The Lab Report - Chemistry - Emory University

Letter from the
Chair
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni
and Friends of the Department of
Chemistry,
It has been far too long since we
connected with the entire Emory
Chemistry Community and much has
happened. Let me set the stage for
things to come.
When I arrived on the Emory campus just over 10 years ago, I saw
a new model emerging, one focused on collaboration and excited
about seizing opportunities created by scientific discovery. I was
impressed by the early successes of this model, such as the Emory-
Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering program and a Science 2000
initiative that brought many of Emory’s natural science departments
together geographically. But most significantly, I was seduced by
the diverse community of scientists that worked collaboratively for
positive transformation and believed that anything was possible.
This community, it appeared to me, had captured a new and unique
strategy for a research university that I found truly remarkable.
And in this collaborative community, I believe, lies Emory’s great
strength and limitless potential. We are in a time where the
connections between traditional units become as important as the
units themselves and where our understanding of our world evolves
at an ever-increasing pace. A case could be made that at no time in
our intellectual history has academic research in chemistry been more
central to societal sustainability than today. From chemical ecology
and health sustainability to renewable energy, from emergent disease
detection to the origins of life, from genomics, proteomics, and
metabolomics to dynamic systems chemistry, from drug development
and terrorists threat detection to the design of new materials, and
from understanding Earth’s ocean floor to defining the composition of
planets around other stars, chemical research provides the foundation
from which technological development depends. Accordingly,
the Department has diverged from the traditional sub-sections of
chemistry to an agile and dynamic model for capturing emerging
intellectual opportunities and several areas of shared scientific interest
and distinction have been identified, including:
• Catalysis and Sustainable Energy
• Modeling and Computational Chemistry
• Molecular Building Blocks and Biomaterials
• Molecular Evolution, Synthetic Biology, and Origins of Life
• Synthesis and Drug Discovery
Furthermore, all but the newest of these scientific initiatives (Molecular
Building Blocks and Biomaterials) have attracted financial support for
collaborative research center and one of them (Synthesis and Drug
Discovery) is responsible for the discovery of a medicine that is taken
EMORY University
Department of Chemistry Newsletter
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
by more than 90 percent of HIV/AIDS patients in the U.S. and around
the world that are currently on medication.
Our commitment to scientific and pedagogical innovation has
contributed to the growth of a robust and dynamic Emory Science
Commons. The adaptation of student-centered “problem-based
learning” in the chemistry classroom has inspired new successes
for students in several 1st and 2nd year courses. Collaborations
between Departments continue to broaden the impact of the
molecular sciences. The development of peer-to-peer learning
opportunities, such as seen in ORDER (On Recent Discoveries by
Emory Researchers), invites graduate students to teach their research
using interdisciplinary methods. And opportunities to learn chemistry
in the context of other disciplines have brought students together
and extended Chemistry across our campus. “The Chemistry of Art
Restoration” and a unique study abroad program with the University of
Siena connects chemistry with art, architecture, food and wine.
I feel especially lucky to lead a Department so dedicated to advancing
Emory’s reputation as a great place to study, teach, and discover.
Last year alone, members of the Department received the highest
faculty honors awarded by the University, the Jefferson Award (Liotta),
the Emory University Scholar-Teacher Award (Lynn), and the Emory
Williams Award for Distinguished Teaching (Weinschenk). And most
importantly, the Department’s focused contribution of its IP settlement
from Emtriva to the unified growth of the Science Commons will
impact the entire University with its collaborative culture.
I am confident in the future of the Natural Sciences within the College
of Arts and Sciences, and Chemistry is beautifully positioned to blaze
the pathway forward. We invite you to join us. Search our web page,
follow us on Facebook and join our LinkedIn group. Keep in touch
and come visit. We will certainly look forward to welcoming you (back)
to our transformative Department that has grown so much from the
foundations you all worked so hard to build.
