2020 Departmental News

Prof. Shi received a BASF-TTU Project Revolution grant to create breeding materials in cotton using gene-editing technology. The total grant amount is $228,032. The award starts January 01, 2021, and lasts through June 30, 2022.
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Dr. Ming and Mrs. Alice Sun have added $230,0000 to The Sun Family Fund in Faculty Research Endowment. The sun family started the endowment in 2018 with a generous gift of $200,000. The new generous donation brings the principle of the endowment to $430,000.

Mr. Stuart Convers has made a sizeable gift ($30k+) to the excellence fund. Mr. Convers is a 1963 Texas Tech University graduate, majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics.

Prof. Hutchins received an ACS-PRF grant (ACS RAF# 61912-DNI10) entitled “Incorporation of Motion-Capable Functional Groups into Solid-State Materials and Impacts on Thermal Expansion.” The grant is for a total award of $110,000. The award starts June 01, 2021 and ends August 31, 2023.
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The following faculty and staff of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have been recognized for the shown number of years of service to TTU:+ More
35 Years: Edward Quitevis
30 Years: David Birney, Dominick Casadonte, Laquetta Purkiss
20 Years: Paul Pare
15 Years: William Hase, Louisa Hope-Weeks, Michael Mayer, Huazhong Shi
5 Years: Daniel Unruh, Quentin Vaughn, Don T. Pathirage

Prof. Kristin Hutchins has been named an advisory board member for the Women in Supramolecular Chemistry Network. The network is an international organization that supports the career progression of women in supramolecular chemistry (link).
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Navkiran Kaur Juneja (Hutchins Group) has been awarded a TTU Study Abroad Competitive Scholarship.
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Prof. Latham received an NIH supplement entitled "Administrative supplement for equipment: Amersham Typhoon 5 gel and blot imager." The award was for $125,000.
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Prof. Korzeniewski is accepted as a Women's & Gender Studies (WGS) Affiliated Faculty member.
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Prof. Wylie received an NIH supplement entitled Title: "The Purchase of a Liquid Chromatography System to facilitate the high-throughput quantification of lipid-protein interactions and membrane ordering using solid-state NMR." The award was for $93,306.00.
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Navkiran Juneja (Hutchins Group) won an award for outstanding poster presentation at CEMWOQ.
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Prof. Pappas is named the 2020 Champion of Women by the West Texas Chapter of the Association of Women in STEAM.
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Prof. Pappas is also awarded the 2020 Integrated Scholar by Texas Tech University.
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Prof. Mechref is a co-investigator of a CPRIT academic research grant entitled “GD2 Expression and Response to Chemoimmunotherapy in Neuroblastoma.” awarded to Dr. Charles Reynolds, Professor of Pediatrics, + More Cell Biology & Biochemistry, and Medicine, the Cancer Center Director for the School of Medicine, and is Director of the South Plains Oncology Consortium (SPOC). Prof. Mechref group developed a sensitive assay that generated preliminary data supporting data generated by Dr. Reynolds' group, suggesting a strong correlation between GD2 expression and response to chemoimmunotherapy in neuroblastoma. Prof. Mechref share of the grant is $129,416.00 for three years.
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Prof. Amanda Boston, who is a former Ph.D. student of the late Prof. Bartsch and is currently a Lubbock Christian University professor, is featured at KCBD for creating a new way for college students to engage their + More lab work during quarantine, and now videos of these science experiments have been noticed by a whole new group of children and their parents: Link

Former Ph.D student from Prof. Poirier group, Corey Petty, was recently interviewed by Forbes magazine. Since graduating from TTU in 2014, Dr. Petty has become a leader in the blockchain/cryptocurrency + More community, and the founder of The Bitcoin Podcast. He is now the Chief Security Officer for Status IM. He also writes public articles on this subject, including the following recent article in JAX
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Congratulations to all the graduate students who have received scholarships and awards. + MoreChemistry Graduate Student Organization Scholarship: Reza Amani, Deepika Bedi, Mona Goli, Chamila P. Manankandayalage, Maryam Yekefallah.
Ginny Shen Lin Endowed Scholarship: Deepika Bedi, Kevin N. Finch, Shipra Garg, Elahe Masoumzadeh, Sophia L. Sagala.
Graduate School 2020 Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship: Deepika Bedi.
Ming Sun Family Graduate Research Scholarship: Collin G. Borcik, Zachary K. Boswell, Amandeep K. Brar, Kevin N. Finch, Yifan Huang, Shiva Moaven, Hossein Rouh, Sara Shafiei Haghighi.
Pearson TA Scholarship: Amna Aqdas, Vanessa R. Charles, Isaac Eason, Ashley N. Moreno-Gongora, Qingya Zou.
Robert Goodin Graduate RA Fellowship: Lu Cheng.
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The Biochemistry Society won first place in the Texas Tech Student Involvement CANstruction Competition. They used 118 cans from their can food drive to make a periodic table.

Daniel Loya, a member of Prof. Hutchins Group, is featured in Chemical & Engineering News, Chemistry in Pictures for an image he took in the laboratory. The link to the article:Link
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Prof. Casadonte has been selected as a recipient of the President's Academic Achievement Award for 2020. Prof. Casadonte will be recognized at the Texas Tech University Faculty Honors Convocation on April 21.
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Prof. Casadonte has been selected as an award recipient for the 2020 Professing Excellence Award. The ceremony will take place Wednesday, April 8^th, 2020 at 3 pm in the Matador Room in the Student Union Building.
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Prof. Hutchins has been selected as a recipient of the Alumni Association's New Faculty Award from the College of Arts & Sciences for 2020. Prof. Hutchins will be recognized at the Texas Tech University Faculty Honors Convocation on April 21.
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Prof. Hutchins has been selected for the Research Spotlight on Texas Tech Women Faculty Initiative for 2020. She will be recognized at the 36th Women's and Gender Studies Annual Conference luncheon on April 17.
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Prof. Nes' recent work (Zhou, W., E. Ramos, X. Zhu, P. M. Fisher, M. E. Kidane, B. H. Vanderloop, C. D. Thomas, J. Yan, U. Singha, M. Chaudhuri, M. T. Nagel, and W. D. Nes. 2019. Steroidal antibiotics are antimetabolites of Acanthamoeba  + More steroidogenesis with phylogenetic implications. J. Lipid Res, 2019 May;60(5):981-994.) has been featured in a commentary article written by J. T. Nickels, Jr. and published by J. Lipid Res.(60, 2019, 919-921). It is stated in the article “The contributions of David Nes and his colleagues herein to our current understanding of sterol diversity and the underlying pathways by which such diversity arises represents an artful foray into this topic, and is highly recommended to the reader.
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Prof. Mechref was elected as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the NCI Alliance of Glycobiologist for Cancer Research.
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