Department News
Chemistry contributes to special issue on chemical safety education
Posted January 13, 2021
The Department of Chemistry has a strong presence in the January Journal of Chemical Education's special issue, Chemical Safety Education: Methods, Culture, and Green Chemistry.
Professor Pomerantz to co-chair ICBS Global Council
Posted January 12, 2021
The International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS) has announced that William C. K. Pomerantz, McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been selected as the co-chair of the ICBS Global Council by the ICBS Board of Directors.
Professor Sapna Sarupria joins Department of Chemistry
Posted January 11, 2021
Associate Professor Sapna Sarupria is joining the Department of Chemistry faculty in Fall 2021. She is moving from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Clemson University.
Professor Roberts receives Leadership Development Award
Posted January 7, 2021
The American Chemical Society and its Young Chemists Committee (YCC) has award Professor Courtney Roberts with a Leadership Development Award, supporting her participation in the YCC Leadership Development Workshop. The YCC program recognizes emerging leaders in the profession and helps them prepare for the leadership opportunities at volunteer organizations such as ACS, and in their professional careers.
Researchers discover new way to deliver DNA-based therapies for diseases
Posted December 18, 2020
University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers in the labs of Professor Renee Frontiera and Professor Theresa Reineke have created a new polymer to deliver DNA and RNA-based therapies for diseases. For the first time in the industry, the researchers were able to see exactly how polymers interact with human cells when delivering medicines into the body. This discovery opens the door for more widespread use of polymers in applications like gene therapy and vaccine development.
Daniel Huh, Ph.D., receives NIH Fellowship
Posted December 17, 2020
Daniel Huh, Ph.D., a post-doctoral associate working with Professor Ian Tonks, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award. His research involves, "Designing Ligand Platforms of Titanium Imido Catalysts and Statistically Screening Alkyne Substrates for [2+2+1] Regioselective Pyrrole Synthesis."
Professor Pomerantz to develop epigenetic therapies for aggressive brain cancers
Posted December 17, 2020
Professor William Pomerantz' lab has received a $100,000 grant from the Humor to Fight the Tumor Foundation to support its chemical epigenetics research project to develop new inhibitors for the treatment of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma.
Professor Barany elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors
Posted December 8, 2020
Distinguished McKnight University Professor George Barany has been elected a 2020 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors® (NAI). He is being honored for “. . . demonstrating a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made tangible impacts on the quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society."
Students honored for 4th-Year Virtual Seminar Series talks
Posted December 7, 2020
Eight graduate students—Yukun Cheng, Ethan Gormong, Katherine Jones, Nathan Love, Bach Nguyen, Claire Seitzinger, Christopher Warkentin, and Huda Zahid—were selected as winners of the 4th-Year Virtual Seminar Series that replaced the annual 3rd-year Graduate Student Research Symposium, which was canceled in Spring 2020 due to Covid-19.
Efficient polymer-mediated delivery of gene-editing RNP payloads
Posted December 3, 2020
Professor Theresa Reineke’s research on genome-editing payloads continues. An article on the latest break-through research, Efficient Polymer-Mediated Delivery of Gene-Editing Ribonucleoprotein Payloads through Combinatorial Design, Parallelized Experimentation, and Machine Learning, has been published in ACS Nano.