News items about Faculty Members
Commemorating Prof. Emeritus Hartman (1931-2014)
When Prof. Standish C. Hartman (‘Stan’) retired in 2005, the Department of Chemistry held a grand celebration honoring his promotion to Professor Emeritus. A man of quiet dignity, with a dry sense of humor, Stan seemed taken aback by the turnout and tributes. Stan’s modesty prevented him from seeing what everyone else knew: that during […]
Reinhard Research Rates Two Journal Covers
This February, the Reinhard Laboratory’s research made the cover of two peer-reviewed journals: Biomaterials Science and Advanced Functional Materials. The Biomaterials Research paper (Biomater. Sci., 2014, 2, 156), “Nanoconjugation: a materials approach to enhance epidermal growth factor induced apoptosis,” was authored by graduate students, Linxi Wu (4th year), Xinwei Yu (5th year), Amin Feizpour (3rd year), […]
Chemistry Research Addresses Deadly Disease
Dr. Scott Schaus (Associate Professor, Chemistry and School of Medicine pharmacology) and Dr. Lauren Brown (Research Professor) were named among the first eight winners of the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Discovery Fast Track Challenge program. GSK’s competition aims to translate academic starting points for new potential medicines. The initial contest attracted 142 entries across 17 therapeutic […]
Reinhard Receives DOE Funding to Develop Optoplasmonic Materials
The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering is funding the Reinhard Laboratory to develop “New Optoplasmonic Materials for Next Generation Energy Systems” (Award No. DE-SCOO10679). The 3-year project addresses key challenges in energy related systems. Current photovoltaic materials offer limited conversion rates across the visible range […]
Elliott Receives NSF Award to Explore Multi-Electron Redox Catalysis
Prof. Sean Elliott and his group have received a 3-year award from the National Science Foundation for their project entitled “Connections Between Redox Chemistry and Catalysis in Multiheme Peroxidases.” While nature excels at the manipulation of redox co-factors to affect dramatic catalytic transformations, we still do not have a molecular understanding of how multi-electron redox […]
NSF Funds Liu Group to Conduct Biosynthetic Study
Prof. Pinghua Liu and his Group pursue highly interdisciplinary research involving organic synthesis, molecular biology, bioinformatics, and enzymology. This combined expertise will be used to conduct their 3-year National Science Foundation Funded project, “Mechanistic Studies of New C-S Bond Formation Chemistries.” Ergothioneine is a unique thiol-imidazole-containing natural amino acid isolated nearly a century ago. Due […]
Ksenia Bravaya Joins Chemistry
The Department of Chemistry is very pleased to announce that Prof. Ksenia Bravaya, a theoretical chemist, has joined our faculty. She comes to Boston University from her postdoctoral position at the University of Southern California (2009-2013), where she did research with Prof. Anna Krylov. Prof. Bravaya received her Ph.D. in Theoretical and Computational Quantum Chemistry […]
Jasti Group Hosts Steppingstone Students
For a second year in a row, Prof. Ramesh Jasti’s group has hosted students from the Steppingstone Foundation to share with them the excitement of nanoscale research. Steppingstone is a non-profit that develops and implements programs which prepare urban schoolchildren for educational opportunities that lead to college success. This year the students learned about nanoscale […]
Porco Tumor Inhibition Research Reported in Science
A new study co-authored by John A. Porco, Jr., Professor of Chemistry and Diector of the Center for Chemical Methodology and Library Development at Boston University (CMLD-BU), along with collaborators at the Whitehead Institute has identified rocaglamide A, an inhibitor of translation initiation, as a strong inhibitor of Heat Shock Factor 1 (HSF1) activation. HSF1 […]
NIH Grant Investigates HIV with Artificial Virus Nanoparticles
Collaborators, Dr. Bjoern Reinhard, BU Chemistry, and Dr. Suryaram Gummurulu, BU School of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, have received an award from the NIH to investigate the role and mode of action of non-virus encoded surface functionalities in the capture of HIV-1 by dendritic cells. Entitled “Elucidating Non-Virus Encoded HIV Capture through Artificial Virus Nanoparticles (AVNs),” […]