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Author: Kayla Benson

Musfeldt Group Published in npj 2D Materials and Applications

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The Musfeldt Group published their work “Chemical bonding and Born charge in 1T-HfS2” in npj 2D Materials and Applications. This is a collaborative research with the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. 

Their research combines infrared absorption and Raman scattering spectroscopies to explore the properties of the heavy transition metal dichalcogenide 1T-HfS2. They employ the LO–TO splitting of the Eu vibrational mode along with a reevaluation of mode mass, unit cell volume, and dielectric constant to reveal the Born effective charge.

 In addition to resolving the controversy over the nature of chemical bonding in this system, we decompose Born charge into polarizability and local charge. Polar displacement-induced charge transfer from sulfur p to hafnium d is responsible for the enhanced Born charge compared to the nominal 4+ in hafnium. 1T-HfS2 is thus an ionic crystal with strong and dynamic covalent effects. 

This work places the vibrational properties of 1T-HfS2 on a firm foundation and opens the door to understanding the properties of tubes and sheets.

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Chemistry of Learning: Machines and Humans

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New courses the Department of Chemistry is offering:

Artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly changes many aspects of chemical sciences, from drug discovery, material design, and the discovery of new reactions and molecules till the acceleration of computer sciences and robotics for chemical applications. In Fall 2021, Dr. Vogiatzis will be teaching Machine Learning for Chemical Applications (CHEM420). This course will cover the key aspects of AI and modern chemoinformatics and how they are applied on chemical sciences.
For more information on this course please email kvogiatz@utk.edu.

In the Spring 2022, students may register for Chemistry of the Brain (CHEM340) with Dr. Sharma. This course will be an overview of basic principles of neuroscience with a focus on the function of key neurochemicals and their receptors. Topics include the chemical bases for neuronal membrane transport, electrical excitability, and ion channels; axonal transport; energy metabolism; synaptic transmission; cellular signaling; Ca2+ homeostasis; neurotransmitters; oxidative stress; apoptosis and necrosis; application of neurochemical principles to the molecular bases of neurodegenerative disorders. Co-Requisite: Organic Chemistry. For more information on this course please email bhavya.sharma@utk.edu.

Long Group Published in Chem. Eur. J.

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The Long Group published their research “Mechanochemical Formation, Solution Rearrangements, and Catalytic Behavior of a Polymorphic Ca/K Allyl Complex” in Chemistry—A European Journal. Authors Brian Long and Alicia Doerr, graduate student, collaborated with Vanderbilt University and the University of Rochester. 

Without solvents present, the often far‐from‐equilibrium environment in a mechanochemically driven synthesis can generate high‐energy, non‐stoichiometric products not observed from the same ratio of reagents used in solution. Ball milling 2 equiv. K[A´] (A´ = [1,3‐(SiMe3)2C3 H3]– ) with CaI2  yields a non‐stoichiometric calciate, K[CaA´3], which initially forms a structure (1) likely containing a mixture of pi‐ and sigma‐bound allyl ligands. Dissolved in arenes, the compound rearranges over the course of several days to a structure (2) with only  η3‐bound allyl ligands, and that can be crystallized as a coordination polymer. If dissolved in alkanes, however, the rearrangement of 1 to 2 occurs within minutes. The structures of 1 and 2 have been modeled with DFT calculations, and 2 initiates the anionic polymerization of methyl methacrylate and isoprene; for the latter, under the mildest conditions yet reported for a heavy Group 2 species (one‐atm pressure and room temperature).

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Albert and Suoma Tuinman’s Passing

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It is with deep sorrow we announce the death of Albert Andrew Tuinman and Suoma Annikki Tuinman.  The couple passed away in their home on March 16, 2020.  Albert came to the University Of Tennessee Department of Chemistry from the Cancer Research Institute in Tempe, AZ serving in the position of Director of Mass Spectrometry and Research Associate Professor from March 1987 until his retirement in April 2006.  A Celebration of Life ceremony will be held May 29, 2021 at the Norris United Methodist Church, 62 Ridgeway Road, Norris, TN 37828, at 10:45 AM.  The hybrid event will include friends and family throughout Europe and South Africa.  Friends of the Tuinmans are invited to attend either in person or on Zoom. For those interested in attending the event through Zoom, please send Linda Lewis (lewisla7755@gmail.com) your desire to participate.

