DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY
News
Faculty News
Chemistry Professor named Outstanding Teacher by the UM System and State!
| Associate Professor
Kathleen V. Kilway
(right) is the 2008 recipient of the University of Missouri
President's Award for Outstanding Teaching. The award was
presented to Professor Kilway by University of |
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Professor Kilway also was recognized in 2008 with the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, conferred by Gov. Matt Blunt.
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Dr. Todor K. Gounev
is UMKC's 2010 recipient of the
Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
This award recognizes and celebrates teaching excellence among
UMKC clinical and teaching faculty. Dr. Gounev is the very first
recipient of this honor. His award was presented at the
“Celebrating Excellence” ceremony held on February 15, 2010 at
Spencer Theatre in the James C. Olson Performing Arts Center.
Provost Gail Hackett, along with Chancellor Leo Morton and UM
System President Gary Forsee were in attendance.
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| Professor J.R. Durig released proceedings of an international conference on photonics, Nanotechnology and computer applications (ICOPNAC) at Ponniah Ramajayam Institute of Science and Technology University (PRIST), which was held in India. This conference's goal is to work with the central government in India to open 375 new colleges in areas where people do not have access to college education. India has a population of approximately 1 billion, but only 11 million students qualify for college education. The Hindu, Feb. 26, 2009 |
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New Grants
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Curators' Professor Y.C. Jerry Jean (right)received a $350K Award (1.5 years) for Slow Positron for Membrane Research from the Singapore Government. |
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Professor
Zhonghua Peng
(right) has been awarded a 3-year NSF grant in the amount of
$300,000 for his work on "Polyoxometalate-Containing Diblock
Copolymers: Synthesis, Self-Assembly and Applications". |
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Promotion and Tenure News
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Faculty
member
J. David Van Horn
(right) has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Professor Van Horn joined the Department in 2002 after completion of a postdoctorate at the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Kenneth Raymond. His primary area of research is bioinorganic chemistry. |
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Publications
Professor Buszek was recently interviewed by writer Phillip Broadwith for the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) regarding a recently published paper (Org. Lett. 2010, 12, 96-99) . The RSC article, "Bending the Rules for Arynes" appears in Chemistry World (the UK equivalent of Chemical and Engineering News) and was published online on January 18.
Professor Keith Buszek recently published an
article from his laboratory, and the article has made the cover of a
journal for the second time this year!
Dr.
Peng is the co-author of a recent
science paper about controlling excitations of dendrimer's
Photoemission Efficiency.
Tetrahedron Lett. 2009, 50, 63-65, 50th Anniversary Cover,
and now Int. J. Mol. Med. 2009, 24, 633-643. The
J. Mol.
Med. article features some nice color artwork of
HMG-CoA reductase binding of his group’s
medium-ring lactams.
Other News
The Chemistry Department installed a new ICP. It is a Varian ICP Optical Emission Spectrometer. model 715-ES. They are primarily used for trace metal analysis with extremely high sensitivity. They are in general superior to the Atomic Absorption machines used for similar work. The AA made use of Flame or Oven to break down samples into its elements and optical absorption for detection. The ICP OES uses plasma to break down samples and optical emission for detection. The AA also usually could only test up to 2 or 3 elements at a time while the ICP OES can do many simultaneously and with much higher sensitivity.
Arindam Ganguly received the Student Poster Award from the Society of Applied Spectroscopy on September 28, 2008 in Reno, Nevada. His award-winning paper was entitled “Conformational Stability, r0 Structural Parameters, Barrier to Internal Rotation and Vibrational Assignment of Cyclobutylamine.”
Alumni News
2008-2009 Graduates
- James Burneson will start at the UMKC School of Dentistry in the DDS program in the fall of 2009.
- Sean Doran will be applying for medical schools for acceptance in 2010. During the interim year, he will be working at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, MO as a Endoscopy Technician.
- Ashley Holloway will start at the UMKC School of Dentistry in the DDS program in the fall of 2009.
- Victoria Ojo will be working and searching for a full time job in science during the summer. In the fall, she will apply to graduate school in get her Ph.D.
