Chemistry faculty, students attend national American Chemical Society conference in San Francisco

Chemistry faculty members Kathryn Matera, Karl Sienerth, Justin Clar, Joel Karty, Gene Grimley and Jennifer Dabrowski were joined by 11 chemistry and biochemistry majors at the national American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco in April.  

Clar gave an oral presentation in the environmental chemistry section of the meeting, in which he examined the release of zinc oxide nanoparticles from coated surfaces, while Dabrowski discussed reductive carbocyclization of unsaturated carbohydrates in her talk.

Matera’s research students, which included Mary Alice Allnutt ’18, Vanessa Grove ’17, Shelby Cuddeback ’17 and Ian O’Leary ’17, all presented posters on their research involving aspects of amyloid beta peptide aggregation, and the effect of that aggregation on the manifestation of Alzheimer’s Disease.  Kimmie Abrams ’17, working with Sienerth, gave a poster examining the quenching of electrochemiluminescence by nitrate explosives, while Carly Weddle ’17, working with Sienerth and Keely Glass, gave a talk on the synthesis and quantification of chemical markers of melanin in complex biological matrices. Both Duncan Hay ’17)  and Kayla Pieri ’18 presented posters on research they have done on nanospheres in the lab of Associate Professor Ben Evans of the physics department.  

Finally, Valeria Rizzi ’17 presented a poster on her work with Grimley on chemotaxonomy of honey, while Amanda Brechbill ’17 presented her research with Dabrowski on the structural analysis of vanadium and peptide complexes. Emily Swanson ’17 gave a poster describing her REU research at the University of Minnesota this past summer.  

The contingent that traveled to San Francisco from the Chemistry Department was funded largely by Elon’s Undergraduate Research Program, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society, Elon’s Student Government Association, the Chemistry Department, the Lumen Prize (Weddle and Allnutt), and the College Fellows (Brechbill) and Honors Fellows (Weddle and Allnutt) programs.