UK Department of Chemistry Regional Undergraduate Poster Competition

Jacobs Science Building - Second and Third floors (check-in located in JSB 261M)

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky will hold its annual Regional Poster Session for Undergraduates on Friday, March 29. Come participate in this opportunity to share your research and network with other undergraduate researchers in the region. There is no registration fee!

Abstracts are due by March 22, 2024 at 5pm. To submit an abstract and register, click here.

To view a copy of last year's abstract booklet, click here.

Note to UK students: Students in CHE 395 planning to graduate or otherwise conclude their research are required to participate in the Poster Session if they have not done so in the past.

Please contact the department if you have questions.

Awards

We thank the Lexington Section of the American Chemical Society for graciously funding the awards for this poster competition.

UK Department of Chemistry Regional Undergraduate Poster Competition

Jacobs Science Building - Second and Third floors (check-in located in JSB 261M)

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky will hold its annual Regional Poster Session for Undergraduates on Friday, March 31, 2023. Come participate in this opportunity to share your research and network with other undergraduate researchers in the region. There is no registration fee!

Abstracts are due by Friday, March 17, 2023. To submit an abstract and register, click here.

To view a copy of this year's abstract booklet, click here.

Note to UK students: Students in CHE 395 planning to graduate or otherwise conclude their research are required to participate in the Poster Competition if they have not done so in the past.

Please contact the department if you have questions.

Awards

Past winners include students from:

We thank the Lexington Section of the American Chemical Society for graciously funding the awards for this poster competition.

Archives

The Department of Chemistry hosts an annual Graduation Celebration and Awards Ceremony to recognize the outstanding achievements of our students on an annual basis.

For a list of recipients and graduates, please refer to the 2023 Graduation Celebration Program.

Abstract: From environmental and economic standpoints, molecular oxygen represents the ideal oxidant for chemical transformations. It is readily available, inexpensive (particularly if used without separation from air) and environmentally benign. However, more expensive and/or hazardous oxidants are often employed in homogeneous metal-catalyzed oxidation reactions. An insufficient knowledge of how transition metal complexes react with molecular oxygen has inhibited catalyst design of effective aerobic systems. Kinetic and mechanistic studies of the reactions of oxygen with various late metal complexes, including metal alkyls and hydrides, will be presented along with our nascent mechanistic understanding of these reactions. The generality of these aerobic oxidation reactions and the potential for incorporation into hydrocarbon functionalization strategies will be discussed.

Dr. Karen Goldberg
Vagelos Professor of Energy Research
University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Goldberg earned her A.B. from Barnard College, her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and performed postdoctoral studies at The Ohio State University, she joined the faculty at Illinois State University, a primarily undergraduate institution in 1989. In 1995, she moved to the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle and in 2010, became the Nicole A. Boand Endowed Professor in Chemistry at UW. From 2007-2017, Professor Goldberg served as Director of the first NSF Phase II Center for Chemical Innovation, the Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis (CENTC), a collaborative effort between 18 principal investigators and their students at 14 institutions across North America. In 2017, she moved to her current position at Penn.

Professor Goldberg is best known for her work developing mechanistic understanding of fundamental organometallic reactions and for application of that knowledge to the creation and optimization of new catalytic systems. Her lab has made significant contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms of C-H, C-C and C-X reductive elimination and oxidative addition reactions, b-hydride elimination reactions and the insertion of molecular oxygen into metal-hydride and metal-carbon bonds. Professor Goldberg has been an invited speaker at conferences and universities around the world and has published over 125 papers. More than 60 graduate students and postdoctoral research associates and over 70 undergraduate students have trained in her laboratories.

Professor Goldberg has served on the Advisory Boards of various American Chemical Society (ACS) and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journals. She co-Chaired the 2012 Gordon Research Conference on Green Chemistry and served as Chair for the Chemistry Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017. She currently serves as a member of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology (BCST) at the National Academy of Sciences, as a member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Solvay Institutes, on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several NSF Research Centers, as a Councilor for the Division of Inorganic Chemistry at the ACS and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Barnard College.  Professor Goldberg received the 2015 Carol Tyler Award from the International Precious Metal Institute and the 2016 ACS Award for Organometallic Chemistry. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Group Website

Department Host: Dr. Aron Huckaba

For more information about Dr. Lyle Dawson and the Dawson Lecture series, please visit this page. 

The Department of Chemistry hosts an annual Graduation Celebration and Awards Ceremony to recognize the outstanding acheivements of our students on an annual basis.

For a list of recipients and graduates, please refer to the 2022 Graduation Celebration Program. 

This lecture series commemorates the life and legacy of Professor Susan Odom, an energetic, productive, and driven faculty member in the Department of Chemistry from 2011 to 2021. It features speakers noted for outstanding research in Professor Odom’s fields of synthetic and materials chemistry.

Visit this page for more information on the Susan A. Odom lecture series.

Jodie L. Lutkenhaus

Bio: Jodie L. Lutkenhaus is holder of the Axalta Chair and Professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. Lutkenhaus received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Current research areas include polyelectrolytes, redox-active polymers, energy storage, and composites. She has received recognitions including World Economic Forum Young Scientist, Kavli Fellow, NSF CAREER, AFOSR Young Investigator, 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award. She is the past-Chair of the AICHE Materials Engineering & Sciences Division. Lutkenhaus is the Deputy Editor of ACS Applied Polymer Materials and a member of the U.S. National Academies Board of Chemical Sciences & Technology. 

