can perform diverse and complex reactions. From the transport and storage of oxygen in animals to the conversion of light into chemical energy in plants, these macrocyclic cofactors are essential to life on earth.¹ The most well-studied of the tetrapyrrole family are the iron containing heme porphyrins.

Our group is fundamentally interested in the design of a series of novel multi-functional nanoscale systems, using diverse chemical strategies. Such a multi-functional material often possesses unique catalytic and optoelectronic properties that are distinctive from and at times, superior to those of its individual constituent components. In essence, our hope and expectation is that chemical synthesis can be used to tune and tailor structure – property correlations.

X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) produce high intensity X-rays with attosecond pulse durations by “undulating” an electron beam at high speeds. The generation of these X-ray pulses allow for Attosecond Pump-Probe Spectroscopy to be used on dilute, gas phase samples. However, XFELs have a problem with shot to shot spectral variation, and due to this, they are not well suited to absorption measurements.

Six graduate students from the UGA Department of Chemistry have been named recipients of the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 2021. The UGA Center for Teaching and Learning administers the Outstanding Teaching Assistant (OTA) award, sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Instruction. This award recognizes teaching assistants who demonstrate superior teaching skills while serving in the classroom or laboratory.