Dr. Michael Wentzel (Chemistry) received a new grant award of nearly $15,000 from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Toxicity Reduction program. In the two-year project, green chemistry will be developed as a unifying theme throughout the chemistry curriculum at Augsburg University. Non-major courses will have a new introduction component to green chemistry emphasized in unique laboratory experiments. The chemistry major curriculum already has a large number of green chemistry principles woven in it, but this work will unify these into a clear message across multiple courses. Finally, a new course on green chemistry and toxicology will serve as a capstone on this theme. Dr. Wentzel will collaborate with multiple faculty in the Chemistry department, as well as undergraduate students, in order to carry out this impactful project.
Dr. Vivian Feng receives grant to continue analytical chemistry research
Dr. Vivian Feng, Associate Professor of Chemistry, has received a new research grant that will allow her to conduct another five years of research in analytical chemistry. She will assess the molecular-level interactions between bacterial species, such as Shewanella oneidensis and Bacillus subtilis, and engineered nanoparticles.
Dr. Feng will lead undergraduate researchers to collect and analyze the resulting measurements. This work is a key component of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN), which recently received a five-year renewal to continue its research, education, and public engagement activities, at a sum of $4M per year. Among the ten other collaborating universities within the center, Augsburg is the only primarily undergraduate institution. Dr. Feng’s grant award totals $400,000.
Read more about the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology here: https://susnano.wisc.edu/ (This is supported by the National Science Foundation under award number CHE-2001611.)
Chemistry Professor to collaborate on Department of Energy Grant
Dr. David Hanson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, is collaborating with Dr. Jeffrey Pierce at Colorado State University to develop computer models that will improve the representation of growth rates of newly formed atmospheric particulate matter. This research, “Collaborative Project: Contributions of Organic Compounds to the Growth of Freshly Nucleated Atmospheric Nanoparticles” is made possible by a $485,434 grant through the Department of Energy (Award # DE-SC0011780). Continue reading “Chemistry Professor to collaborate on Department of Energy Grant”
Chemistry Professor Receives Grant for i-NMR Software
Dr. Michael Wentzel, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, recently received an Implementation Grant from the Chemistry Collaborations Workshop and Communities of Scholars Program (cCWCS). This $1,000 matching grant will allow Dr. Wentzel to purchase i-NMR software for interactive spectroscopic analysis of organic compounds. This software will provide students in organic chemistry with a more active and realistic experience with data and an increased understanding of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR).
If you’d like to learn more about this project, please contact Dr. Wentzel at wentzelm@augsburg.edu.
Chemistry Professor Receives NSF Grant for Nucleation Research
Dr. David Hanson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was awarded $386,163 from NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. The three year project, “Nucleation studies with sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and Nitrogenous Bases,” will test models for nucleation rates that can be incorporated into global climate models. Continue reading “Chemistry Professor Receives NSF Grant for Nucleation Research”