"Redox-active Macromolecular Radicals for Metal-Free, Degradable Batteries"

Abstract: Because of the projected shortages of elements used in Li-ion batteries and limited battery recycling, alternative electrode chemistries are gaining interest. Ideally, this future battery would contain materials that are easily sourced with little environmental impact, would be degradable of recyclable, and would bear similar or better energy storage characteristics in comparison to Li-ion batteries. This talk will examine one such promising battery chemistry, that of macromolecular radicals. These polymers generally contain redox-active nitroxide radical groups that reversibly exchange electrons at rates much higher that of current metal oxide cathodes. This manifests as a higher power or a high charging rate. The current challenges for macromolecular radical batteries are to understand the redox mechanism, to increase the energy density in metal-free or aqueous conditions, and to consider a circular life cycle. Insight into the polymer’s redox mechanism is provided using electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring, in which mixed electron-ion-solvent transfer is quantified. This knowledge reveals why certain metal-free, aqueous electrolytes are well-suited to this polymer class. Last, an organic peptide battery that degrades on command into amino acids and byproducts provides a path forward toward recycling for a circular life cycle. Collaborative work on polypeptide redox flow batteries with the late Susan Odom is highlighted.

Speakers
	Dr. Erin Calipari Vanderbilt University Dr. Calipari received her PhD in Neuroscience in 2013 in the laboratory of Dr. Sara Jones at Wake Forest University School of Medicine where she studied how self-administered drugs altered dopaminergic function to drive addictive behaviors. She then went on to complete her postdoctoral training with Dr. Eric Nestler at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she used circuit probing techniques to understand the temporally specific neural signals that underlie motivation and reward learning. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Pharmacology. Her independent work seeks to characterize and modulate the precise circuits in the brain that underlie both adaptive and maladaptive processes in reward, motivation, and associative learning. Group Page
	Dr. Tim Harris Johns Hopkins University Timothy Harris is a research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He leads the Applied Physics and Instrumentation Group at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus, and is the originator of the project that produced the Neuropixels Si probe for extracellular recording in animals, mostly mice, and rats. He shares his time between Janelia and Johns Hopkins and is working on projects to enable recording 10-20,000 neurons in rodents and 30-50,000 neurons in non-human primates, as well as stimulate with high resolution. He received a BS in Chemistry at California Polytechnical State University, San Luis Obispo, and a PhD in Analytical Chemistry at Purdue University. Group Page
	Dr. Elizabeth Hillman Columbia University Elizabeth Hillman is professor of biomedical engineering and radiology at Columbia University and a member of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia. Hillman received her undergraduate degree in physics and Ph.D. in medical physics and bioengineering at University College London and completed post-doctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. In 2006, Hillman moved to Columbia University, founding the Laboratory for Functional Optical Imaging. Hillman’s research program focuses on the development and application of optical imaging and microscopy technologies to capture functional dynamics in the living brain. Most recently, she developed swept confocally aligned planar excitation (SCAPE) microscopy, a technique capable of very high speed volumetric imaging of neural activity in behaving organisms such as adult and larval Drosophila, zebrafish, C. elegans and the rodent brain. Hillman’s research program also includes exploring the interrelation between neural activity and blood flow in the brain, as the basis for signals detected by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Hillman is a fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA), the society of photo-optical instrumentation (SPIE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She has received the OSA Adolf Lomb Medal for contributions to optics, as well as early career awards from the Wallace Coulter Foundation, National Science Foundation and Human Frontier Science Program. Group Page
	Dr. Baljit Khakh University of California, Los Angeles Baljit Khakh completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in the laboratory of Patrick PA Humphrey. He completed postdoctoral fellowships in the laboratory of Graeme Henderson at the University of Bristol, and then in the laboratory of Henry A. Lester and Norman Davidson at California Institute of Technology. In 2001, Khakh became Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and in 2006 he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles where he is Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology. Khakh’s work has been recognized, including with the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, the Paul G. Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, and the Outstanding Investigator Award (R35) from NINDS. Group Page

2022 Naff Symposium Committee

Dr. Chris Richards - Chair

The Department of Chemistry Graduate Student Association (GSA) would like to invite you to a tailgating event on Saturday, November 20 from 10:00am-11:30am on the Tobacco Research, Lawn 1. This event is co-hosted by the Sri Lankan Student Association. A grill and some non-alcoholic beverages will be available. If you choose to bring your own alcohol, you must remain in compliance with University Alcohol Policies.

The Tobacco Research, Lawn 1 is located on the corner of University Drive and Cooper Drive, directly adjacent to the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center. You may view it on the campus map here.

We hope to see you there this Saturday!

Department of Chemistry Graduate Student Association

Sri Lankan Student Association

Title: Probing the Assembly, Functional Relevance, and Dynamics of AcrA in Multi Drug Efflux in Escherichia coli

Abstract: Efflux pumps and low permeability of the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria are major culprits in drug resistance. The most studied of these multidrug efflux pumps is the AcrAB-TolC, a complex of three proteins, the inner membrane transporter AcrB, the periplasmic adaptor AcrA and outer membrane factor TolC. This pump exports a wide range of molecules such as dyes, detergents, and antibiotics out of the bacteria system into the external environment. AcrB and TolC exist as obligate trimers, but the structure of AcrA during the assembly process is not well defined. My research aims to explore the functional and structural dynamics of the AcrAB-TolC pump to target the efflux pumps for effective antibiotic development. To achieve this, it is important to understand its structure, behavior, and function within the cell. The dominant negative effect of inactive AcrA and AcrB mutants was investigated, and we proved that once formed, the complex remains bound and does not dissociate easily. We also speculated that the assembly of the AcrAB-TolC is a precisely controlled process involving delicate proof-reading mechanisms that prevent the formation of futile complex.

Zoom Link: https://uky.zoom.us/j/86171629271

Facutly Advisor: Dr. Yinan Wei