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Chemistry Department Welcomes Two New Faculty Members
In the Fall 2007 semester, Dr. Amy Brown and Dr. Sheela Venkitachalam joined the Ursinus chemistry department as visiting assistant professors. Read brief biographies below.

Amy Brown, Visiting Assistant Professor in Chemistry
B.S., Lafayette College
Ph.D., University at Buffalo

Dr. Amy Brown joins the Chemistry Department after completing a one-year post-doctoral research fellowship in cancer immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests involve the interface of chemistry and biology, and as a graduate student, she synthesized and analyzed a number of unique bioorganic compounds. Her research has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Chemical Communications. At Ursinus, Dr. Brown will be teaching biochemistry and organic chemistry. Amy is married to Ryan Savitz, class of 1995.

Sheela Venkitachalam, Visiting Assistant Professor in Chemistry
B.Sc., University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
M.Sc., Indian Institute of Technology
M.S., Ph.D. University of Cincinnati

Dr. Sheela Venkitachalam gained extensive training in teaching general chemistry while a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati, where she received an award for excellence in teaching. Over the course of five years, she completed three post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, MIT, and Georgia State University. Her research interests involve the interactions of DNA with other biomolecules and drugs. At Ursinus, Dr. Venkitachalam will be teaching general chemistry lectures, recitations, and labs.

Intercollegiate Student Chemists (ISC) Convention
The 70th annual Intercollegiate Student Chemists (ISC) Convention will be held at Ursinus College on Saturday, April 22, 2006. Find out more at the ISCC Web page.
 

NSF Major Research Instrumentation Grant for Codrina Popescu
Codrina Popescu, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was recently awarded a Major Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation for the years 2004–2007 (about $126,000) for the purchase of a Mössbauer spectrometer. This grant is awarded by the NSF exclusively for instrument acquisitions. The Mössbauer spectrometer was installed in the spring of 2005, and it is used for collaborative projects with bio-inorganic chemists from SUNY Stony Brook, St. Joseph’s University, University of Delaware, and Texas A & M. The proposed projects include studies of iron-containing proteins and model compounds for iron enzymes. Because Mössbauer research groups at small colleges are rare, this grant makes possible unique collaborations of Ursinus research students with research groups at Mid-Atlantic universities and colleges.
 

ACS PRF Grant for Mark Ellison
Mark Ellison, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, was recently awarded a $50,000 research grant, "Investigating the Chemistry of Boranes with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Using FTIR and Raman Spectroscopies", by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF). These funds will be used to support undergraduate research in nanotechnology. Students will investigate new ways of doping nanotubes with boron, which will allow for improvements in the electrical conductivity of the nanotubes. The reactions of nanotubes with boranes that will be investigated with this grant are expected to allow for finer control of the amount of boron added to the nanotubes. Such fine-tuning of nanotube electrical properties should allow for their future application in nanoscale electronic devices.

As part of this research, Dr. Ellison also received a grant for computer time at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for computational modeling of the nanotube–borane reactions.