All the best,
David Lynn
The Lab Report Spring 2012
Co-Editors
Jennifer Bon • jbon@emory.edu
Carol Jurchenko• cschum2@emory.edu
Sarah Peterson • sarah.a.peterson@emory.edu
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

Faculty Profile
Dr. Chris Scarborough joined the
Emory Chemistry faculty in Fall of
2011. He earned his Ph.D. from
University of Wisconsin-Madison
in the lab of Shannon Stahl
working on asymmetric catalysis of
N-heterocyclic carbenes. He then
worked as a post-doc at the Max
Planck Institute in Germany studying
chromium complexes with unusual
electronic structures and analyzing
them using various spectroscopies
for paramagnetic transition metal
compounds.
Q: Why did you find chemistry
interesting?
CS: What I liked about chemistry…
was that I could understand things at a very fundamental level, or at
least at the time what I thought was a very fundamental level. I could
draw organic reaction mechanisms that made sense. I could explain
why these compounds form and why reactions go this way and that
way and I really liked that. I love that in chemistry, you have the
opportunity to make unique compounds with unique properties.
Q: Why did you choose to focus on inorganic chemistry?
CS: I looked around at some of the major homogenous industrial
processes, like the Wacker oxidation, the LP Oxo Process, and the
Monsanto and Cativa acetic acid processes, and thought that it was
a bit silly that these use some of the rarest elements in the earth’s
crust (and the most expensive, of course). Why do we have to use
rhodium, iridium, and palladium? Why do they work and why do their
abundant congeners, Ni and Co especially, why do these fail in these
processes? I knew that to understand why, I had to learn about the
electronic structure of these complexes.
Q: If witness protection required you to make a career change…
what would you pick as a second career?
CS: I thought I might pick being an ambassador to a European
country and live a good life, but I realized that if I’m under witness
protection that’s probably a little too public! I always really loved
history and if I hadn’t been good in science, I would have really
enjoyed history, being a history major.
Q: As a teacher, or in a political role?
CS: I probably would’ve gone towards professorship and done
research in history.
Q: What was your favorite part of being a grad student or a postdoc?
CS: My favorite part was the first two years of my Ph.D. and the first
year of my post-doc. This is where the learning curve is so steep. It’s
really…actually, it’s exhausting.
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
Q: That doesn’t seem like the good part! That’s the painful part.
Everything fails; you don’t know anything; you don’t know what
you’re doing!
CS: (laughing) Yes, that’s right, but the amount that you learn when
you’re on that steep part of the learning curve is just unbelievable.
You start to see the world differently; you see everything through
new eyes. Then once you level off and you start becoming highly
productive now that you’ve learned this stuff, your world-view or your
view of science isn’t changing so drastically but you’re generating
interesting data. That’s fun as well, but I really love a good challenge.
Q: What research is your lab focused on?
CS: In some respects, I’m still intrigued by the same problem. Why
are rhodium and palladium special in homogenous catalysis? I have
a few things that I’ve learned that I think I could point to. They’re all
fundamental electronic structure things and so what we’re doing is
we’re playing tricks, essentially, with the orbital shapes and sizes and
electron interactions.
Q: By playing with the ligands?
CS: That’s right, by synthetic design. A lot of it is ground-state
engineering. One of the projects we do is a photochemistry project,
and I like to refer to that as excited-state engineering because we
have to know all about the excited states and be able to tune them,
which is not very easy. Tuning ground states is hard enough. The
major problem that we’re trying to solve is replacement of these
precious-metal catalysts with earth-abundant catalysts.
Q: Which chemist would you most like to see win the Nobel
Prize?
CS: That’s a hard question. I think if I had to pick someone it would
be Harry Gray. He’s amazing, he’s a wonderful person, and his
research has spanned a lot of different areas. He’s absolutely one
of the founding members of inorganic chemistry in the last century.
A phenomenal guy, phenomenal research…starting as a classical
inorganic chemist and thinking about ligand field theory (he helped
develop that theory, molding MO theory and crystal field theory) to
develop our understanding of transition metal complexes. All the way
to long-distance electron transfer in proteins, how biology deals with
electron transfer. He’s pretty phenomenal and now he’s working on, of
course, the energy problem, water splitting.
