Department News

Prof. Dominick Casadonte will be speaking about and demonstrating Chemistry to students at Double T College on Sep 25-29 
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Prof. Yehia Mechref has received an NIH R01 competing renewal award for $1,151,179 (4-years) + More According to the ORS records, this award is the first successful NIH R01 competing renewal that Texas Tech has received since 1996 (no records exist before 1996). The proposed research will enable the development of tools for the characterization of protein carbohydrate structures at sensitivity, throughput, and level of detail not previously possible. The implementation of these tools will enable researchers to better understand the attributes and biomedical significance of glycans in the development and progression of a wide array of diseases. Examples of future benefits for public health include the identification of disease and cancer biomarkers for medical diagnostics and the monitoring of recombinant protein therapeutics, which will lead to better-targeted drugs that are more bioactive with fewer side effects.
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Prof. Benjamin Wylie received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award of $1,745,725 + More Prof. Benjamin Wylie received a Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) (R35) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His proposal was entitled “Functional Interplay of Lipid Membrane Components: Activation, Inhibition, and Raft Formation.” The Wylie lab will receive $1,745,725 over five years.
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Prof. Michael Latham has received half of a TTU Presidents' Collaborative Research Initiative Grant of $50,000 + More Professor Michael Latham received a TTU Presidents' Collaborative Research Initiative award for a proposal entitled “A Structural Basis for a Form of Mental Retardation.” This is a collaborative grant with Drs. Clint Macdonald and Petar Grozdanov from TTUHSC (Lubbock, TX). This award provides seed money for experiments to understand how a single mutation of a protein found in brain cells can cause a severe form of mental retardation. The total award is $50,000 for one year, while Prof. Latham's share is $25,000.
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Prof. John D'Auria received an NSF Collaborative grant of $800,000 + More Professor John D'Auria on receiving an NSF Collaborative grant of $800,000 (3 years) for his proposal entitled “Collaborative Research: A systems approach toward understanding the diversification of tropane and granatane alkaloid biosynthesis.” Dr. D'Auria is the lead PI on the grant along with Dr. Cornelius Barry from MSU and Dr. Charles Stewart Jr. from ISU. The total award is $800,000 (3 years) while TTU share is $332,348.
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Prof. Dimitri Pappas received a CH Foundation's gift of $102,126 + More Professor Dimitri Pappas received a CH Foundation's gift of $102,126 (1 year) for his grant award entitled A Microchip Sepsis Detection System for Point of Service Healthcare.
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Prof. Bill Poirier receives 3 year grant ($498,009) from NSF + More Prof. Lionel "Bill" Poirier has received a grant in the amount of $498,009 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a three year project funded jointly through CTMC (Chemical Theory, Models, and Computation) and OAC (Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure). The title of the funded proposal is: "CDS&E: Massively Parallel Quantum Dynamics: Computing many accurate quantum states for real molecular applications." Prof. Poirier (and senior personnel Dr. Adelia Aquino and Dr. Juergen Eckert) of Texas Tech University are supported by a CDS&E (Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering) award, to develop methods to scale exact quantum dynamical molecular simulations across the next generation of massively parallel supercomputers. Molecular simulations promise to enable computers to replace expensive and time-consuming laboratory experiments, and are thus used routinely in many areas (energy, drug design, nanomaterials, etc.). However, very few molecular simulations incorporate quantum dynamical effects—even though these can be important—because of the daunting numerical hurdles and difficult mathematics involved. To meet this challenge, Poirier and coworkers are developing the world's first massively parallel exact quantum dynamics code, which may dramatically improve the accuracy, reliability and true predictive power of molecular simulations.
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Prof. David Nes receives R33 grant ($881,354) from NIH for 3 year study + More Horn Prof. David Nes has received an R33 grant in the amount of $881,354 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a three year study. The title of the funded proposal is: Discovery of new anti-amoeba therapeutics. The grant is a continuation award of Prof. Nes' current R21 grant that runs through May 2018. The ongoing research program seeks development of new potent steroidal inhibitors. More specifically, this work is aimed to develop transition state analogs and mechanism-based suicide substrates- as anti-amoeba agents that target enzymes (sterol methyltransferases) specific to the amoeba pathogen (Acanthamoeba and Naegleria) not synthesized in the animal host.
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Prof. Guigen Li's Work Featured in ACS C&EN
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Professor's Collaborative Work Gives Explanation for Organic Chemistry Reactions 
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Dr. Bill Hase is hosting Shreyas Vijay Malpathak, a 2017 S.N. Bose Scholar + More For the S.N. Bose Scholars Program (for Indian students) this year, received over ~1500 applications. A joint India-U.S. selection committee evaluated each and every application and short-listed 60 students. At this level, these students are among the top 1.5% of the best students across India.
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New faculty member, Dr. Kristin Hutchins, joins Department in fall 2017 + More In fall 2017, Dr. Kristin Hutchins will join the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. She will teach organic chemistry-related courses and her research projects are in the areas of organic, materials, and supramolecular chemistry.
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 New Department Chairman, June 1, 2017 + More The department's faculty, staff, and students welcome Prof. Yehia Mechref as the new Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, as of June 1, 2017, and sincerely thank Prof. Hope-Weeks for her outstanding service as past Chair.

