Archives for 2014
Chemistry Alumna Invited to the White House
Chemistry alumna, Diane Schmidt, was invited to the White House for the National Medal of Technology and the National Medal of Science presentations on Thursday, November 20. A gala will be held at the Ritz Carlton Pentagon City to celebrate the award recipients. Earlier this year, Schmidt was elected the President of American Chemical Society for the coming year of 2015.Matheny Lab Discoveries
The Matheny Lab has two new publications coming out this week, describing SIX new genera of fungi! Congratulations!
Sanchez-Garcia et al. 2014 Deconstructing the Tricholomataceae (Agaricales) and introduction of the new genera Albomagister, Corneriella, Pogonoloma and Pseudotricholoma
Matheny et al. 2014 Crassisporium and Romagnesiella: two new genera of dark-spored Aragricales
Gorman Paper in PLoS One
PhD student Courtney Gorman (Bailey Lab), Jen Schweitzer, and Joe Bailey recently published an article in PLoS One that’s making the news! Their paper finds that saving endemic species is important for ecosystems. Follow this link to read the full article.
Playdate with Burghardt (Updated)
UPDATE: The local NPR station, WUOT, aired an interview with Gordon Burghardt on October 24 for the program, Changing Course. Burghardt discussed play throughout the animal world and his pregame showcase.
Alumni Distinguished Service Professor Gordon Burghardt is known for his research on animal behavior, particularly playing behavior in taxa that are not thought to play. His research on play in cichlid fish has been featured recently in the international press.
This Saturday, Burghardt will be talking about the importance of play at the Pregame Showcase, prior to the football game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. The showcase will begin at 5:30 p.m., two hours before kickoff, in the Carolyn P. Brown University Center Ballroom (Room 213). The showcase is free and open to the public, and it features a thirty-minute presentation followed by a fifteen-minute question-and-answer session. A brief reception will be held after the program, and a door prize will be awarded.
Professor Guiochon Passed Away
Dear Chemistry Community:
On October 21, 2014, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Distinguished Scientist Georges Andre Guiochon passed away in the arms of his wife with his daughters holding his hands. After a successful bout against pneumonia, Professor Guiochon succumbed to neuromuscular failure due to Post-Polio Syndrome. His work as Professor in the Department of Chemistry since 1987 focused on the theory of non-linear chromatography and its applications in gas, liquid and supercritical fluid separation science. His UT efforts garnered awards too numerous to list but included 2 from ACS and the LCGC Lifetime Achievement Award, while he received honorary PhD degrees from the Universities of Pardubice, 1999; Ramon Llull, Barcelona 2002; Ferrara 2003; and Science and Technology, Liaoning 2010, and was inducted into the Spanish Academy of Science in 2011. He published 5 books and about 1100 peer-reviewed papers while performing research with over a hundred graduate students and post-docs.
written by Dr. Lois Beaver, wife of Georges
Events Planned to celebrate the life of Georges Guiochon
1) Lois’ family—funeral mass and lunch in Buffalo, NY Friday, Nov. 28.
2) Private interment in France at the Guiochon Family Crypt
Gathering in honor of Georges Guiochon
2:30 pm, Saturday, December 6, 2014
La Maison des Polytechniciens
12, rue de Poitiers
75007 PARIS, FRANCE
If you wish to participate, please respond by November 30 to: souvenirgeorgesguiochon@gmail.com
Celebration of a Scientist
Saturday, March 14, 2015
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
If you wish to participate, please respond to jrui@utk.edu to reach Rachel Rui, PhD, who will provide more information when it is available.
Chemistry Graduate Students Raced for the Cure
Chemistry graduate students participated in the Knoxville Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure on October 18th in the World’s Fair Park. The team of 7 finished the 5k run and raised over a thousand dollars.
The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure® Series is the largest series of 5k run/fitness walks in the world. Komen Knoxville has raised millions of dolllars. 75% of revenue from this race stays in east Tennessee for breast cancer treatment and support, the other 25% funds research nationally. *
Students participated in this year’s race include Laura Casto, Maggie Lookadoo, Amanda Clune, Alex Fisch, Adam Carr, Michael Merrill and Sam Mattern-Schain. The team was formed “in honor of family and friends afflicted by breast cancer,” Mattern-Schain said. “I love Race For The Cure and believe it does a tremendous amount of good for our community. It’s a wonderful awareness event and brings a lot of joy to the community of breast cancer survivors/victims and their families. ”
*Information from KomenKnoxville website and e-newsletter.
Professor Musfeldt Chaired Gordon Research Conference
Janice Musfeldt, professor of chemistry, chaired the first Gordon Research Conference in multiferroics and magnetoelectrics held from August 10 to 15 in University of New England in Biddeford, Maine.
The conference featured a wide range of scientifically and technologically important topics such as the origins of various microscopic coupling mechanisms, the behavior of domain structures, the role of spin-orbit coupling, and the consequences of nanoscale confinement. Due to the highly interdisciplinary nature of the conference, invited speakers represented various scientific disciplines including chemistry, physics, materials science, and engineering. One of the attendees commented that this conference was simply “top end.”
“The scientific level and the open nature of the exchange at the talks and beyond was remarkable,” Dr. Ashot Melikyan, an editor of Physical Review B, commented. “I will certainly be applying to 2016 Gordon Conference on multiferroics. The editors of APS usually attend 2 – 4 conferences every year, and this one was one of the most informative and useful conferences i attended.”
This conference attracted more than one hundred attendees from 18 different countries. Besides scientific diversity, many attendees were also pleasantly surprised by the gender and geographic diversity. “I was very impressed with the diversity of the speakers and the participants at this meeting,” one of the attendees wrote in her feedback form. “It was wonderful to meet so many other women in the field, and also I was impressed by the number of countries represented.”
Ken O’Neal and Michael Yokosuk, graduate students in the Musfeldt’s group attended the conference. O’Neal presented a poster titled “Size- and Shape-Dependent Magnetoelectric Coupling in alpha-Fe2O3 Nanoparticles.” Yokosuk’s poster talk was on magnetoelectric properties of a material Ni3TeO6 titled “Magnetoelectric Coupling in Ni3TeO6.” They both enjoyed presentations from “leading scientists in the field”, and described their experiences as “awesome.”
“I love bringing people together to discuss new science,” Musfeldt said. “In fact, I am already at work on the 2015 Tellunide workshop on spin-orbit coupling in 4- and 5d-containng materials!”
UTIA grant for McCracken Lab
Congratulations to Gary McCracken, Emma Willcox (FWF) and Riley Bernard! They were recently notified of a $10,000 grant from the UTIA Center for Wildlife Health to do a project titled: “Understanding Lower Pseudogymnoascus destructans Loads and Susceptibility to White-nose Syndrome in Gray Bats.”
Rhododendron Grant for Pfenningwerth
Alix Pfenningwerth, a graduate student in the Schweitzer Lab, won a Fellowship from the American Rhododendron Society this summer. Her research proposes to study how genetic variation in Rhododendron species influences physiological performance under a changing climate, including increasingly fluctuating temperatures, moisture regimes, soil nutrient cycling, and interactions with pathogens, herbivores, and beneficial microbes.
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