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

Faculty Profile
In August of 2011, Dr. Emily
Weinert joined the faculty of
the biomolecular division of the
Emory Chemistry Department. Dr.
Weinert earned her Ph.D. in 2006
from the University of Maryland,
College Park where she worked
on synthesis of quinone methides,
the basis of many anti-cancer
drugs, in the lab of Steven Rokita.
From there, she moved on to
UC Berkeley to do a post-doc in
the lab of Michael Marletta. Her
post-doc work focused on heme
proteins. She sat down to discuss
with us a little about herself and
her research here at Emory.
Q: What made you decide to major in chemistry?
EW: My dad’s a physicist. I grew up spending time thinking about
‘here’s the natural world, what’s going on’ kind of questions…so I love
science. And I just really like the molecular level understanding, trying
to really understand. In college, I loved organic chemistry because
once you understand what’s happening, it can be predictive. I love
being able to do the experiments, have a prediction, go in test it and
ask “Does that make sense?”.
Q: What made you transition to biomolecular chemistry?
EW: I’ve always really been interested in living systems and trying to
sort out what’s happening in these complex systems. I had always
hoped to get to the part in my Ph.D. (working with quinone methides)
where we’d learned enough to go in vivo and test some of our
theories. But like so often happens in science, sometimes you find
that you really don’t understand things that well or you get drawn in
different paths…so I wanted to do something more biological after
focusing on small molecules.
Q: Did you ever want to be anything else?
EW: Actually, when I was growing up I wanted to be a wildlife
biologist.
Q: Really?
EW: Yeah, live out in the wild and count the wolves and watch their
migration patterns… But then I realized I didn’t really like the cold that
much and living out in a tent with things that could eat me makes me
a little nervous so I ran for the lab instead. I think it worked out a lot
better.
Q: And you have, like, you know…plumbing
EW: Yeah, (laughs) that was another thing.
Q: What research does your lab focus on?
EW: My lab does protein chemistry. We’re interested in understanding
how proteins work, thinking about them as complex chemical systems
rather than as the normal circles and pac-men that we often see.
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
The two general interests in the lab are heme proteins and nucleotide
signaling. We have some proteins that are heme proteins and
some proteins that are involved in nucleotide signaling and at the
intersection are a group of proteins that have both heme domains and
do nucleotide chemistry. We’re looking at cyclic nucleotide signaling in
bacteria and some potentially new cyclic nucleotides that are involved
in pathways in mammals.
We’re also interested in heme proteins and how protein scaffolds
tune the electronics and the reactivity of the heme itself. A lot of
heme proteins use protoporphyrin IX, although there are some other
porphyrins, but you can take protoporphyrin IX and do chemistry with
oxygen, like peroxidases and P450 enzymes. And you can also use
the same porphyrin to do reversible ligand binding for oxygen delivery
or for sensing. So organisms can actually sense gases, binding very
low concentrations of ligand so that it causes a downstream change in
the organism.
Q: And this variation in activity is dependent on the protein
structure?
EW: Yes, the scaffold itself. So you can change the redox potential
widely from around -400 mV to around 380 mV. That’s a huge change.
You can change the type of reaction; you can change if you can do
electron transfer with most of the biologically available oxidants and
reductants. And so it can changes just about everything. And right
now, our understanding of that is still pretty poor. There’s a huge
amount of work that’s been done on the globins. I think there are
probably at least 150 mutants of myoglobin that have been published,
but it’s still not very predictive and we can’t always apply it to other
heme proteins. So, like most protein engineering or protein chemistry,
we don’t have a lot of predictive power to suggest how mutations will
affect the heme.
Q: Which chemist do you wish you had an opportunity to meet?
EW: Rosalind Franklin and Hans Fischer.
Q: Why them?
