Gustaf H. Carlson School of Chemistry

News

  • Lincoln Muhoro '08 took 4th place in the poster session of the New England Science Symposium held at Harvard Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts on April 3rd, 2009.  Lincoln presented part of his Honors thesis on collagen VII and its role in epidermolysis bullosa.  He is completing the Accelerated B.A./Master's Degree Program at Clark and is a Research Associate at the Abbott Bioresearch Center in Worcester, Massachusetts.

  • Professor Fred Greenaway has entered an Agreement with Nuclea Biomarkers for research on Inhibitors of Copper-Containing Quinoprotein Amine Oxidases.

  • Luis Smith has been awarded a five-year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for research on Solid State NMR Studies of Transition Metal Oxides: Correlation of Local Structure with Physical Properties. ($530,000)

Seminar Schedule, 2008-2009

Seminars are held on Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. in S122, Sackler Sciences Center.  All seminars are open to the public. 

June 16 (Tuesday – 1:00 p.m.)
Ph.D. Defense Seminar

Xuefeng Wang
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Clark University
"Determination of the Structures of Layered Niobates, Niobate Nanosheets and Mesoporous Niobium Oxide by Solid State NMR and PXRD"

May 11 (Monday – 10:00 a.m.)
Graduate Research Seminar

Ricky (Yan) Meng
"Study Vibration Damping Behavior of PIB/PMMA in Micro- and Nanolayer Assemblies"

May 7 (Thursday – 1:00 p.m.)
Ph.D. Defense Seminar

Philip Klausmeyer
Andrew W. Mellon Conservator in Paintings and Conservation Science
Worcester Art Museum
Worcester, MA
"An Immunological Approach to the Analysis of Art Materials:  The Effect of Ageing and Pigment Interaction of Antigenic Detection of Proteinaceous Paint Binding Media Using an Improved Protocol for Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays"

May 6
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speaker:

  • Kevin Robbins – "Using Ligand-Detected NMR to Probe the Aggregation of IAPP"

Graduate Second Year Seminar
Graduate Student Speaker:

  • Robert Doyle – "Investigation Into the Applicability of Poly(ethylene imine) As An Effective DNA/Plasmid Delivery System"

April 29
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Sean Chen – "Phase Separation Behavior of Multifunctional Proton Transfer Membranes"
  • Fido Liu –  "Van der Walls Surface to Calculate Poisson-Boltzmann Equation for Human Growth Hormone Complex"

April 24 (Friday)
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Honors Seminar
(4:30 p.m., Lasry Center for the Biosciences, Room B124)

  • Timothy Hanley – "Drug Resistance in a Haploid Vertebrate Cell Line"
  • Dushani Palliyaguru – "Insulin Receptor Substrate 2 (IRS-2) Regulates Apelin Gene Expression in Mammary Tumor Cell Lines"

April 22
Chemistry Undergraduate Honors Seminar

  • Susan Herringer – "Investigations into copper (II) complexes with electron withdrawing, monosubstituted pyrazines"
  • Melissa Loving –  "Hard Templating of Inorganic Oxides in a Silicon Oxide Mesopore"

April 15
Graduate Research Update Seminar
Graduate Student Speaker:

  • Grace Liu – "TOCSY study of Inhibition of Islet Amyloid Polypeptide by Curcumin"

Undergraduate Honors Seminar
Undergraduate Honors Speaker:

  • Kelley Shortsleeves – "Chemistry and Magnetism of 2-pyridone Copper Halide Systems"

April 8
Rajeswari Kasi
Department of Chemistry
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
"Self-assembling polymers:  Ordering on multiple length scales"

April 1
Andrew Miranker
Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry Department
Yale University
New Haven, CT
"Molecular Mechanisms On and Off the Pathway to Amyloid Deposition"

March 25
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Robert Doyle – "Triazole Functionalized Poly(ethylene Imine) as Water-Free Proton Conducting Membrane"
  • June Fan – "Multiple Folding Pathways of Protein 1BBL"
  • Jamie Towle – "Further Characterization of the Zinc Binding Domain of Arabidopsis Mitochondrial Helicase"
  • Howard Wu – "The folding of RNA pseudoknot using PRM"

March 18
Brian T. White
Department of Biology
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Boston, MA
"Assessing Students' Critical Thinking About Complex Data"

March 11
Dr. Kathleen S. Zandi
Pharmaceutical Sciences Team Leader
Pfizer, Inc.
Groton, CT
"Drug Discovery and Development at Pfizer"

