Studying Mysteries of the Microbiome – interview with Dr. Stephanie Kivlin
https://artsci.utk.edu/dialogue/studying-the-mysterious-of-the-microbiome/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=noopener%20noreferrer&utm_campaign=TN%20Today
by ldutton
https://artsci.utk.edu/dialogue/studying-the-mysterious-of-the-microbiome/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=noopener%20noreferrer&utm_campaign=TN%20Today
Graduate student Kevin Smith and Professor Janice Musfeldt were recently featured by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for their work with the Advanced Light Source (ALS). The highlight described the work in their paper entitled “Real-Space Infrared Spectroscopy of Ferroelectric Domain Walls in Multiferroic h-(Lu,Sc)FeO3” published in ACS Applied Matter Interfaces.
Smith and Musfeldt used infrared light from the ALS to investigate the properties of the domain walls that separate electrically polarized regions in a rare-earth ferrite material. Their findings open the door to broadband imaging of physical and chemical heterogeneity in ferroics, and improved understandings of the properties of flexible defect states. The complete highlight is available here.
On Thursday, April 27th the Department of Chemistry will host the East Tennessee chapter of the American Chemical Society’s S.C. Lind Lecture Series. This lecture series is designed to bring exceptional scientists and researchers to East Tennessee and will feature Nobel Laureate Richard R. Schrock.
Richard Schrock received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005 for his work on “the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis.” Metathesis is an important chemical reaction to assembling or synthesizing organic substances. In 1990 Schrock successfully produced a metallic compound that aids in metathesis, a process that has contributed to more effective and environmentally sound practices in industry. Schrock shared this award with Yves Chauvin and Robert H. Grubbs.
In his lecture entitled “How Molybdenum and Tungsten-Based Olefin Metathesis Catalysts are formed from Olefins,” Schrock will address how heterogeneous and homogeneous alkylidene complexes are formed from olefins. The lecture will take place Thursday, April 27th at 10:30am in room 272B of the Student Union. Light refreshments will be served at 10am.
Schrock earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, followed by a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Cambridge. In 1975 he joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and became a full professor in 1980. Schrock was named the Frederick G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT in 1989 and is now Professor Emeritus. In 2019, he joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of California, Riverside, where he is now the Distinguished Professor and George K. Helmkamp Founder’s Chair of Chemistry.
Two undergraduate chemistry students are included in the 2023 Volunteer of Distinction Award winners. Drake Robins and Clay West were nominated by faculty members and joined the ranks of students from across the university being honored.
Drake Robins is a fourth-year senior studying analytical chemistry. He is a member of the Air Force ROTC and has been working in Associate Professor Bhavya Sharma’s lab since his junior year. After graduation, Robins will join the United States Air Force and attend Undergraduate Pilot Training. Robins expressed his gratitude for the award and his time at the University of Tennessee.
“Academics and research have always been a top priority for me throughout my time at UT, and I feel extremely blessed to be recognized for it this close to graduation,” said Robins.
Clay West, also a fourth-year senior, is a student in the department’s American Chemical Society certified bachelor’s degree program. He plans to spend the year after graduation applying to graduate schools and preparing to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry. West stated he was grateful to receive the Volunteer of Distinction Award and considers it to be a reflection of the work he has put into earning his degree.
The Volunteer of Distinction Awards were created in 2021 by the university to recognize students across campus who exhibit extraordinary academic achievement, professional promise, or excellence in research. Previous award winners from the chemistry department include Maggie Eslinger, Hannah Hagewood, Elijah Hix, Galvin McCarver, and Wilson Wang.
Grier Jones, fifth year chemistry PhD student, recently won a poster competition at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). His poster, entitled “Exploring the topology of electronic correlation with graph neural networks” earned the NVIDIA GPU Award for Best GPU Poster. The award targets excellent computational chemistry research using a graphical processing unit (GPU).
GPUs are most often associated with the high-quality images seen on gaming computers. However, the highly parallelized architecture of GPUs offers an acceleration platform that can outperform central processing units (CPUs) when processing large amounts of data in parallel. This has implications for scientific computing and machine learning applications, which have traditionally used CPUs.
Jones has developed a novel computational model that incorporates GPUs with graph neural networks (GNNs) and topological data analysis (TDA) to explore the topology of electron correlation. By incorporating two central motifs of the machine learning projects in the Vogiatzis lab, Data-Driven Quantum Chemistry (DDQC) and the application of persistent homology this study provides new perspectives on both the topological nature of electron correlation and the data-driven algorithms used to capture electron correlation.
For the purposes of this study, GPUs provided by the Infrastructure for Scientific Applications and Advanced Computing (ISAAC) cluster at the University of Tennessee were used. Training machine learning models on GPUs allows for the exploration of large datasets by reducing the computational time required to train the models. As a second step, persistent homology was used to characterize the transferability in the machine learning models between system size.
Jones expressed his gratitude to the Graduate Student Senate Travel Award and the Vogiatzis’ NSF-CAREER award for providing financial support for his participation in the ACS Spring 2023 National Meeting in Indianapolis. The award provides a professional workstation-level NVIDIA GPU, which Grier is excited to incorporate into his current and future projects.
The NVIDIA GPU Award for Best GPU Poster is a competitive biannual award sponsored by NVIDIA and the American Chemical Society’s Division of Computers in Chemistry.
by ldutton
The Ecological Society of America is pleased to announce its 2023 Fellows. The Society’s fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research, communication, education, management and policy. This year, the ESA Governing Board has confirmed seven new Fellows and ten new Early Career Fellows.
Fellows are members who have made outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA, including, but not restricted to, those that advance or apply ecological knowledge in academics, government, non-profit organizations, and the broader society. They are elected for life.
Read more here: https://www.esa.org/blog/2023/04/05/ecological-society-of-america-announces-2023-fellows/