The work of Hamilton College's Dreyfus Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow Steven Feldgus and several students is featured in a NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) article about using computational chemistry to explore new cancer treatments.
Feldgus, the project's principal investigator, has worked extensively with NCSA resources in the past, beginning with projects in graduate school, and has applied for and used over 100,000 supercomputing hours for multiple projects in the last three years...
The team at Hamilton is learning to manipulate cyclization temperatures, increasing the chances that a more effectively targeted class of antibiotics with low toxicity to healthy cells will be developed. The ultimate goals of the undergrads are to observe the drug-induced extraction of hydrogen molecules, which splits the DNA; to find and manipulate the thermal barrier for cyclization; and to view the natural processes that occur in conjunction with the reaction...
(Chemistry Chair) George Shields, a co-principal investigator for the project, says that this hands-on approach to education is an essential element in turning students into scientists, "We feel that the best kind of teaching stems from the mentoring and one-on-one interactions between faculty and students in a small research group. Science has always worked best with the apprenticeship model, and we give undergraduates a chance to find out if they want to become research scientists before they have to make a decision on whether to attend graduate school."
RELATED LINKS
- Complete NCSA Article (opens in new window)
- Supercomputer Acquired for Student/Faculty Research