- Stephen Person will be volunteering at Research Medical Center this summer. In the fall, he will be attending Kirksville College of Medicine.
- Andrea Rice will start at the UMKC School of Dentistry in the DDS program in the fall of 2009.
- Tiffany Teegarden will start at the UMKC School of Dentistry in the DDS program in the fall of 2009.
- Jennifer Titus Pirtle will attend medical school at MU in the fall.
- Richard Van Trump will be attending KCUMB's Masters in Medical Biosciences Program, starting in August.
- Crystal Wilson was accepted to an M.S. program at KU Medical Center in the School of Allied Health to study Dietetics and Nutrition. She will be starting this summer.
Other Chemistry Alumni News
- Dipak Ranjan Mal, Ph.D., (Chemistry Ph.D.), Professor of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India. Papers published in Synthetic Communications and Organic Letters.
- Charles E. Carraher Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, published two books: Introduction to Polymer Chemistry (2007, ISBN: 978-0-8493-7047-2) and Seymour/Carraher's Polymer Chemistry (7th Edition, 2008, ISBN: 978-14200-5102-5).
- Gary Howell (Chemistry B.A.) is Director of the Johnson County Sheriff's Criminalistics Laboratory.
- Yongchun Pan, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline) is a senior chemist at Incyte Corporation in Delaware.
- Bubin Xu, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline), Founder and CEO of Zhejiang Joye Pharmaceutical Company, China. In the week of September 14, 2009's issue of "Computer and Engineering News," there is an ad for Zhejiang Joye Pharmaceutical Company on page 60.
- Meng Lu, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline) is a senior chemist at Nalco Energy Services in Houston, Texas.
- Jeonghee Kang, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry C0-Discipline), Assistant Professor, St. Joseph’s College, New York, USA.
- Derek White, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline), works for the U.S. government.
- Matthew Miller, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline), works at Astrazeneca Research, Boston.
- Lin Ye, Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry Co-Discipline), is a postdoc at University of North Carolina.
- Hongwu Gao, Ph.D. (Chemistry Ph.D.), Director of Medicinal Chemistry at ChemPartner Co., Ltd. in Shanghai, China, manages 3-4 collaborations from the USA and does work with antibacterials.
2008 and 2009 Latin and Departmental Honors GraduatesSumma Cum Laude
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Magna Cum Laude
Cum Laude
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 2008
graduate, Zaynab Zarrabi, with Dr. Andrea Drew Gounev and
Professor Kathleen Kilway. |
Departmental Honors 2008 and 2009
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 2008
Chemistry graduates at Commencement (media credit Patrick
Binder). |
Current Student News
- Rachel Weiler, IPhD student, is the 2008-2009 winner of the Mr. and Mrs. Fong Wu Cheng Scholarship, which is awarded to a chemistry graduate student who best demonstrates ability or potential in chemical research.
- Xueyi (Eddie) Chen, IPhD student, is a 2008-2009 recipient of a Superior Graduate Teaching Assistant Award through the UMKC School of Graduate Studies.
- David Sylvester is the 2008 winner of the CRC Press Award given to a student who demonstrates "outstanding achievement in chemistry".
- Christopher Slifer (BS Chemistry/BS Physics) and Adam Brummett (BS Chemistry) are the 2008-2009 recipients of the K.L. Cheng Undergraduate Scholarship in Chemistry, given to undergraduate students in chemistry who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement.
- Hillary Lungren (BA Chemistry, 2007), Phaedra Dowell (BA Chemistry, 2008), and Ashley French (BA Chemistry/BA Biology, 2008) were all 2007-2008 recipients of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Honors. These graduating students were chosen for their exceptional academic achievements, leadership, and service to the community.
- Bradley Miller, IPhD student, has been selected to receive the 2008-2009 Graduate Teaching Assistant Superior Award. He has also been chosen as a Preparing Future Faculty Fellow for 2009-2010.
- Arindam Ganguly, IPhD student, received the Coblentz Society Student Award for his work using a variety of spectroscopic tools combined with computational chemistry to investigate the properties of pharmaceutical-related substituted cyclic compounds.