Chemistry & Biochemistry Seminars Fall 2024
USU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry presents the weekly seminar series to give students and faculty the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research in the field. Seminar is held on Wednesdays at 4:00 p.m. (Mountain Time) in ESLC 046.
August 28 | Yang Liu, PhD |
University of Utah
September 4 | Student Welcome Event | 5:00 pm
September 11 | John McLennan, PhD |
University of Utah (EGI)
September 18 | CPR, AED, and Stop The Bleed Training
USU Department of Public Safety
September 25 | David Lee Phillips, PhD |
University of Hong Kong
October 2 | No Seminar
October 9 | Gregory Hartland, PhD | Olsen Lecture
University of Notre Dame
October 16 | Tho Nguyen, PhD |
University of Georgia
October 23 | Orion Berryman, PhD |
University of Montana
October 30 | Matt Beard, PhD |
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
November 6 | Jiaojian (Tristan) Shi, PhD |
University of Washington
November 13 | Ting Xiao, PhD |
University of Utah (EGI)
November 20 | Zheming Wang |
Pacific Northwest National Labratory (PNNL)
November 27 | No Seminar | Thanksgiving Break
December 4 | Xiongyi Huang, PhD |
John Hopkins University
Time: 4:00-5:00 p.m. (Mountain Time)
Location: ESLC 046
Yang Liu, PhD | Very fast CRISPR and DNA repair
August 28, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Ryan Jackson
Affiliation: University of Utah
About the Speaker: Dr. Liu received his PhD from Emory University in 2016 and then relocated to Baltimore to pursue postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He started his lab as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Utah in 2022. He has received several awards and research funding from the National Institute of Health and the American Cancer Society.
"We study how cellular machinery detects, signals, and repairs DNA lesions, a collective network known as DNA damage response (DDR). Many human diseases are associated with DDR defects, including developmental abnormalities, accelerated aging, and common cancers. In particular, we leverage state-of-the-art chemical biology, genomics, and microscopy techniques to characterize DDR processes within its genomic and cellular context. We developed a controllable CRISPR-Cas9 technology, termed very fast CRISPR (vfCRISPR) (Liu et al., Science 2020), which can induce DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) after light stimulation and with second-scale temporal resolution. This enabling technique, akin to the ‘Channelrhodopsin’ in optogenetics, allows ultrafast genome perturbation and is compatible with multi-omics and imaging methods to capture the DSB-induced alterations at the molecular, genomic, and cellular levels. Together, our interdisciplinary research in nucleic acids, gene editing, and cellular biophysics will significantly deepen our knowledge of genome maintenance and shed light on improving biotechnologies for precision genome editing."
Student Welcome Event
September 4, 2024 | 5:00 - 6:30 p.m. | ESLC 130
All undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry majors encouraged to attend.
John McLennan, PhD | Geothermal Energy: An Opportunity at Any Temperature
September 11, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Lance Seefeldt
Affiliation: University of Utah (EGI)
About the Speaker: Since 2009, Professor John McLennan has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah. He has been a Senior Research Scientist at the Energy & Geoscience Institute and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Utah since 2008. He has a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto, awarded in 1980. Before joining the university, he had more than twenty-five years of experience with petroleum service and technology companies. He worked nine years for Dowell Schlumberger in their Denver, Tulsa, and Houston facilities. Later, John was with TerraTek in Salt Lake City, Advantek International in Houston, and ASRC Energy Services in Anchorage. He has worked on projects concerned with subsurface energy recovery (hydrocarbon, geothermal) in a variety of reservoir environments throughout the world. He is an ARMA Fellow and has served as ARMA president. He is a Co-Principal Investigator on the Department of Energy’s Utah FORGE project. He is a member of the Utah Academy of Engineering and Science.
CPR, AED, and Stop The Bleed Training
September 18, 2024 | 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. | ESLC 046
Presentation by USU Department of Public Safety for graduate students, faculty, and staff.
Hands-on activities and training. Come in comfortable clothes.
David Lee Phillips, PhD | Time-Resolved Spectroscopic Studies of Selected Photodeprotection Compounds and Insight IntoTheir Reaction Mechanisms
September 25, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Frank Qiu
Affiliation: University of Hong Kong
About the Speaker: Professor David Lee Phillips is Chair Professor of Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. Professor Phillips is an internationally recognized scientist who uses time-resolved spectroscopy experiments and quantum mechanical calculations to study short-lived intermediates in chemical reactions of interest in chemistry, biology and the environment. Examples include the direct time-resolved spectroscopic characterization of excited states and intermediates involved in some chemical and photochemical damage of DNA nucleobases and oligomers, photodeprotection compounds with applications as phototriggers in physiology experiments, drug delivery and photodynamic therapy and novel aqueous solution photoredox reactions and phenol oxidation related intermediates. In collaboration with several other groups, he also investigates and characterizes new materials with applications related to solar cells, OLEDs, and photocatalysts to generate hydrogen.
Gregory Hartland, PhD | Olsen Lecture | Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Single Plasmonic Nanostructures
October 9, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Hosts: Dr. Tuan Trinh, Dr. Yi Rao
Affiliation: University of Notre Dame
About the Speaker: Research in the Hartland group is focused on using optics to examine the properties of nanomaterials and how these materials interact with their environments. Almost all of the projects in the group involve single particle studies, and the development of novel techniques to perform time-resolved and steady state spectroscopy experiments on single particles is a major component of the research. Examples of the processes that are being studied are the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons in metal nanostructures, charge carrier trapping and diffusion in semiconductor nanowires, chemical reactions in nanomaterials, and the effects of viscosity at the nanoscale. The work is very interdisciplinary, bridging the fields of physical and analytical chemistry and involving collaborations with groups around the world as well as at the University of Notre Dame.