Collaboration awarded an EAGER grant by the Engineering Division of the NSF + More Professor Michael Findlater of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Professor Weile Yan of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering have been awarded an EAGER grant in the amount of $80,000 by the Engineering Division of the NSF. The development of hydraulic fracturing has led to a glut of natural gas resources in the US, however, water use associated with the process has raised environmental concerns; Professors Findlater and Yan are developing new technology to remediate wastewater associated with hydraulic fracturing.

Student Highlights

Amanda Miller, BS Biochemistry major, received a 2017 Amgen Scholar award to perform research this summer at Harvard University 
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Dr. Roya Baghi, a 2017 Ph.D. graduate from Dr. Hope-Week's research group, has received an appointment with the TTU Waco campus 
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2014 TTU Ph.D. graduate Dr. Rui Sun (Hase group) has accepted a faculty position at the University of Hawaii
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Shiyue Zhou awarded 2017 Song Prize for best departmental Ph.D. dissertation + More Shiyue Zhou was awarded the 2017 Song Prize for his Ph.D. dissertation entitled: Comprehensive LC-MS and MS/MS Study of N-Glycans Derived from Biological Samples. His studies were conducted under the direction of Prof. Yehia Mechref.
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8 Chem/Biochem majors inducted into Phi Beta Kappa + More Eight Chemistry/Biochemistry majors were recently inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and, arguably, most prestigious honorary society in the US. The honored graduates include: Colton R. Davis, Colleen D. Driscoll, Holden R. Fried, Jaime I. Haro-Silerio, Farah F. Mechref, Alexandria C. Nichols, Erin H. Sims and Simran R. Singh.
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Biochemistry major, Holden Fried (BS, May '17) received two American Chemical Society awards + More Biochemistry and Mathematics (double major), Holden Fried (BS, May '17) received the 2017 Outstanding Graduating Senior Award from the South Plains local section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the 2017 Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry from the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry. Holden has accepted an offer to attend graduate school in fall 2017 at Tufts University where he will begin studies toward his PhD in biomedical engineering.

Anu Saini awarded Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship + More Departmental graduate student, Anu Saini, was recently awarded (spring '17) a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship by the TTU Graduate School. This funding will be used to fully support Anu's stipend for the next academic school year as she completes her experimental work and finishes writing her Ph.D. dissertation.
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PhD Candidate, M. Mustafa Cetin, to begin new work with 2016 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry + More On March 4th, 2017, PhD candidate and Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate student, M. Mustafa Cetin visited Northwestern University in Evanston, IL and he presented an overview of his research activities (with the Mayer group and collaborators) here at TTU. Mustafa has since accepted an offer for a postdoctoral research associate position, to begin in the fall at Northwestern, in the laboratories of Professor Sir J. Fraser Stoddart (2016 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry), after a summer 2017 TTU graduation.