Bone Selected to Attend NX School

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Alex Bone, graduate student in the Xue Group, has been selected to attend the Twenty-Third National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering to be held virtually from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering (NX School) will be held virtually from July 12-30, 2021. The first week of the program will consist of half day lecture sessions, the second and third week will be lectures, remote experiments and data analysis tutorials.

The main purpose of the National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering is to educate graduate students in the use of major neutron and x-ray facilities. Lectures, presented by researchers from academia, industry, and national laboratories, include basic tutorials on the principles of scattering theory and the characteristics of the sources, as well as seminars on the application of scattering methods to a variety of scientific subjects. Students will conduct short remote experiments at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor, which provides hands-on experience using neutron and synchrotron sources.

This year’s NX School will be three weeks in length. The first week will consist of half day lecture sessions. The second two weeks will be full-time consisting of lectures and remote experiments.

Jointly Conducted by: Argonne National Laboratory’s, Advanced Photon Source and Materials Science Division, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Neutron Sciences Directorate and Materials Science and Technology Division.

The School is supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, and Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

Tin Awarded Shull Wollan Center Graduate Research Fellowship

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Pagnareach (Reach) Tin, graduate student in the Xue Group, has been awarded the Shull Wollan Center Graduate Research Fellowship for Spring 2021.

The Shull Wollan Center Graduate Research Fellowship Program has been designed to recognize and support outstanding graduate students in neutron science disciplines who are pursuing research-based doctoral degrees at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

The Shull Wollan Center Graduate Research Fellowship will be awarded to two UTK doctoral students with majors in physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering, biology, or a related area who are engaged in active research as part of their PhD thesis.  Successful applicants will be awarded a monthly stipend for January through June 2021.

Sharma Announced Winner of 2021 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy

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Bhavya Sharma, assistant professor, has been named the winner of the 2021 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award. The award will be presented to Sharma at the SciX 2021 conference this fall, where she will give a plenary lecture and be honored in an award symposium.

“We would like to extend congratulations to Professor Sharma for winning the 2021 Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award,” said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences™, the parent company of Spectroscopy®. “Sharma is well deserving of this recognition for all of her excellent work as a molecular spectroscopist. We are proud to honor her with this award at the SciX conference this fall.”

Sharma received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. She has become a leader in the area of neurochemical detection with various forms of Raman spectroscopy, including surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and spatially offset Raman spectroscopy. Sharma has developed novel Raman spectroscopy methods for neurological detection, including surface-enhanced spatially offset Raman spectroscopy. Additionally, she is developing methods to demonstrate direct detection of molecules for the first time by combining SERS and multivariate analysis.

Sharma has published 26 papers and has given more than 40 oral and poster presentations at scientific conferences. She is a reviewer for multiple journals and received an Outstanding Reviewer award for the journal Analyst in 2018. As an active member of the Coblentz Society, Sharma has served on multiple award committees and was also a member of the program committee for the OSA Optical Sensors Conference for 2018 and 2019. Sharma has also been active in organizing sessions at various scientific conferences, including Pittcon, the SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing Symposium, and SciX. 

Selected by an independent scientific committee, the Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award recognizes the achievements and aspirations of a talented young molecular spectroscopist who has made strides early in his or her career toward the advancement of molecular spectroscopy techniques and applications. The winner must be within 10 years of receiving his or her PhD. 

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Doerr Selected for Prestigious Symposium

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Alicia Doerr, graduate student in the Long Group, has been selected to take part in the ACS national meeting’s symposium entitled “Excellence in Graduate Polymer Research.” This annual symposium is organized by the POLY division and held at Spring national meetings of the ACS to recognize outstanding graduate students in polymer science and engineering, foster networking and exposure, and help develop the careers of future leaders in the field of polymers. This symposium was started in 2004 and includes both oral and poster sessions with presentations exclusively from graduate students.

Due to this meeting’s hybrid nature, the ACS POLY division created an independent web page to highlight the accomplishments of these graduate scientists. 

Doerr’s research explores the field of redox-switchable catalysis which has gained considerable interest in recent years, enabling catalytic reactivity/selectivity to be oscillated based on the redox-state of the ligand or active metal center. Unfortunately, though a myriad of redox-switchable catalysts have been developed for the ring opening polymerization of cyclic esters, very few fundamental structure-catalytic performance studies have been conducted that ascertain how systematic changes in ligand structure affect the catalytic performance.

