2022 Departmental News

Both TTU and FAPESP have given funding to Dr. Poirier's proposed collaboration with Dr. Brett Carlson, entitled “Riding Quantum Trajectories beyond Born-Oppenheimer: Building better methods for reaction dynamics”. The total grant amount is $20,000.

Dr. Poirier was chosen as the Spring 2022 Arts and Science Students' Choice Top Faculty.

Mona Goli (graduate student in Prof. Mechref's group) received the 2022 Ming Sun Family Graduate Research Award , was selected to receive a Texas Tech University Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Aiying Yu (graduate student in Prof. Mechref's group) received the 2022 Ginny Shen Lin's Scholarship.

Aiying Yu (graduate student in Prof. Mechref's group) received the 2022 CGSO Scholarships.

Dr. Andrew Cho (a former graduate student of Prof. Mechref's group) co-shared the 2022 Song Prize for the Best Ph.D. Dissertation in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Adineh Rezaei also was awarded with Chemistry Graduate Student Organization (CGSO) Scholarship Award (Inorganic Division), Ming Sun Family Graduate Research Award, and Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in Upper-Division Chemistry

Texas Tech's own, Sean Meyer (‘17) received his PhD in materials chemistry couple weeks ago from Univ Illinois.

Dr. Ruibin Liang has won a Welch Grant for $300,000 for 3 years! The achievement is particularly impressive, given that the number of applications was considerably higher, and the number of grants awarded fewer, than in recent years.

The Gorden group has officially been notified of funding to be awarded $650,000 from the National Science Foundation for their project on "NSF2154848 - LnIII Complexes Displaying ErIII-centered Upconversion Emission in Solution and the Solid State with YbIII, NdIII or a Porphyrin-based ligand as Activators."+ More This is in collaboration with groups at University of Nevada and Cal Poly - Humboldt.

Guigen Li's paper, “Asymmetric [4 + 2] cycloaddition synthesis of 4H-chromene derivatives facilitated by group-assisted-purification (GAP) chemistry”, was selected by the Royal Society of Chemistry as a 2021 HOT RSC Advances article. You can find his publication in the link below as well as the others selected for this honor: RSC Advances HOT Article Collection

Kevin Finch, PhD candidate in the Gamez lab, received the prestigious Richard Payling Prize at the International Glow Discharge Spectroscopy Symposium, April 6 – 8, 2022, Oviedo, Spain.+ MoreThe Payling Prize is a biennial internationally competitive award, established in 2005, "… given in recognition of outstanding work in the field of Analytical Glow Discharge...awarded to a young scientist who gives the best presentation during a meeting…" Kevin is the 2nd person from a US institution who has won the award since its inception.

Adineh Rezaei Bazkiaei from the Gorden group won the Paul Whitfield Horn Graduate Fellowship, received in a ceremony at the University Women's Club.

Dr. Yehia Mechref, Dr. Dimitri Pappas, Dr. Bill Poirier, and Dr. Daniel Unruh, and were all selected as Special Honorees for induction into the TTU Chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Phi Kappa Phi is the nation's oldest, most selective, and most prestigious all-discipline academic honor society

Dr. Elka Georgieva was admitted as a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry. This is indeed a great honor and accomplishment, since the Member status is granted based on education, scientific merits, and letters of recommendation. It also requires a comprehensive review

Navkiran Kaur Juneja was awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship by the graduate school for 2022-2023.

Dong Zhang, PhD candidate in the Gamez lab, was selected to receive a Texas Tech University Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Xiaodan (Dannie) Ding was awarded a summer thesis/dissertation research award from the graduate school.

Saman Majeed, a Graduate Student in Georgieva lab, was awarded the TTU Study Abroad Competitive Scholarship (SACS) for both the 2022 Summer and 2022 Fall Semesters.

Sophia Sagala, from the Quitevis lab, was awarded a Study Abroad Competitive Scholarship for Summer 2022 and Fall 2022.

Adineh Razaei from the Anne Gorden lab, had several awards: Create Possible Scholarship Award (Spring 2022, by the College of Arts and Sciences), Study Abroad Competitive Scholarship Award (Summer 2022), Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship (from Graduate School), and Paul Whitfield Horn Fellowship.

It's official: Profs. Kristin Hutchins and Benjamin Wylie both achieved Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor. Congratulations Kristin and Ben!!!

It's official: Prof. Huazhong Shi received Promotion to Full Professor. Congratulations Huazhong!!!

The Lewis Daniel Moore Memorial Scholarship Endowment was recently gifted to the department through a very generous donation from Ms. Carolyn F. Moore. The endowment will support undergraduate students in the department with a preference for a student who is in recovery as a member of the Center for Collegiate Recovery Communities at Texas Tech University.

Research Professor János Sarka, in conjunction with Prof. Bill Poirier, received a Frontera Pathways award entitled “SwitchIT: Pushing the Limits of Computational Rovibrational Molecular Spectroscopy Simultaneously with Respect to System Size, Convergence Accuracy and Number of Computed States”. + MoreThe award—which was rated “highly competitive”—provides an allocation of 224,964.0 node hours on Frontera, the most powerful academic supercomputer in the world.

Akram Bani Ahmad, a Graduate Student in the Georgieva lab, was selected to receive the Study Abroad Competitive Scholarship (SACS) for the 2022 Spring Semester.

Saman Majeed's application for an ASBMB 2022 Graduate Student Travel Award was approved for funding. Saman is a Graduate Student in the Georgieva lab. In April 2022, Saman will attend the ASBMB Annual Meeting in Philadelphia to present her, and colleagues', exciting work on viral membrane proteins.

Dong Zhang, PhD candidate in the Gamez lab, was selected to receive a 2022 ASMS Graduate Student Travel Award to attend the 70th ASMS conference in Minneapolis, June 2022. “The ASMS Graduate Student Award recognizes graduate students whose academic achievements and current mass spectrometry research display a high level of excellence and distinction.” He will be recognized in a ceremony at the conference.

In a recent Stanford study identifying the most cited researchers in the world, 10 of our Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty were identified in the top 2%! Five of these are still active in the department—Guigen Li, Hans Lischka, Yehia Mechref, Paul Pare, and Huazhong Shi.
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Kevin Finch, PhD candidate in the Gamez lab, received an award sponsored by the Journal for Analytical Atomic Spectrometry for his poster presentation at the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, held in Tucson, January 2022.

Kevin Finch, PhD candidate in the Gamez lab, received a travel grant sponsored by Spectron Inc. to present an invited talk and a poster at the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, held in Tucson, January 2022.

Mona Goli, a graduate student in Dr. Mechref's research group, was invited to serve as a Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Neurological Biomarkers (especially section of Frontiers in Neurology).

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