Tags: Special Seminar


2026 Chemistry Alumni Lecture:
Accelerated Microdroplets Reactions: Mechanism and Applications in Materials and Organic Synthesis

Two publications from this lab, in 2011 and 2012, used mass spectrometry to show that the rates of reactions in microdroplets are accelerated by many orders of magnitude. These experiments used ordinary organic solvents and demonstrated that acceleration occurs at the solution/air interface.  These observations were then extended to a range of classical organic reactions. The Zare group showed reaction acceleration in aqueous microdroplets…


Career Opportunities in the Nuclear Security Enterprise – Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS)

Please join us for a presentation from the Pit Production Laboratory at Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), on career paths and opportunities for chemistry graduates at the Savannah River Site.   


41st Annual Robert S. Mulliken Lecture:
Chemical Kinetics in Multiphase Chemical Transformation

The first part of the talk describes experimental studies of molecular-weight growth pathways leading to PAH formation under combustion conditions, focusing on resonantly stabilized radicals, strained aromatic intermediates, and radical–radical chain-propagating (“well-skipping”) chemistry. Three complementary studies highlight the importance of five-membered-ring motifs in curved aromatic growth. We show that cyclopentadienyl (C5H5) + propargyl…


Downstream Regulatory Element Antagonist Modulator and Neuronal Calcium Sensor One As Potential Targets for Neurotoxins, Drugs, and Pollutants

Neuronal calcium sensors (NCS), including neuronal calcium sensor 1 (NCS1) and downstream regulatory element antagonist modulator (DREAM), constitute a family of calcium-binding proteins involved in a wide range of physiological and pathological processes. These include neuronal development, exocytosis, learning and memory, pain perception, and the progression of disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, autism, and cancer. Over…


Distinguished Alumni Lecture
Chirality, Optical Activity, and Quantum Chemistry: The Path Forward to Predictability

The simulation of the optical spectra of chiral compounds is among the most challenging problems in all quantum chemistry.  Solvation, temperature (molecular vibrations), electron correlation, and more all play pivotal roles in the quantitative – and sometimes even the qualitative – accuracy of theoretical models of such properties. In this lecture, we will explore the significance of each of these components and the current state of…


Distinguished Alumni Lecture
Insights into Intermolecular Interactions from Quantum Chemistry

Interactions between molecules govern the structure of liquids, molecular solids, and biomolecules, and they dictate how drugs bind to proteins.  However, the fundamentals of how molecules interact are hard to extract from experiments on such complex chemical environments.  This talk will describe how computational quantum chemistry can provide deeper insight into drug binding, solute-solute interactions in solvent, and the lattice…


A Golden Time for Nanotechnology

Gold nanocrystals of controlled size and shape have tunable optical properties that enable new science.  Upon illumination with resonant light, these gold nanocrystals can not only scatter light but also generate plasmons (coherent oscillations of conduction band electrons).  These plasmons, in turn, can produce local electric fields and heat.  All these modalities mean that gold nanocrystals can serve as excellent contrast and…


London Dispersion in Molecular Chemistry[1]

1 Institute of Organic Chemistry, Justus Liebig University, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 17, 35392 Giessen, Germany; e-mail: prs@uni-giessen.de; www.uni-giessen.de/schreiner  Keywords: catalysis • chemical bonding • noncovalent interactions  The Gecko can walk up a glass window because of the adhesion in hydrophobic setae on its toes that convey van der Waals (vdW) interactions with the surface. [2] and in catalysis.[7]  The and in…


New Windows Into The Secret Lives of Cells

From the 17th through the 19th century, beautifully artistic drawings of living specimens were inextricably linked to biological discovery. However, for much of the 20th century, optical microscopy took a back seat to the powerful new fields of genetics and biochemistry. Starting in the 1980s, the tables started to turn again, thanks to the widespread availability of computers, lasers, sensitive detectors, and fluorescence labeling techniques.…


Multi-Dimensional Separations for Bacteria Identifications and Investigations of Antimicrobial Resistance

Bacterial infections are a major global health concern, with an estimated 1 in 8 deaths attributed to bacterial infections in 2019 alone. When a patient with a suspected infection arrives in a clinical setting, the first step to developing a treatment strategy is to identify the causative pathogen, followed by determination of antimicrobial therapeutics that are appropriate and effective. The challenge for both these essential steps is the…
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