To the naked eye, the simple glass beads all over the lab of Meghan Carter ’12 are not very exciting. However, under UV light, the beads glow different colors depending on their composition. Working under Associate Dean of Students for Academics and Professor of Chemistry Karen Brewer, Carter is trying to increase the fluorescence of these beads. More ...

Over the past few years, people have become aware of a health threat in an unexpected place: traces of bisphenol-A (or BPA) that leach from reusable plastic water bottles. Because of his interest in endocrinology and toxicology, Dan Brimberry ’13 has decided to further pursue this subject with funding from an Emerson grant and guidance from Timothy Elgren, professor of chemistry. More ...

The Ninth Annual National MERCURY Conference on Computational Chemistry, devoted solely to undergraduates who are working on research projects in computational chemistry, was held at Hamilton from Aug. 1 through Aug. 3. The program offered an opportunity for undergraduates to learn about the breadth of research in computational chemistry, particularly in interdisciplinary topics and to discuss their work with other undergraduate computational chemists as well as some leaders in the field. More ...

In a chemistry lab, Eric Kuenstner ’12 and Jack Trieu ’11 place a round-bottom flask on an instrument called a rotovap. With a push of a button the flask begins spinning, making the solution flow from the flask through coiled tubes. “It always makes me feel like a mad scientist,” Kuenstner laughs, and Trieu nods agreement. But the result of this seemingly diabolical processing is hardly sinister; the students are looking to find the most favorable conditions for a [2,3] sigmatropic rearrangement to occur. More ...

Jason McGavin ’12 observes the organic balls that seem to be bleeding dye into the surrounding liquid. But what caused the destruction? In this microscopic game of Space Invaders, it is the destructive entity that is the aggressor: piscidins, a type of bacteria-killing protein found in fish. McGavin is looking at two specific piscidins and attempting to relate their destructive function to their chemical structure. More ...

A new, active metabolite called cryptomaldamide was discovered by Robin Kinnel, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, while he was on leave at Scripps Institute of Oceanography during the spring semester. This summer Kinnel is pursuing the synthesis of cryptomaldamide with University of Maastricht graduate student Marta Kolodziejczak who comes to Hamilton through the Junior Year in France Program.
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When viewing our existence from a molecular level, one miniscule change can have enormous repercussions. Carbon dioxide, for example, is the natural waste product of our respiration; but carbon monoxide is toxic to us when inhaled. Similarly, a molecule’s orientation can also affect the way the body processes it. This summer, Cara Vennari ’12 is working under Associate Professor of Chemistry Ian Rosenstein to expand ring molecules that have three carbon atoms in them to contain five. More ...

Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten recently participated in a Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) annual business meeting that gathered councilors from diverse academic disciplines at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Cotten contributed to two workshops as part of the national meeting that followed the business meeting. More ...

Deep in the bowels of the Science Center, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Camille Y. Jones labored away at the project that has become her White Whale: unlocking the secrets of the clathrate hydrates (molecules that form cage-like structures around various guest molecules). But as she ran the spectroscopy on the clathrates, she found the resulting spectra to be extremely complex—too complex to be interpreted. In order to facilitate Jones’ research, Kate Otley ’12, working under Associate Professor of Chemistry Ian Rosenstein, is spending her summer replacing some of the troublesome hydrogen atoms with its isotope, deuterium. More ...

Assistant Professors of Chemistry Nicole L. Snyder and Adam Van Wynsberghe have each received a Cottrell College Science Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. These grants each supply $35,000 for the investigators’ research programs and include funds for equipment, supplies, and faculty and student stipends. Fifty-seven of these awards were funded nationally in 2010. More ...