Rosalind Franklin has a fascinating story. The work she was doing
was still in a time when it was not necessarily expected that many
women did their own science. She was clearly brilliant and she figured
out most of the structure of DNA before Watson and Crick. The
reason Watson and Crick got the structure was by looking at her data.
Unfortunately she died before the Nobel Prize was given and they
don’t give it posthumously. I think she would be fascinating to talk to
and to hear her story.
Hans Fischer was the first to discover chlorophyll and heme and
he was the first one to figure out what these pigments were and to
synthesize them. I think it’s really interesting to think of how do you go
about, at the time (the 1920’s), saying ‘I’m going to isolate this colored
compound’ and then how do you go about with the techniques then
available figuring out what all is in there? I think it would be really
interesting to hear how the field got started from the guy that started
the field!
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

C-H Center Prepares for Evaluation
The NSF Center for Chemical Innovation on Selective C-H
Functionalization has been very active this past year as it gears
up for evaluation as a Phase II center. C-H functionalization, the
conversion of C-H bonds into C-X bonds where X is any of a variety
of heteroatoms or carbon, is widely recognized to have the potential
to be transformative across chemical disciplines. Traditionally C-H
bonds are very inert and therefore hard to activate; however, certain
catalysts make this possible and can render C-H bonds a functional
handle. Challenges remain in both regio- and stereoselectivity due
to the small differences in C-H bond strengths. As general methods
for the functionalization of specific C-H bonds are developed, these
methods are becoming powerful due to the ubiquity of C-H bonds
in organic, organometallic and biological molecules of interest.
The Center’s mission focuses on the impact that this new mode
of reactivity will have in material science, fine chemical synthesis
and drug discovery in addition to the potential paradigm shift C-H
functionalization could create in the way organic chemistry is taught.
The initial Phase I Center involved 6 PI’s: the center director Huw
Davies, Simon Blakey and Jamal Musaev at Emory, Justin DuBois at
Stanford, Jin-Quan Yu at Scripps, and Christina White at University
of Illinois U-C. During Phase I, the Center has not only fostered
numerous research collaborations but has facilitated a number of
student exchanges and outreach programs. A Communicating
Science course was offered in conjunction with the Center for
Chemical Education in which graduate students from across the
department practiced various methods of communicating with other
scientists, students and the public. A Graduate School Prep/Journal
Club was developed at Spelman College to help students prepare for
and be successful in graduate school. The Center has also started an
annual symposium on C-H Functionalization in order to engage the
entire scientific community not just center members.
In early March of this year, seven people from the Emory Chemistry
department (founding Center members Davies, Blakey and Musaev,
students Felicia Fullilove, Slava Boyarskikh, and Jen Bon, and staff
member Meisa Salaita) plus 13 other professors and students traveled
to NSF headquarters in Arlington, VA for the Phase II evaluation. The
Phase II proposal expands the center to a total of 24 PIs from 16
different universities and includes additional experts in the following
areas:
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
• Total Synthesis: Erik Sorensen (Princeton), Mo Movassaghi
(MIT), Brian Stoltz (Cal Tech), Richmond Sarpong (UC Berkley)
• Methodology Development: John Montgomery (Michigan)
• Catalyst Design: Cora MacBeth (Emory), Matt Sigman (Utah),
Andy Borovik (UC Irvine)
• Computational Chemistry: Ken Houk (UCLA)
• Analysis of Reactive Intermediates: Donna Blackmond
(Scripps), John Berry (Wisconsin), Dick Zaire (Stanford)
• Flow Technologies: Chris Jones (Georgia Tech)
• Material Science: Seth Marder (Georgia Tech), Stefan France
(Georgia Tech), Christine Luscombe (Washington)
If the Phase II grant proposal gets funded, $20 M over the next
five years will be split between the 24 principal investigators and
their labs. It would allow for continued outreach in many forms,
including continuation of the Grad School Prep Club at Spelman
and expansion to additional local universities and to schools located
near other Center institutions as well. It would provide funding for
a post-doctoral position in outreach that would include training in
public communication in the form of blogging and animation. The
postdoc would also participate in the AAAS Mass Media Science and
Engineering Fellowship Program during which they would work with
a national media organization to communicate science to the public.
