Departmental Seminars Archive

Speaker: Mingjing He

 January 8, 2020

Host: Kim Hageman

Affiliation: Southwest University of Chongqing, China

Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ming_Jing_He

Bio: Associate Professor MING-JING HE focuses on the occurrence, fate, and transport of organic pollutants in the environment. His laboratory quantifies organic pollutants in soils, dust, water，air and biological samples. He mainly focuses on the occurrences of organophosphorus ester and phthalate in different environmental matrices. His research group develops and validates methods for the extraction and clean-up of analytes from complex environmental matrices, conducts field experiments, and develops bioaccumulation behaviors of organic pollutants. He has co-authored 27 peer-reviewed articles; his H-index is 11 and his publications have received > 640 citations (Scopus).

Speaker: Sean Roberts

 January 15, 2020

Host: Yi Rao

Affiliation: University of Texas, Austin

Faculty Page: https://cns.utexas.edu/directory/item/12-chemistry/1277-roberts-sean?Itemid=349

Research Group: https://www.robertsgrouput.org/

Bio: Sean T. Roberts received his BS in Chemistry from the University of California Los Angeles in 2003 and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute in Technology in 2010 for work using multidimensional infrared spectroscopy to study proton transport in liquid water with Andrei Tokmakoff. In 2010, Sean was awarded an NSF ACC-F postdoctoral fellowship and undertook a position at the University of Southern California where he worked in the groups of Stephen Bradforth and Alexander Benderskii on collaborative projects organized by the Center for Energy Nanoscience, a DOE supported Energy Frontier Research Center. In 2014, Sean started his independent career at the University of Texas at Austin where he leads a research group that uses and develops ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to understand how the mesoscopic ordering of semiconductor nanomaterials impacts their ability to manipulate energy and transport charge. Sean is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, was named a Cottrell Scholar in 2018, and has lead projects funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Robert T. Welch Foundation, and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. Sean has also won numerous teaching awards and currently leads an ACS and NSF-funded education and research program, GReen Energy At Texas (GREAT), that works with community colleges to increase student retention and degree attainment in the physical sciences.

Speaker: Natalie Ahn

 January 22, 2020

Host: Joanie Hevel

Affiliation: University of Colorado, Boulder

Faculty Page: https://www.colorado.edu/biochemistry/natalie-ahn

Bio: Natalie Ahn discovered mammalian MAP kinase kinases, key regulators of the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase pathway, which are important targets for anti-cancer therapies. She elucidated enzymatic and cellular mechanisms underlying cell signaling events, and pioneered the use of functional proteomics and hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry for signal transduction research.  Ahn received a B.S. in Chemistry (1979, Univ. Washington, Seattle), and a Ph.D. in Chemistry (1985, Univ. California, Berkeley) where she carried out studies in mechanistic enzymology in the lab of Judith Klinman.  She then carried out postdoctoral studies on the purification of lipocortins in the lab of Christoph de Haen and the identification of enzymes in the MAP kinase pathway in the lab of Edwin Krebs, Univ. Washington.  She has been Professor of Biochemistry at Univ. Colorado, Boulder since 1992, and was an HHMI Investigator from 2003-2014.  Honors and service include Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past-President of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the U.S. Human Proteome Organization.  

Speaker: Erik Grumstrup

 January 29, 2020

Host: Joanie Hevel

Affiliation: Montana State University

Faculty Page: http://www.chemistry.montana.edu/directory/1662468/erik-grumstrup

Research Group: http://www.montana.edu/grumstruplab/

Speaker: Sarah Styler

 February 5, 2020

Host: Kim Hageman

Affiliation: University of Alberta

Faculty Page: https://www.ualberta.ca/science/about-us/contact-us/faculty-directory/sarah-styler

Research Group: https://spaces.facsci.ualberta.ca/styler/our-group/

Bio: My path to the University of Alberta has been winding: although I obtained my BSc, MSc, and my PhD at the University of Toronto, I’ve also made stops in London, Lyon, and Leipzig.
During my BSc, I studied synthetic organic and environmental chemistry (I was the rare student with a full set of organic chemistry courses as electives!), and was an undergraduate research student in the laboratories of Prof. Jonathan P. D. Abbatt and Prof. Andrei K. Yudin. 
I performed my MSc and PhD work under the supervision of Prof. D. James Donaldson. My MSc research focused on photooxidative reactions occurring on ‘urban film’, the complex mixture of chemicals that coats surfaces in urban environments. During my PhD, I studied the interaction of desert dust with organic pollutants, and focused on the role that dust plays in promoting photochemical reactions in the atmosphere.
In 2013, I began postdoctoral work at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Hartmut Herrmann. In Leipzig, I used a combination of field sampling and laboratory experiments to gain insight into the role that urban surfaces play in mediating urban air quality and the atmospheric lifetime of of photochemically active pollutants.
Here at U of A, where I’m currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Chemistry, my research program focuses on chemistry and photochemistry in atmospheric aerosol populations typical of those found in polluted urban and industially influenced environments.

Speaker: Steve Baldelli

 February 12, 2020

Host: Yi Rao

Affiliation: University of Houston

Faculty Page: https://uh.edu/nsm/chemistry/people/faculty/Baldelli/

Research Group: https://baldellilab.weebly.com/

Speaker: Alexander V. Bendersii

 February 19, 2020

Host: Yi Rao

Affiliation: University of Southern California

Faculty Page: http://chem.usc.edu/faculty/Benderskii.html

Speaker: Jennifer Schaefer

 February 26, 2020

Host: Tianbiao Leo Liu

Affiliation: Notre Dame University

Faculty Page: https://mccourtneyhall.nd.edu/faculty/jennifer-schaefer/; https://engineering.nd.edu/profiles/jschaefer2

Research Group: https://www.schaeferresearch.com/

Bio: Jennifer L. Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame.  Dr. Schaefer received M.Eng. and B.Ch.E. degrees in chemical engineering and a B.S. in chemistry from Widener University in 2008.  She completed a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Cornell University in January 2014.  She then held an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associateship in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology until moving to Notre Dame in July 2015.  Her research group studies ion transport, interfacial phenomena, and applied polymer materials in electrochemical and electroactive devices.

Speaker: Andrew Gewirth

 March 11, 2020

Host: Tianbiao Leo Liu

Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Faculty Page: https://chemistry.illinois.edu/agewirth

Research Group: http://faculty.scs.illinois.edu/aag/

Bio: Professor Andrew A. Gewirth received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1981 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. He joined the Illinois faculty in 1988 after postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, Austin. Research in his group focuses on the structure and reactivity of surfaces and interfaces.