2020 James and Laura Winefordner Summer Graduate Scholarship

The Analytical Chemistry Division is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 James and Laura Winefordner Summer Graduate Scholarship, Taylor Domenick. Taylor is a graduate of the College of Charleston and a member of Professor Rick Yost’s research group. Her dissertation research focuses on the development of ambient ionization techniques to investigate the metabolome of live microglial cells, as well as methodology to increase the confidence of metabolite and lipid structural identification, by ion mobility-mass spectrometry.

Congratulations Taylor!

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Eastman Chemical Fellowships

The award in analytical chemistry or polymer characterization goes to Taylor Domenick. Taylor received her BS degree from the College of Charleston and joined our program in 2016. She is a member of Prof. Yost’s research group. Her dissertation research focuses on the development of ambient ionization techniques to investigate the metabolome of live microglial cells, as well as methodology to increase the confidence of metabolite and lipid structural identification, by ion mobility-mass spectrometry.
The award in organic chemistry goes to Jacob Lessard who received his BS degree from the University of New Hampshire and began his PhD studies at UF in 2016. Jacob is a member of Prof. Sumerlin’s research group. His research has mainly focused on the synthesis of reprocessable thermosets, controlled radical polymerization, and the development of new polymerization methods.
Congratulations Taylor and Jacob!

We are pleased to announce Julia Rho is selected as a 2020 PMSE Future Faculty Scholar

This program aims to highlight up-and-coming postdocs and provide a platform for them to share their work at the ACS, which took place virtually this year. Julia is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Sumerlin group working in the area of polymer chemistry. Her research spans several projects, including the study of polymer self-assembly, complex coacervates, and cyclic polymers as vitrimers. Congratulations, Julia!”

Kari Basso: Selected as the female superstar in Mass Spec

This is a group within the American Society for Mass Spectrometry that brings together women in the field of mass spec. They hold virtual workshops with people around the world focused on supporting and mentoring women in science. They hold a virtual happy hour every two weeks that includes a speaker, often female CEO’s, or speakers on work life balance issues and then we have a break out session to network. Every month they spotlight one female super star in mass spec, this month the woman chosen is our own Dr. Kari Basso. When asked, Dr. Basso described being both shocked and honored to have been chosen.

Will Henderson and Georg Scheutz received the 2020 POLY ACS Travel Award

Since this year’s meeting was hold virtually, Will (Castellano Group) and Georg (Sumerlin Group) presented each other with their award in front of Sisler Hall, home to their research endeavors.

Coray Colina Receives Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Mexico for a Research/Teaching Appointment

The U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board are pleased to announce that Coray Colina of University of Florida has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Mexico. Colina will research/lecture at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico as part of a project to perform research on Molecular Chimeras for Opioid Receptor Modulators.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Colina will share knowledge and foster meaningful connections across communities in the United States and Mexico. Fulbrighters engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions.

For more info please visit: https://news.clas.ufl.edu/chemistry-professor-coray-colina-receives-prestigious-fulbright-award/

Wei group published in Energy & Environmental Science

A research paper from the Wei group has been published in Energy & Environmental Science–the top leading journal in the energy field with a 2018 impact factor of 33.250 and five-year impact factor of 32.826. The article titled “Modulating Multi-Hole Reaction Pathways for Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation on Gold Nanocatalysts” reports a discovery that catechol molecules on Au/TiO2 heterostructures are able to directly trap and stabilize visible-light-generated hot holes on Au under steady-state reaction conditions (t ~ms–s). Those long-lived hot holes are further found to create a new reaction pathway in which the catechol-trapped holes cooperate with the newly generated holes on Au. The new mechanism boosted photoelectrochemical water oxidation on Au by one order of magnitude. Our study provides a molecular level understanding of the role of photo-generated hot holes in facilitating water oxidation, illustrating a strategy to assemble metal nanoparticles, semiconductors, and molecules to effectively separate charge carriers and harvest hot holes for driving photochemical reactions.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, UF Graduate School Fellowship, Department of Energy Science Graduate Student award, Ann Stasch Summer Fellowship, Vala Research Excellence Award, and College of Liberal Art and Science (CLAS) Dissertation Fellowship funded by the Charles Vincent and Heidi Cole McLaughlin Endowment.

Please also see https://news.clas.ufl.edu/can-sunlight-solve-the-global-energy-crisis/

Article: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/EE/C9EE04192C#!divAbstract

Wei group published in JACS

A research paper from the Wei group has been published in JACS. The article titled “Cooperation of Hot Holes and Surface Adsorbates in Plasmon-Driven Anisotropic Growth of Gold Nanostars” reports a discovery that plasmon-generated hot holes work with surface adsorbates collectively to control the anisotropic growth of gold (Au) nanostructures. Specifically, it is found that hot holes stabilized by surface-adsorbed iodide enable the site-selective oxidative etching of Au0, which leads to non-uniform growths along different lateral directions to form six-pointed Au nanostars. Our studies establish a molecular-level understanding of the mechanism behind the plasmon-driven synthesis of Au nanostars and illustrate the importance of cooperation between charge carriers and surface adsorbates in regulating the morphology evolution of plasmonic nanostructures.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, UF Graduate School Fellowship, and Department of Energy Science Graduate Student award.

This work is selected as spotlights by JACS https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c06392

Article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c03342

Melanie Veige Honored as Florida CourseShare Pioneer

Florida CourseShare Honorees

The Florida CourseShare award recognizes faculty for their willingness to support innovative collaboration across the State University System. Florida CourseShare faculty allow course materials that they created to be shared to Canvas Commons so that other instructors can adapt them for course development. Visit the Florida CourseShare page to learn more about this initiative.

• Contributed CHM1020 Chemistry for the Liberal Arts

Melanie Veige is a Senior Lecturer and Director of General Chemistry in the department of chemistry. She enjoys creating highly structured, engaging materials for largely introductory level chemistry courses. She has lately turned her skills to revising and iteratively updating the general chemistry lab manuals, both for residential students and for UF Online (boot camp).

The collaboration of Wei group and Angerhofer group published in JACS

A collaboration paper from the Wei group and Angerhofer group has been published in JACS. The article titled “Manipulating Atomic Structures at the Au/TiO2 Interface for O2 Activation” reports a discovery of new science in an old catalytic system (Au/TiO2)   by demonstrating how the manipulation of atomic structures at the Au/TiO2 interface significantly altered the interfacial electron distribution and prompted O2 activation. Using a novel materials fabrication strategy, we constructed two distinct Au/TiO2 heterostructures, with defect-free interface and Vo-rich interface. It was found that at the defect-free Au/TiO2 interface, electrons were transferred from Ti3+ species into Au nanoparticles (NPs) and further migrated into adsorbed perimeter O2 molecules, facilitating O2 activation and leading to a 34 times higher CO oxidation activity than that on the oxygen vacancy (Vo)-rich interface, at which electrons from Ti3+ species were trapped by interfacial Vo on TiO2 and hardly interacted with perimeter O2 molecules. We further revealed that the calcination released those trapped electrons from interfacial Vo to facilitate O2 activation.  Taken together, our results not only established an atomic-level understanding of the interfacial-structure-dependent catalytic activity on Au/TiO2 heterostructures, but also provided strategies to engineer metal/oxide interfaces for the optimization of heterogeneous catalysis.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, UF Graduate School Fellowship, and Department of Energy Science Graduate Student award.

Article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.9b13453