With Phase II funding the Center would also work toward expanding
undergraduate chemistry education to include covering more cutting
edge techniques and reactivity including C-H Functionalization.
The Center for Selective C-H Functionalization has already made an
impact at Emory and beyond, both to advance this exciting field of
research and to share it with both general and scientific communities.
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

The Undergraduate Bulletin
ChEmory Highlights
The 2011-2012 academic year was another busy and exciting year
for ChEmory, Emory’s undergraduate American Chemical Society
(ACS) affiliated chemistry club. This club strives to raise awareness
about chemistry in the broader university community and to promote
sustainability.
As part of their outreach efforts, ChEmory’s demo team worked
to kindle excitement about science and a passion for chemistry
in the community. They visit local elementary schools to perform
demos, such as fake snow and the methanol canon, and to assist in
interactive demos, like gloop and bubbles.
In the fall, ChEmory hosted a series of events bringing undergrads,
grad students, and faculty together to celebrate National Chemistry
Week in October. The weeklong series of events included preparing
a Periodic Table of Cupcakes, a demos show, and Mole Day party.
ChEmory members performed science demonstrations ranging from
cool demonstrations with liquid nitrogen, brightly colored chemical
rainbows, to the hot fiery thermite reaction. On Mole Day, revelers
were treated to Minute-To-Win-It games and science-inspired
music. The Mole Ball was dropped at precisely 6:02 pm, which
was then followed by the ignition of three hydrogen balloons and
the presentation of the Periodic Table of Cupcakes. In honor of the
International Year of Chemistry and to welcome arrival of two new
faculty members, a handmade mole-shaped piñata, dubbed “Dr. A.
Mole,” was cracked opened to reveal sucrose-saturated treats.
During the spring semester, ChEmory celebrated Valentine’s Day
by having a dress-up day, where members dressed as their favorite
chemical pair, such as a diene and dienophile pair from the Diels
Alder reaction, two components of an emulsion, and the dyes Cy3 and
Cy5 from a FRET pair. In addition, the club was able to sponsor five
members to attend the 243rd ACS National Meeting in San Diego,
CA. The members participated in a chemistry demos exchange and
presented a poster at the “Successful Chapter” event hosted by
the Division of Chemical Education. The meeting was a wonderful
opportunity for networking, getting exposure to new research and
picking up free periodic tables of elements.
As part of our green chemistry and sustainability mission, ChEmory
also hosted green events that emphasized the integration of
environmentally benign technology and materials into our daily
lives, academia, and industry. ChEmory, under the tutelage of Dr.
Doug Mulford, held a balloon twisting class that used biodegradable
latex balloons. Students left the event with armfuls of balloon
poodles and flowers, and new knowledge about degradable plastics
and recycling. ChEmory also held a green study break, where
students were introduced to the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry,
as stated by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute®, and played with
water-soluble starch-based toys, building unusual biodegradable
structures. Collaborating with the Georgia local section of ACS,
ChEmory organized and hosted Dr. Bob Peoples, the Director of
the ACS Green Chemistry Institute®, who gave a talk on the global
perspective of green chemistry and its impact on society. In particular,
he emphasized the effectiveness of green chemistry in industry
through the development of green products and in the synthesis of
pharmaceutical products.
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
Three Emory sophomores make peanut butter
playdough at Mole Day festivities
Emory College students put Mentos into a bottle
of Coke to create enough volume for it to spill
over in “Bubblin’ Over” (top). Dr. A. Mole”piñata
(below.)
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

Spotlight on the Graduate Program
Student Profile: Michael Reddish
Michael Reddish, a second year student in the Dyer Group, was
awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship for 2011-2014. The oldest fellowship of its
kind, the Graduate Research Fellowship Program strives to select
recipients whose academic and research history anticipates significant
contributions to research, teaching, and innovations in science and
engineering. The priorities outlined by the NSF highlight Reddish’s
strengths and the value he brings to our department.
