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.
Learn More
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).
Archive of Departmental News
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
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