Seven Hamilton College students presented their research at the 245th American Chemical Society National Meeting. The conference, held from April 7 to 11 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, attracted more than 14,000 attendees and featured research presentations and posters spanning 37 sub-divisions of chemistry.  Chemistry department faculty Karen Brewer, Saritha Nellutla and Adam Van Wynsberghe also attended.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe gave an invited seminar as part of the “Modeling Diffusional Encounter and Subsequent Events Mini-Symposium” held this week at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD).

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam W. Van Wynsberghe presented a seminar titled “Hitting the Target: Simulations of the ligand binding pathways of influenza neuraminidase” on Oct. 16 at Colgate University. The seminar was co-sponsored by Colgate’s chemistry and biology departments and primarily described the work of three undergraduate researchers in the Van Wynsberghe lab: Erica Losito ’12 and Carmen Montagnon ’13, as well as Jeffrey Sung of the University of California-San Diego.

The Molecular Educational Research Consortium in Undergraduate Computational chemistry (MERCURY) has received a $200,000 award from the National Science Foundation to further its work utilizing computational chemistry techniques to provide productive and educational research experiences for undergraduates.

One of the most common methods of combating the influenza virus is to utilize an inhibitor to prevent the binding of the viral protein neuraminidase with cell surface receptors terminating in a sialic acid moiety. While this may sound like a complex process, it’s actually relatively simple to understand once the scientific jargon has been translated. In order for a virus like influenza to continue its life cycle, its neuraminidase enzyme needs to bind to and cleave a sialic acid molecule away from the human cell receptors.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam W. Van Wynsberghe attended the 7th annual National Biomedical Computation Resource Summer Institute at the University of California-San Diego, July 30-Aug. 3, and presented the summer research of Leah Krause ’13. Other Van Wynsberghe lab members who contributed to the research included Alvin Wu ’13, Dan Mermelstein ’14 and Jeremy Adelman ’13.

Rob Clayton ’15 and Leah Krause ’14 presented their research at the 11th Molecular Educational Research Consortium in Undergraduate Computational chemistRY (MERCURY) conference at Bucknell University. Both students have been working this summer in the laboratory of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe.

A paper recently published by Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe received notice in two different venues in the past month. It was featured on the Oak Ridge National Labs’ supercomputing center website and was named a “must-read” by the post-publication review service Faculty of 1000.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe was a contributing author of a paper published in the Oct. 25 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. (PNAS)

Over the weekend of July 29,  Dan Mermelstein’14, Carmen Montagnon ’13 and Alvin Wu ’13 presented their research at the 10th Molecular Educational Research Consortium in Undergraduate Computational chemistRY (MERCURY) conference at Bucknell University. The three students have been working this summer in the laboratory of Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe.