News
Department News
Josh McCormick is the recipient of one of seven Department of Homeland Security Nuclear Forensics Graduate Fellowships awarded this year. This is an honor for both Josh and our department. Congratulations to Josh!Katrina Kline of the Tucker group was selected as this year’s recipient for the Pfizer Graduate Travel Award in Analytical Chemistry. The travel award will provide $1000 for Katrina to attend the Spring ACS Meeting in New Orleans and present her work on "Spectroscopic investigations of hyperbranched polymers and comparison to their dendritic counterparts." Congratulations!
Research News
Chemistry Professor Receives Highest Honor from the American Chemical Society
M. Frederick Hawthorne’s life work has made him one of the giants in the nano and molecular medicine field. Hawthorne, director of the University of Missouri International Institute of Nano and Molecular Medicine and pioneer in boron chemistry, will receive the 2009 Priestley Medal for his achievements in the field of chemistry. The award is the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) highest honor and recognizes distinguished service in the field of chemistry. The ACS, with 160,000 members, is the world’s largest professional society.
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Researcher presents origin-of-life theory for young Earth;
Presence of essential molecule in space could support life on other planets
Some of the elements necessary to support life on Earth are widely known - oxygen, carbon and water, to name a few. Just as important in the existence of life as any other component is the presence of adenine, an essential organic molecule. Without it, the basic building blocks of life would not come together. Scientists have been trying to find the origin of Earth's adenine and where else it might exist in the solar system. Professor of Chemistry Rainer Glaser may have the answer.
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Researchers create model of cancer-preventing enzyme; study how it works
Researchers at the University of Missouri- Columbia recently created a model of proline dehydrogenase, an important cancer-preventing enzyme in the human body, and analyzed how it works.
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New family of pseudo-metallic elements may change how scientists fight disease, create materials
The periodic table of elements, all 111 of them, just got a little competition. A new discovery by a University of Missouri-Columbia research team, published in Angewandte Chemie, the journal of the German Society of Chemists, allows scientists to manipulate a molecule discovered 50 years ago in such as way as to give the molecule metal-like properties, creating a new, pseudo element. The pseudo-metal properties can be adjusted for a wide range of uses and might change the way scientists think about attacking disease or even building electronics.
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