Faculty Research Labs

Many faculty members engage undergraduates in their research. Students must apply to a research faculty to be accepted for enrollment in Loading.... Undergraduates work closely with their faculty mentors, and in some cases experienced Masters students, to answer interesting scientific questions.

Amrita Bhattacharyya
Environmental Chemistry - use of traditional analytical tools and state-of-the-art synchrotron based (spectro)microscopy characterization studies to investigate environmental geochemistry problems due to climate change with a focus on metal-organic interactions and greenhouse gas emission at terrestrial-aquatic ecosystems.

William Karney and Claire Castro 
Computational Organic Chemistry - use of computational tools to solve problems in organic chemistry, with a focus on reactive intermediates and heavy-atom tunneling.

Osasere Evbuomwan
Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry - development of lanthanide complexes for prostate cancer diagnosis, and image-guided tumor resection via Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging properties.

Giovanni Meloni
Physical Chemistry - high-temperature reactions and spectroscopic characterization of reaction intermediates important to atmospheric and combustion chemistry, especially focusing on biofuel molecules.

Herman Nikolayevskiy
Synthetic Organic Chemistry – synthesis and evaluation of "turn-off" cytotoxins as a way to increase the tolerability of anti-cancer chemotherapies.

Natalia Powers-Riggs
Physical-Organic Chemistry - Synthesis and physical characterization of photoactive assemblies prepared through self-assembly to mimic solar energy processes.

Michael Stevenson
Bioinorganic Chemistry – use of calorimetry and spectrophotometry to quantify and probe metal-specific interactions with antimicrobial peptides for use in therapeutic design.

Janet Yang
Biochemistry - thermodynamic and kinetic analyses of ATP Binding Cassette transporters — membrane proteins that regulate the cellular intake of nutrients and export of toxins — using a variety of biochemical and biophysical approaches.

How to Sign-Up

  • Complete, or have almost completed, Organic Chemistry II Loading... and Loading....
  • Find an available lab and meet with faculty during office hours.
  • Attend chemistry department faculty research seminars.

Typically, but not always, students begin working in a research lab during the summer months.

All majors accepted for research in the department must sign up for at least 1 unit of Loading... during the fall or spring semester.

Other Research Opportunities

National Science Foundation »
Provides REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) opportunities.