This work describes studies used to determine how changes in the placement and number of redox-active moieties, ligand denticity, and active metal center identity impacts the catalytic performance.

The results of these studies reveal that the proximity of the redox-active moiety to the active metal center may influence both catalyst activity and redoxswitchability. Conversely, the number of redox-active moieties present within the ligand scaffold may not play a crucial role in the catalysts’ switchability. Lastly, when Ti-/ Zr-centered analogues of these catalysts were compared it was revealed that the choice of metal center may dramatically influence both catalyst activity and redox-switchable.

Do Lab Published in Chemical Science

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The Do Lab recently published their work “α-CGRP disrupts amylin fibrillization and regulates insulin secretion: implications on diabetes and migraine” in Chemical Science.

Amber Gray and Aleksandra Antevska, graduate students, share first authorship on this piece.

Despite being relatively benign and not an indicative signature of toxicity, fibril formation and fibrillar structures continue to be key factors in assessing the structure–function relationship in protein aggregation diseases. The inability to capture molecular cross-talk among key players at the tissue level before fibril formation greatly accounts for the missing link toward the development of an efficacious therapeutic intervention for Type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

This research shows that human α-calcitonin gene-related peptide (α-CGRP) remodeled amylin fibrillization. Furthermore, while CGRP and/or amylin monomers reduce the secretion of both mouse Ins1 and Ins2 proteins, CGRP oligomers have a reverse effect on Ins1. Genetically reduced Ins2, the orthologous version of human insulin, has been shown to enhance insulin sensitivity and extend the life-span in old female mice.

Beyond the mechanistic insights, their data suggest that CGRP regulates insulin secretion and lowers the risk of T2DM. Our result rationalizes how migraine might be protective against T2DM. They envision the new paradigm of CGRP : amylin interactions as a pivotal aspect for T2DM diagnostics and therapeutics. Maintaining a low level of amylin while increasing the level of CGRP could become a viable approach toward T2DM prevention and treatment.

Hix in Bailey Lab Named Goldwater Scholar

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As the result of a partnership with the Department of Defense National Defense Education Programs (NDEP), Mrs. Peggy Goldwater Clay, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, announced that the Trustees of the Goldwater Board have increased the number of Goldwater scholarships it has awarded for the 2021-2022 academic year to 410 college students from across the United States.

“As it is vitally important that the Nation ensures that it has the scientific talent it needs to maintain its global competitiveness and security, we saw partnering with the Goldwater Foundation as a way to help ensure the U.S. is developing this talent,” said Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, Director of the NDEP program, as he explained the partnership. With the 2021 awards, this brings the number of scholarships awarded since 1989 by the Goldwater Foundation to 9457.

From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1256 natural science, engineering and mathematics students were nominated by 438 academic institutions to compete for the 2021 Goldwater scholarships. Of students who reported, 198 of the Scholars are men, 207 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their highest degree objective. Fifty-one Scholars are mathematics and computer science majors, 291 are majoring in the natural sciences, and 68 are majoring in engineering. Many of the Scholars have published their research in leading professional journals and have presented their work at professional society conferences.

Goldwater Scholars have impressive academic and research credentials that have garnered the attention of prestigious post-graduate fellowship programs. Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 94 Rhodes Scholarships, 150 Marshall Scholarships, 170 Churchill Scholarships, 109 Hertz Fellowships, and numerous other distinguished awards like the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

Elijah Hix, of Cookeville, Tennessee, is a College Scholar whose major focuses on quantum chemical biology. Hix has pursued research at UT, Tennessee Tech, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Currently he is conducting research at UT under Constance Bailey, assistant professor of chemistry. He subsequently plans to pursue a PhD in biophysics to study the intersection of enzymatic synthesis and cellular networking to develop more adaptable antibiotics. “I am honored to be selected as a 2021 Goldwater Scholar,” Hix said. “It is the culmination of years of work with my two mentors, and I look forward to using this opportunity to propel enzyme modeling and engineering to new heights.”

Hix anticipates graduating May 2022. “After obtaining my degree in Quantum Chemical Biology, I plan to earn a Ph.D. in Biophysics in order to continue my research and teach on the molecular dynamics of enzymes,” Hix said.

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