Reddish graduated from Furman University in 2009. It was during
a serendipitous summer research opportunity with his Physical
Chemistry professor Jeff Petty that he found a scientific field that
really resonated with his intellectual disposition. He had never been
one to take answers at face value. Rather, he had always sought
the how and why answers, recognizing the value of taking things
and ideas apart to really understand them. As Reddish explains it,
Physical Chemistry seeks to answer “How?” in order to understand
“Why?” As a result, it requires a broad knowledge base, and what
Reddish enjoys most about graduate school is being able to spend
his days learning in a variety of disciplines - chemistry, physics,
biology, math - and to approach
his research through different
means - programming, reviewing
relevant literature, working on an
instrument in the Physics machine
shop, or collecting data in the
Dyer lab.
Reddish participates in the
enzyme dynamics research
of the Dyer lab, which aims to
understand how enzymes function
as reaction centers. He focuses
on dihydrofolate reductase (or
DHFR), which serves as a model
enzyme because it is present in
all living organisms and a building
block for DNA. It is well studied, helping Reddish and his colleagues
focus on their specific point of interest – the enzyme’s dynamic
structure. Among other things, Reddish studies the hinge loop
structure present in DHFR, an enzyme difficult to investigate because
it operates on a very fast time scale. Once all the components are in
place the reaction happens in roughly one millisecond. (Of course, the
process of getting all the right players in place simultaneously has its
own time scale.)
A central component of work in the Dyer lab is choosing and adjusting
instruments to allow for better observation of atomic motion at very
fast time scales. One approach Reddish and his colleagues use
to study the enzyme’s dynamic interactions is laser spectroscopy,
which facilitates their observation of different areas in the enzyme’s
structure. The specific properties of interest can be measured by
laser probes that interact with emitted light directly by absorbing its
energy and often re-emitting some of the energy as different light.
Therefore, Reddish must carefully design experiments by selecting a
probe that will report on the area of interest and then using the correct
instrument to observe its response throughout the reaction. If they
can understand the enzyme’s structure and how it changes during a
reaction, then they can better understand how it functions.
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
When describing how he goes about investigating the structure
of DHFR, Reddish modestly suggests it is akin to fixing a vacuum
using traditional problem solving techniques. By removing variables,
one can begin to isolate what is essential to a system’s function.
Reddish and his colleagues observe DHFR in its native state then
alter its structure or introduce new variables to observe whether
the reaction occurs identically. If something different or unexpected
happens, then they try to identify what structural change might have
contributed to the new result. As anyone who has tried to fix a broken
machine knows, this method requires a lot of patience, focus, and
determination, all qualities required of a Chemistry graduate student
and qualities Reddish possesses in plenty.
Looking ahead, Reddish aspires to a faculty position at a smaller
institution where he can have greater impact on the community
through science. He sees hope in the force of science education to
act as a vehicle to greater prosperity by inspiring innovation, and he
strives to contribute his passion and knowledge to that effort. We are
fortunate to have Michael Reddish working toward his goals at Emory,
and we are proud that the NSF Graduate Fellowship committee
recognized his high quality work.
Career Seminar
In 2010, the Chemistry Department implemented a Career
Development Seminar Committee aimed at growing the conversation
about next steps for chemistry PhDs. The Seminar emerged from a
Faculty retreat where two graduate student representatives articulated
their concern about a perceived stigma around non-academic career
paths. The feeling that choosing a career outside the academy may
disappoint one’s mentor(s) is pervasive, and it can leave graduate
students without knowledge of alternatives to the tenure-track and
feeling unsure of how to make career decisions. Professor Susanna
Widicus Weaver responded by leading a planning committee, made
up of four graduate students – Kevin O’Halloran, Chandra Potter,
Carol Schumacher, and James Simmons – who conducted an online
anonymous survey to poll the Chemistry graduate students about
their interests. Then they planned seminars and workshops geared
towards the topics that garnered the most interest with two main
goals: to present alternate career paths and to discuss common
challenges to and best practices for building a successful career and
work-life balance.
