Award

Daniel Lambrecht has been selected to receive a Research Corporation for Science Advancement 2017 Cottrell Scholar Award based on his proposal entitled "Bridging Quantum Chemistry and Chemical Intuition to Characterize, Understand and Design New Chemical Sensor Materials." 

Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) announces it has named two-dozen top early career academic scientists as 2017 Cottrell Scholars.The designation comes with a $100,000 award for each recipient for research and teaching, for a total of $2.4 million. “The Cottrell Scholar (CS) program champions the very best early career teacher-scholars in chemistry, physics and astronomy by providing these significant discretionary awards,” said RCSA Senior Program Director Silvia Ronco.

Read more about the award here.

Giannis Mpourmpakis' proposal "Designing synthesizable, ligand-protected bimetallic nanoparticles and modernizing engineering curriculum through computational nanoscience " was recently selected for an NSF CAREER award. 

Although scientists can chemically synthesize metal nanoparticles (NPs) of different shapes and sizes, understanding of NP growth mechanisms affecting their final morphology and associated properties is limited. With the potential for NPs to impact fields from energy to medicine and the environment, determining with computer simulations the NP growth mechanisms and morphologies that can be synthesized in the lab is critical to advance NP application. 
Because this is a relatively new field, traditional core courses in science and engineering lack examples from the nanotechnology arena. In addition to improving the research, the award will enable Giannis Mpourmpakis and his students to modernize the traditional course of Chemical Thermodynamics by introducing animation material based on cutting-edge nanotechnology examples, and developing a nanoscale-inspired interactive computer game.

The Office of Naval Research has announced awards of $16 million through its 2017 Young Investigator Program (YIP). The awards were made to 33 scientists whose research holds strong promise across several naval-relevant science and technology areas.

Sergey Frolov was among this year's Young Investigator Award recipients for his proposal "Semiconductor Nanowire-Based Quantum Emulators".

Sean Garrett-Roe has been selected to receive a 2017 Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. The Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award recognizes teaching excellence by members of the University of Pittsburgh's faculty. This award consists of a cash prize to the faculty member and a grant to support the faculty member's teaching activities. 

Garrett-Roe was recognized for his work with the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) approach, which uses a flipped classroom model, multisensory input and incorporates technologies to encourage students to engage, derive and interpret the materials of physical chemistry. He has also shared his pedagogical models in such venues as Pitt’s Summer Instructional Design Institute and the American Chemical Society’s national meeting.

In this fourth year of the annual competition, a total of eight grants were awarded to researchers at four Pennsylvania higher education institutions: Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, The Pennsylvania State University and University of Pennsylvania.

The Kaufman Scientific Advisory Board received 229 letters of intent from 30 academic institutions seeking funding in two categories: New Investigators and New Initiatives.

Benjamin Hunt won a New Investigators Award, i.e., a grant of $150,000 for two years ($75,000 per year), for research on “Proximity effects and topological spin currents in van der Waals heterostructures.” 

Brian D’Urso and Gurudev Dutt won a New Initiatives Award, i.e., a grant of $300,000 for two years ($150,000 per year) for research on “Trapped diamond nanocrystals for precision gravitational measurements and tests of quantum gravity.” 

Read the abstracts here and here, respectively.

Peng Liu has been selected to receive a National Science Foundation CAREER award based upon his proposal, entitled "Computational Studies of Transition-Metal-Catalyzed Reactions in Organic Synthesis." 

In this CAREER project funded by the Chemical Structure, Dynamic & Mechanism B Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Peng Liu of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh is developing new strategies to use computational tools to investigate mechanisms and effects of ancillary ligands in transition-metal-catalyzed reactions of unactivated starting materials, such as C-C and C-H bonds, and unactivated olefins. The goal of this research is to reveal the fundamental reactivity rules of common organometallic intermediates in these transformations and to develop new models to interpret ligand effects on reactivity and selectivity. This proposal’s educational and outreach plan aims to maximize the power of computations to enhance learning of organic chemistry concepts and to facilitate synthetic organic chemistry research. Professor Liu’s team will develop virtual reality (VR) software and educational materials to visualize three-dimensional molecular structures and reaction mechanism videos in an interactive and immersive environment.