Two Chemistry faculty receive NSF CAREER Awards
The National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER awards are presented to teacher-scholars who are “most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century." The Department is proud to announce that two of our junior faculty received this award, effective 2008.
Feng (Seymour) Wang has received his CAREER award for his work on "Molecular Dynamics Study of Growth and Dissolution Dynamics of Stable and Meta-Stable Methane Hydrates." The goal of his research is to gain an atomistic scale understanding of the growth and dissolution processes of methane hydrate, which is an important but little understood part of the global carbon cycle. Methane clathrate has considerable potential as an alternative energy source. At the same time, its stability poses major environmental implications since methane is a greenhouse gas. In providing a fundamental understanding of the formation and dissolution dynamics of methane clathrate, Prof. Wang's work will shed light on both of aspects of these hydrates.
Prof. Wang's educational plan aims at using computational chemistry tools to help undergraduate students understand concepts and trends in organic chemistry. Working in collaboration with Prof. John Snyder, Prof. Wang is creating semi-automated tutorials that students can use to set up simple electronic structure calculations. The objective is to demonstrate to undergraduates the practical uses of current computational techniques in different areas of chemistry.
Pinghua Liu has received his CAREER Award for his proposal "Mechanistic Studies of Phosphonates: Biosynthesis and Biodegradation." The phosphate ion combines with various atoms and molecules within living organisms to form many different compounds essential to life. In this work Prof. Liu will investigate two issues at the forefront of bioscience: 1) determination of the mechanisms of the biosyntheses of natural phosphonates and the role of the metallo-cofactors in catalysis; and 2) indentification of enzymes that can degrade natural or synthetic phosphonates. This work has the promise of increasing our understanding of the biosyntheses of phosphonates and lead to insights about their role in Nature.
The educational component of his award will address significant issues in the training of the next generation of bioscientists such as their need for a global view of the technical challenges faced by society and society's need for scientists with an interdisciplinary background who can address the challenges faced in the 21st century.
December, 2007