The first event in September 2010 was a panel discussion made up
of local individuals with backgrounds in Chemistry who have pursued
different career paths: teaching faculty member, Professor Jack
Eichler (formerly of Oxford College), a former government lab principal
investigator, Professor Brian Dyer (Emory), a patent attorney, Patrea
L. Pabst, J.D. (Pabst Patent Group); and an industrial chemist and
Emory alum, Dr. Vladimir Gigoriev (Kemira). With over 70 students in
attendance, the discussion was a huge success. After two and half
hours of lively discussion, we had to take our last question (primarily
because one of the panelists had a prior engagement!). The seminar
filled a great need among our graduate students and invited them to
pose questions they might otherwise have been hesitant to ask.
Since then, thirteen professionals have presented at the Career
Seminar Events, providing useful information about writing resumes,
telling stories about the (often winding) paths they took to their current
job, and offering valuable advice about job negotiations.
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

Spotlight on the Graduate Program
Career Seminar cont.
Widicus Weaver and the planning committee have been successful
in inviting people who have a wide range of stories and advice to
share, which helps students feel more confident imagining how
they might use their science degree. This year we heard from Prof.
Steven Shipman, a professor at a liberal arts college, Dr. Eva Heintz,
a technology manager at Solvay Specialty Plastics, Dr. Todd Polley,
our own department’s Director of Operations, Lt. Col Brian Tom, an
Air Force lieutenant, and Dr. Valerie Young, a well-known career
consultant. While each speaker identified concrete approaches to
the job market, they also offered personal stories and advice that
emphasized the personal and sometimes unpredictable nature of a
career path. Most students found comfort and inspiration in hearing
that the trajectory of many successful chemistry PhDs is rarely straight
or straightforward.
The Career Seminar Committee is always
looking for Friends of the Department who
have stories to share.
Even if you cannot come to campus,
please let us know what you are doing
and how you got there by sending a
message through Facebook or email.
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322
The Lab Report
Spring 2012

Alumni Reflection
Malcolm Hendry MS48 PhD50
After I spent 2 1/2 years in the navy, my young bride and I finished our
bachelors degrees, mine as a chemistry major. But I didn’t feel I knew
enough to be a real chemist. My adviser suggested several graduate
schools for me to consider. I still had almost two years of GI bill
remaining. After writing to each I set off to select a school. Having no
money, I hitchhiked, not nearly so scary in 1947 because the public
had picked up hitchhiking service men all during the war.
My plan was to hitch to three graduate schools including Emory. I
didn’t plan well, reaching Lookout Mountain in the middle of the
night...but then a got a lift on down to Atlanta. When I walked onto the
Emory campus and saw all those beautiful Georgia marble buildings I
thought it was heaven. They almost glowed in the sunlight.
Emory’s chemistry graduate program was new with only about a
dozen students. After meeting the chemistry faculty and determining
our mutual interest it seemed that Emory was the place for me.
But where would we live? Before the war it was unheard of for
married couples to attend school so our next problem was living
accommodations. Emory had provided for the deluge of married
couples with trailers on campus and the tar paper covered army
barracks on Clifton Rd soon to be known as “mudville”. We were
assured of a one-bedroom apartment (at a cost of $17 per month,
with army bunks and an ample supply of cockroaches).
The chemistry department’s budget was very sparse in 1947. Vessels
fitted with ground glass connectors were scarce. So we used rubber
connectors. Potentiometers and heating mantles were given, one to
each organic researcher. We made our own distillation columns from
glass tubes filled with glass beads. Ground glass equipment gradually
became available. Each of us had to build our own carbon/hydrogen
analysis train to substantiate the new chemical compositions we were
synthesizing.
I began my masters research, on an organic chemical reaction
involving bromine. The problem was the chemical hoods had no draft
to draw off the fumes...so I ran a rubber tube out the window. The
clearest indicator of my research was the growing orange bromine
stain on the outside marble window ledge.
