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News

Spring 2022

  • Congratulations to this year's Chemmys Award winners:
    • Justin Miller - William H. Zuber Memorial Scholarship. 
    • Christopher Litle - J. C. Williams Memorial Scholarship.
    • Salma Hashmi - Outstanding Freshman Chemistry Major.
    • Michael Chaney - Chi Beta Phi Award.
    • Assefa Akinwole - Outstanding Teaching Assistant.
    • Natalie Taylor - Outstanding 3rd year Graduate Researcher.
    • Gregory Szwabowski - Outstanding 4th year Graduate Researcher.
    • J. Dan McCool - Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher.
  • Four students in our department were recognized with the 2022 Student Research Forum Awards:
    • Emily Treptow (undergraduate student working jointly in the Baker and Parrill groups) wins the Second Place in Life Sciences with the work titled "Informatic Analysis of Hydrophobic Surface Patches to Guide Design of Water-Soluble G-Protein Coupled Receptor Analogs"
    • Christy Dyer (graduate student working jointly in the Baker and Parrill groups) wins the Second Place in Life Sciences with the work titled "Hydrophobic Surface Patch Disruption to Produce Water-Soluble G-Protein Coupled Receptor Analogs"
    • Brian Hoffman (graduate student working in the Baker group) wins the First Place in Physical and Applied Sciences with the work titled "Synthesis of novel diffusible signaling factors, for determination of structure activity relationships and structural stability"
    • Rachel Wiley (graduate student working in the Baker group) wins the Second Place in Physical and Applied Sciences with the work titled "Synthesis and stereochemical characterization of novel diffusible signal factor 2-heptylcyclopropyl-1-carboxylic acid for antibiofilm action"
  • Dr. Kensha Clark was awarded $590,000 from the National Science Foundation for her CAREER project "Exocyclic Imine Ligands for Electron Transfer."

Fall 2021

  • Dr. Xiaohua Huang was selected as a Dunavant Professor by the College of Arts and Sciences. The endowment recognizes exceptional achievement in teaching, scholarship, service, and outreach, and includes research support of $5,000 per year for three years.
  • Dr. Abby Parrill-Baker, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and professor for the Department of Chemistry, was awarded $525,000 from the Memphis and Shelby Crime Commission for her project “Public Safety Institute.”
  • Dr. Michael Brown joins the department as an Assistant Professor. Welcome Mike!

Summer 2021

  • Dr. Tomoko Fujiwara was awarded $68,919 from Texas Tech University with the National Science Foundation for her project “CPS: Small Inkjet Printed Flexible Electronic CPS with Context-aware Events of Interest Detection.”
  • Dr. Xuan Zhao was awarded $475,000 from the National Science Foundation for his project “Catalytic H2 Evolution by Molecular Cobalt Complexes with Pentadentate Ligands in Aqueous Solutions.” With the support of the Chemical Catalysis program in the Division of Chemistry of National Science Foundation, Dr. Xuan Zhao is studying hydrogen production from water as a promising approach to generate alternative, clean and renewable fuel for the future. His research has potential to discover new catalysts for hydrogen production at wide range of aqueous solutions, including both acidic and alkaline solutions, in the context of future applications in renewable energy conversion.
  • Drake Williams wins the Dean's Outstanding Employee Award.
  • Four students in our department were recognized with the 2021 Student Research Forum Awards:
    • Darwin Ramirez Alvarez (undergraduate student in the Fujiwara group) wins the First Place in Life and Health Sciences with the work titled "Synthesis of amino acid derivatives for metal coordination in hydrogels for tissue regeneration."
    • Paige Castleman (graduate student in the Baker and Parrill groups) wins the First Place in Physical and Applied Sciences with the work titled "Computational Ligand Discovery Efforts to Identify Chemical Tools to Study GPR52."
    • Martin Guerrero (undergraduate student in the Baker and Parrill groups) wins the Second Place in Physical and Applied Sciences with the work titled "Experimental Validation of Structure-Based Pharmacophores: Toward a High-Throughput Screening Tool for GPCR Ligand Discovery."
    • Thomas Summers (graduate student in the DeYonker group) wins Second Place in Physical and Applied Sciences with the work titled "Designing Cheminformatics-based Enzyme Quantum Mechanical Models: A Catechol-O-methyltransferase Case Study."
  • Kylie Loadholt (undergraduate student in the Brewster group) wins the CAS outstanding undergraduate award!

Spring 2021