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.