Dr. Todd Harrop and Dr. Michael Johnson of the UGA Chemistry Department have been awarded a grant of $343,686 from the Major Research Instrumentation program of the National Science Foundation. This program serves to “increase access to multi-user scientific and engineering instrumentation for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education.” The program provides an avenue for research teams to acquire advanced instrumentation that is vitally important to achieving advances in fundamental science and engineering research. The grant will fund the acquisition of a Bruker EMXplus EPR spectrometer that will impact research across the campus in numerous fields including chemistry (synthesis of inorganic and organic molecules), materials science (solid-state polymeric or nanomaterials), and biology (metalloenzymes and metalloproteins). The grant will also enhance the research training of students who will become the next generation of instrument users, designers and builders. Their proposal was awarded after critical peer evaluation against 863 competing academic proposals.