Dr. Hartland was senior editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, and now is deputy editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. He is a Royal Society of Chemistry fellow, ACS Fellow, and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow.
Tho Nguyen, PhD | Rapid Optical and Electrical Sensing of Hydrogen Using Templated Control of Nano-hydride Geometry and Magnetic Composition
October 16, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Tuan Trinh
Affiliation: University of Georgia
About the Speaker: Dr. Tho Nguyen is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Georgia (UGA). He earned his BS degrees in Physics (1996) and Computer Science (1998) from Can Tho University, and a PhD in Condensed Matter Physics (2008) from the University of Iowa. Following his PhD, he completed two postdoctoral fellowships: one at the University of Tennessee in 2008 and another at the University of Utah from 2008 to 2010. In 2010, he was promoted to Research Assistant Professor at the University of Utah, before joining UGA as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in 2012. Dr. Nguyen has been deeply involved in organic spintronics research since 2004, focusing on magnetic field effects in organic light-emitting diodes and magnetoresistance in organic spin valves. His recent research interests include developing semitransparent perovskite solar cells for greenhouse applications and investigating spintronics in 3D and 2D organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites. Additionally, his work extends to plasmonic lattices in THz and Vis-IR wavelengths, with applications in chemical and hydrogen gas sensors. He has published over 70 papers and holds two U.S. patents.
Orion Berryman, PhD | The role of Hydrogen Bonds and Halogen Bonds in the Assembly of Anion Binding Higher-Order Helices
October 23, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Steve Scheiner
Affiliation: University of Montana
About the Speaker: Orion grew up enjoying the great outdoors surrounding Homer, Alaska. In 2003, Orion received a BA in chemistry and a minor in music from the University of New Hampshire. For postbaccalaureate studies Orion attended the University of Oregon and earned a PhD in organic/inorganic chemistry in 2008. During his doctoral studies Orion helped define the nature of anion/arene interactions under the guidance of Darren W. Johnson. Postdoctoral studies led Orion to The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA where he worked for Julius Rebek Jr. developing light responsive catalysts and ligands that encapsulate uranium. Orion has been a faculty member at the University of Montana since 2012 and is full professor and director of the Small Molecule X-ray Diffraction Core Facility. Orion is a also member of the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics where he teaches organic chemistry and develops new catalysts and self-assembled supramolecular structures that utilize noncovalent interactions.
Matt Beard, PhD | Chiral Organic/Inorganic Hybrid Semiconductors
October 30, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Tuan Trinh
Affiliation: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
About the Speaker: Matthew C. Beard is a senior laboratory research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Director of the Center for Hybrid Organic Inorganic Semiconductors for Energy (CHOISE) and Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) funded by the Office of Science within DOE. Beard is also a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute a join research institute between NREL and CU Boulder and an Adjoint professor within the Chemistry department of Colorado School of Mines. Beard has been at NREL since 2003 and before that graduated from the Yale Chemistry Department where he received his PhD degree developing non-contact ultrafast probes of carrier dynamics in semiconductors and semiconductor nanocrystals. Beard also served as Associate director for the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics. Beard is a fellow of the AAAS, American Physical Society, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Beard is listed a Clarivate highly cited researcher from 2023-2018 with over 200 publications. Beard was awarded the 2022 E.O. Lawarence Award for DOE and the NREL highest impact paper in 2024. Beard serves on the editorial boards of Phyiscal Review Letters (divisional editor), ACS Energy Letters and Journal of Chemical Physics.
Jiaojian (Tristan) Shi, PhD | Ultrafast control of nanomaterials with terahertz and mid-infrared light
November 6, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Yi Rao
Affiliation: University of Washington
About the Speaker: Jiaojian (Tristan) Shi earned his BS in physics from Peking University in 2015 and his PhD in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2021. While at MIT, he worked in the lab of Keith A. Nelson on strong-field phenomena in nanomaterials at terahertz frequencies. Following that, he became a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Aaron M. Lindenberg at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, focusing on studying light-matter interactions with ultrafast structural-sensitive spectroscopies with sensitivity down to single-particle levels. He will join UW to develop laser-based tools to surgically control physicochemical processes crucial for clean energy conversion, power storage, and quantum world development.
Ting Xiao, PhD | Carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage in Utah
November 13, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Seth Lyman
Affiliation: University of Utah (EGI)
About the Speaker: Dr. Ting Xiao is a research assistant professor at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Utah. Her research interests include subsurface reactive transport simulations, carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), risk/uncertainty assessment, and underground sources of drinking water quality. She is working on feasibility assessment and public engagement for the development of CCUS hubs.
Zheming Wang, PhD |
November 20, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Yi Rao
Affiliation: Pacific Northwest National Labratory (PNNL)
About the Speaker:
Xiongyi Huang, PhD | Bringing new catalytic functions to nonheme enzymes
December 4, 2024 | 4:00 p.m. | ESLC 046
Host: Dr. Gang Li
Affiliation: John Hopkins University
About the Speaker: Xiongyi earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2010, where he conducted research in computational organic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Yao Fu and Prof. Jing Shi. He then pursued graduate studies in the United States, completing his PhD with Prof. John T. Groves at Princeton University as an HHMI International Predoctoral Fellow. During his PhD, Xiongyi developed Mn-catalyzed biomimetic C–H functionalization methods and novel radiolabeling chemistry for positron emission tomography (PET) applications. After receiving his PhD in 2016, he joined Prof. Frances Arnold’s lab at Caltech as an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow and later as an NIH Pathway to Independence Fellow. In the Arnold group, he applied directed evolution to engineer enzymes for non-natural reactions. In September 2019, Xiongyi became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, where his research focuses on introducing new catalytic functions to metalloenzymes. He is the recipient of the 2021 Packard Fellowship and the 2024 Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.