Work with a faculty mentor on a research project in chemistry. Below is a list of faculty mentors and their research interests.
Requirements: Instructor permission. Developed in consultation with a faculty mentor.
Faculty Research Interests
Dr. Blose’s lab focuses on understanding how nucleic acids like DNA and RNA fold and function in a cellular environment. Using multiple spectroscopic techniques along with adding osmolytes and macromolecular crowders to our solutions, we desire to add to the understanding of nucleic acid structure and function in vivo.
Molecular solvation is central to condensed phase chemistry and chemical applications. We use steady-state and pulsed laser techniques including picosecond time-resolved fluorescence and femtosecond transient absorption to study solvation dynamics in systems that focus on ionic liquids and biomolecular based solutions.
With polyethylene glycol (PEG) used as an environmentally friendly solvent in synthetic chemistry, a better understanding of its properties is needed. With collaborators from Germany, we use NMR spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations to explore solute-solvent interactions in PEG.
Dr. LeSuer’s lab uses digital fabrication tools such as 3D printers and CNC mills, along with inexpensive electronics to design new ways to make measurements. Further, our aim is to make these new tools customizable, flexible, and broadly accessible.
Dr. Logan’s lab researches the areas of structure-property relationships and organopalladium chemistry. Structure-property relationships are how changes in the chemical structure of a molecule impacts or changes some measurable property of the new molecule.
Our goal is to better understand how structural changes to the iridium complex impacts its selectivity towards DNA by synthesizing iridium (III) complexes and testing their ability to bind to various types of DNA. These types of complexes with DNA find application in label-free switch-on fluorescent analyte sensing platforms.
Dental caries is a highly prevalent disease that is associated with an elevated abundance of the acidogenic bacterium Streptococcus mutans. We focus on the isolation and characterization of compounds that reduce the pathogenicity of oral pathogens.