Dr. Rexford received her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the College of Charleston. She earned her PhD in Biochemistry at Florida State University studying protein-protein interactions involved with the activation of the glycolytic enzyme glucokinase under the guidance of Dr. Brian Miller. Since 2016 she has taught chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State University. Dr. Rexford’s goal is to facilitate critical thinking in her classroom through application-based problem solving. She is excited to bring her skills to the University of Florida Department of Chemistry.
Christopher Brewer Receives UF Graduate Student Mentoring Award
Christopher Brewer has been honored with the UF Graduate Student Mentoring Award. This award is presented by the UF Graduate School and all graduate students at UF are eligible. Brewer is a fourth year graduate student in the McElwee-White lab. During his time here he has mentored two undergraduate students (Olivia Hawkins and Nicholas Sheehan) and two graduate students (Hanwen Liu and Courtney Sparrow). To Chris, mentoring others is a very rewarding part of his graduate career here.
Ashley Erb and Chris Brewer Received Graduate Teaching Awards
Ashley Erb is a second year graduate student in the Aponick group, who has been teaching in our CHM2211L lab course for two years. For Ashley, Organic Chemistry really energizes her and she strives to pass on this enthusiasm to her students. Ashley’s skills as an instructor have recently been recognized by both the Chemistry Department and the University of Florida, and she is a recipient of a 2018-2019 University of Florida Graduate Student Teaching Award.
Christopher Brewer has been honored as a recipient of the 2018 – 2019 UF Graduate Student Teaching Award. This award is presented by the UF Graduate School and awardees are nominated by their department. Chris is a fourth year graduate student in the McElwee-White group and has taught CHM1025 as instructor seven times over four years. Chris has had the opportunity to share his passion for chemistry with over two thousand students during his time teaching at UF. During lectures Chris incorporates numerous live chemistry demonstrations to foster excitement about learning. Additionally, Chris coordinates and teaches an Honors Harry Potter-themed Potions Camp for incoming freshmen to the UF Honors Program. To Chris, teaching others is a very rewarding part of his graduate career.
Robin Kemperman – Named UF’s Outstanding Graduate Student of 2019
Robin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the department of chemistry and works under the direction of Dr. Yost. He was chosen for the Outstanding Graduate Student Award by the Graduate Student Council at UF for the year of 2019. This award is only awarded to 2 out of roughly 17,000 UF graduate students annually for outstanding academic contributions and services to the graduate school. Robin has mentored several graduate and undergraduate students on a variety of projects. In addition, he has collaborated on a number of projects resulting in over 35 scientific contributions, including publications, presentations, posters, and an international patent application. He also has served as a committee member on the UF student conduct board, graduate student council representative, and journal club coordinator.
Undergraduate researcher in biological chemistry receives CLAS Scholars Award
Alexander Duong, an undergraduate researcher in the Eddy Research Group, was recently named a recipient of a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Scholar Award. UF CLAS provides this award to high achieving undergraduate students who show great promise for making significant contributions to original scientific research, and the award provides undergraduate students an opportunity to work one-on-one with a CLAS faculty member on a research project. Alex is a rising sophomore and chemistry major, and he will be studying the structures and functions of human G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs are sensory proteins on the surfaces of cells involved in numerous diseases including cancers, heart disease, and diabetes. GPCRs are the target of over 1/3 of FDA-approved drugs and are top targets for the development of new therapeutics. Alex?s research will focus on improving our understanding of the activity of GPCRs to improve drug design criteria.
2019 Tarrant Awards Announced
We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019 Tarrant Summer Graduate Research Scholarships. The endowment honors Prof. Paul Tarrant, a member of our department from 1946 to 1981, and this award promotes outstanding research for graduate students working in the division of Organic Chemistry.
This year’s recipients are Ehsan Fereyduni and Jacob Lessard. Ehsan, who received his M.S. degree in chemistry from Kharazmi University, is a member of Prof. Alex Grenning’s research group and is working on devising a simple and standardized synthetic route to access natural and bioactive cycloheptanes for drug discovery. Jacob received his B.S. degree in chemistry from University of New Hampshire and is a member of Prof. Brent Sumerlin’s research group. His research has mainly focused on the synthesis of reprocessable thermosets and the development of new polymerization methods.
2019 James and Laura Winefordner Summer Graduate Scholarship Announced
The Analytical Chemistry Division is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2019 James and Laura Winefordner Summer Graduate Scholarship, Mr. Robin Kemperman. Robin is a graduate of HAN University and Applied Sciences and a member of Professor Rick Yost’s research group. His dissertation research focuses on targeted metabolite isomer separation with as goal to reduce analysis time, in addition to integrating isotopic labeling strategies with ion mobility spectrometry for metabolomics studies, to achieve higher confidence in the identification process. Congratulations Robin!
2019 Herty Medalist
Professor Lisa McElwee-White is the recipient of the 2019 Herty Medal as awarded by the Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society recognizing outstanding work and service by a chemist in the Southeast. Prof. McElwee-White is Colonel Allen R. and Margaret G. Crow Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at The University of Florida. She is being recognized for introducing mechanism-based design of organometallic precursors for fabrication of thin films and nanostructures and for her many outreach contributions and service to the American Chemical Society.
Dept. New Hire: Dr. Steven Harris, Lecturer, General Chemistry
Dr. Harris received his bachelor’s degree from Langston University. He then continued to the University of Oklahoma for his master’s and PhD in Biochemistry where he studied tertiary structures of small RNA constructs using nuclear magnetic resonance under the guidance of Dr. Susan Schroeder. Next, he was selected to be in the SPIRE Program which is an NIH funded dual research and teaching postdoctoral program at University of North at Chapel Hill. While performing research to further his knowledge of RNA tertiary structure in Dr. Kevin Weeks’ lab, Dr. Harris also received teacher training at North Carolina A&T State University. Dr. Harris spent the last 5 years honing his interactive teaching style at Christopher Newport University and is excited to bring his skills to the University of Florida Chemistry Department.
Dept. New Hire: Dr. Stefanie Habenicht, Lecturer, Organic Division
“Dr. Habenicht obtained her Dr. rer. nat. (Sc.D.) at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, where she developed novel small-molecule fluorophores. As an Adjunct Lecturer here at UF, she discovered that teaching is her passion. She tries to facilitate students? mastery of Organic Chemistry while maintaining a high standard, experimenting with different strategies, tools and classroom props to help students visualize and rationalize difficult concepts.”