Check out 2018 highlights and catch up with some of our alumni in the latest issue of the UO Chemistry and Biochemistry newsletter!

An instructional grant from the WIlliams Fund helped bring to life the UO Sustainable Invention Immersion Week, allowing students to collaborate across majors to develop ideas and products to solve environmental and societal problems.

UO Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty Julie Haack will participate in the Williams Fund Showcase on Wednesday, November 7, from 11am – 1pm in the Erb Memorial Union’s Crater Lake North room.

from AroundtheO:

Williams Fund Showcase will share innovations in teaching

Every year, the Williams Fund recognizes faculty members from across campus for their insightful approaches to undergraduate teaching.

An upcoming showcase will feature a panel of Williams Fund fellows and instructional grant recipients who will share insights and takeaways from their experience enhancing undergraduate education at the UO.

The panel will include Michelle McKinley, the Bernard B. Kliks professor of law; Kate Harmon, an instructor in the Lundquist College of Business; and Julie Haack, a senior instructor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as a few other past fellows and grant recipients.

Harmon and Haack are the faculty members behind the UO Sustainable Invention Immersion Week, which was one of seven instructional proposals chosen by the Williams Council for 2017-18.

Read more here

Video:Doctoral student Brittany White talks about the collaborative research project she worked on with postdoctoral researcher Yu Zhao and chemistry professors Ramesh Jasti and Mike Pluth.

Teamwork by chemists in two University of Oregon labs has led to a new class of fluorescent dyes that could expand the real-time view of cell activity in medical diagnostics.

In a paper in ACS Central Science, with White as lead author, the group detailed how they fitted organic molecules called nanohoops with a chemical sidechain of sulfonate to make them water soluble and able to penetrate cell membranes. Nanohoops are made with short, circular slices of carbon atoms. Making them in different sizes, the group discovered, produces distinctive colors that can be illuminated in living cells by a single laser burst.

Read the full article in AroundtheO

From left) Professors Brian Smith, Andy Marcus and Mike Raymer are helping advance UO research in quantum computing as well as the National Quantum Initiative.

UO researchers on the forefront of quantum information science continue to make major strides toward passing legislation, and last week three of them were awarded a major grant to pursue studies in quantum science.

UO physicist Michael Raymer, a Philip H. Knight professor in the Department of Physics, and two colleagues, chemistry professor Andy Marcus and physics professor Brian Smith, have been awarded a $997,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award is part of a $31 million NSF program for fundamental quantum research that, together with $281 million in Department of Energy investment, aims to help the United States take a leading role in the fast-evolving quantum technology revolution.

Read the full article in AroundtheO

UO chemists in the Haley Lab have taken a step forward in efforts to harness organic molecules as a cheaper alternative to traditional silicon-based conductors in digital storage devices.

Read about their research discovery in AroundtheO

A nice remembrance of Professor Emeritus David Herrick ~

Jim Hutchison

Read the article here:

Transforming chemical discovery and innovation