Feb. 18
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Yun Cao – "Purification of Arabidopsis Mitochondrial Helicase"
  • Sue Han – "Structural Characterization of Human Islet Amyloid Polypeptide in Model Lipid Membranes"
  • Ting Liu – "93Nb Solid State NMR Study of KNb308"
  • Kai Peng – "Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Lysyl Oxidase"

Feb. 18
Matthew J. Evans
Chemistry Department
Wheaton College
Norton, MA
"Chemical weathering and the long term carbon cycle from Greenland to the Himalayas"

Feb. 11
Heather Wiatrowski
Department of Biology
Clark University
Worcester, MA
"Interactions between the toxic metal mercury and mircoorganisms from groundwater aquifers"

Feb. 4
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Subin Adhikari – "Determination of Structural Features of RbSr2Nb3O10 and its Acidic Form by Density Functional Theory:
  • Clara Chen – "Lentil Seedling Amine Oxidase (LSAO) Purification and Inhibitor Binding Study"
  • Xuefeng Wang – "Solid State 93Nb, 87Rb, 1H NMR Study of RbSr2Nb3O10 and the Acid Exchanged Form, HSr2Nb3O10"
  • Ricky Meng – "The Comparison Between Two Lithium Electrolytes:  PMMA Ionomer/PEG And LiTFSI Doped PMMA/PEGDME"

Jan. 28
Harry A. Stern
Department of Chemistry
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY
"Computational Estimation of Ligand Binding Affinities"

Dec. 10
Victor S. Batista
Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Chemistry
Yale University, New Haven, CT
"Computational Research Needs for Renewable and Alternative Energy:  Studies of Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis"

Dec. 3
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers

  • Yun Cao – "Mitochondrial Helicases"
  • June Fan – "Possible Global Downhill Folding Protein --- 1BBL"
  • Kai Peng – "Expression and Purification of Lysyl oxidase"

Nov. 19
Dr. Nayan Amin, Vice President for Research and Development
PCI Synthesis, Devens, MA
"Who Is PCI Synthesis"
 

Nov. 12
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers

  • Subin Adhikari – "Structural Investigation of a Layered Dion-Jacobson Phase, RbSr2Nb3010 Using Density Functional Theory"
  • Sue Shuqiu – "Huamn Islet Amyloid Polypetide With or Without Insulin in Model Lipid Membranes"
  • Jamie Towle – "Characterization of the Zinc Binding Domain of Mitochondrial Hilicase" 

Nov. 5 – Time:  1:30 p.m., Room S-121, Sackler Sciences Bldg.
Joint Colloquium, Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Education, Math/Computer Science, and Physics
Speaker:  Dr. Isa Zimmerman, UMass – Massachusetts STEM Initiative
Title:  "What STEM in Massachusetts Means to Higher Education"
 

Oct. 15
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Grace Liu – "Inhibition of Islet Amyloid Polypeptide Aggregation"
  • Ting Liu – "Characterization of Aluminum Oxide Filled Mesopore"
  • Ricky Meng – "A Novel Single-Ion Lithium Polymer Electrolyte Based on the Polymer Blend of PMMA/PEG"
     

Oct. 8
Graduate Second Year Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Kai Peng – "RNA Interference:  A Powerful Tool to Enhance Cancer Drug Discovery"
  • Jamie Towle – "Surface Plasmon Resonance:  Theory and Experimental Application for Protein-DNA Studies"

Oct. 3
20th Annual Harry C. Allen Jr. Symposium
1:00pm-5:30pm
 Sackler Sciences Center, Room S121

 Jeffrey Skolnick, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
"Novel Approaches to Drug Discovery and Cancer Metabolomics"

Lila Gierasch, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
"Towards an In-cell Protein Folding Landscape"

Yawen Bai, Center for Cancer Research, NIH, Bethesda, MD
"Protein Folding Mechanims:  Defined Folding Intermediates and Stepwise Energy Landscape"

Timothy A. Cross, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
"Why Structural Biology Needs Solid State NMR:  e.g. Membrane Proteins"

Oct. 1
Graduate Second Year Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Yun Cao – "Single-molecule FRET and its Application in DNA Holliday Junction Structural Dynamics Studies"
  • Jue Fan – "Replica Exchange Method (REM) for protein folding"

Sept. 10
Graduate Research Updates Seminar
Graduate Student Speakers:

  • Clara Chen – "Purification and structural study of Lysyl Oxidase from Bovine Aorta"
  • Xuefeng Wang – "A new method for analyzing two-dimensional MQMAS spectra of half-integer quadrupole spins"
  • Howard Wu – "Human Telomerase RNA Folding Pathway Search Using Probabilistic Roadmap"

Sept. 3
Laboratory Safety Workshop Seminar
Speaker:  Frank Abell, Chemical Safety Officer, Clark University