Our organic research labs were on the first floor, you know, one flight
up the grooved marble steps, just below the analytical labs identified
by the perpetual rotten egg odor.
Our manometers were filled with mercury. And our stirrers were also
sealed from air with mercury. As a consequence of these homemade
devices there was always a puddle of mercury in the water troughs
used to channel the cooling water from the distillation columns. No
problem.
The hood problem became more difficult during my doctorate
research. The work involved butyric,
valeric, and isovaleric acids (which smell like dirty socks, rancid
meat and dog poop.) My wife always made me take off my clothes
before entering the apartment and when I stood in a line at the store
everyone began sniffing their arm pits and looking in every corner for
a “deposit”
My wife worked as a secretary to the Emory admissions director in the
building next to the chemistry building. We walked back and forth to
Mudville every day... until June 1950 when I finished my PhD
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
just as my GI bill ran out. It was the 5th PhD given by Emory. There
was just enough money left in our piggy bank to take the Greyhound
to my new job in Ohio.
Our years at Emory were Wonderful and life changing. Our greatest
adventure!
We are always eager to hear news from our
alumni.
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Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

2012 Commencement
The May 14th ceremony celebrated over 80
Chemistry Majors. Congratulations and best
wishes to our newest Chemistry Alums!
SUMMER ‘11
Hee Joo Choe
Dua Ahmed Hassan
Justiss Ailene Kallos
Jalisha Denae Richmond
FALL ‘11
Xiaoying Gu
Dylan Glenn Jones
Yong Kim
Sang-Jin Lee
Yiwei Li
Eric Robert Panicco
Viet Xuan Tran
SPRING ’12
Nirja Jignesh Acharya
Ayoka Masheila Adams
Aneal A. Ahmed
Ehiole Ogboma Akhirome
Alexander Maximillian Baumgartner
Anis Abdul Bhimani
Andrew James Bowman
Candace Kelly Bruney
Kelly Suzanne Burke
Alexander David Carstairs
Su Jee Cha
Charlene Jun-Zhi Chan
Deep Dinesh Chandegara
Edward Chen
Wan-Hsuan Chen
Yiwen Chen
Marta M. Chlistunoff
Myoung Jin Samuel Chun
Amy Michelle Clark
Katherine Elizabeth Conen
Geraint Hywel-Madoc Davies
Jeanne Rochelle Delgado
Ian Samuel Diner
Brent Garrison Earley Jones
Benjamin Westley Euwer
Kelly Christine Falls
Yetunde Adekemi Fatade
Emily Frances Fleischman
Raphaela S Fontana
Hamad Rafiq Ismail Hamad
Jaeha Han
Kevin Nicholas Harrell
John Paul Haydek
Ashley Sloan Hodges
Jeremiah W. Huang
Choon Sung Elizabeth Kambara
Dipan Nishikant Karmali
Hye Kyung Kim
Hyun Woo Kim
Clinton James Kimzey
Jay Arthur Kroll
Lee,Suk Young
Amy Yan Li
Hui Li
Jacob George Light
Christina Ann Liu
Yuhong Liu
Jared Curtis Malcom
Victor-Alexandre Claude Mane
Jordan Bennet Marks
Stephen Sandell Marshall
Richard William McLean
Lauren Alyssa Newman
Viva Bao Hoang Linh Nguyen
Nawazish Ali Palejwala
Akash Ashwinkumar Patel
Parin Patel
Rishi Ramesh Patel
David Neal Primer
Mary Lynn Radhuber
Benjamin Joseph Redpath
Alex Steven Rosner
Mitchell Peter Rostad
Andrew Charles Seidner
Adam Thomas Stockhausen
Petria-George Salewa Thompson
Ying Kim Tsoi,
Rahul Mahendra Varman
Katherine Elizabeth Wagner
Wei Wang
Xinye Monica Wang
LaCrystal Givens Ware
Colin Vincent Washington
Duncan Somerset Wood
Suk Whan Yoon
Phoebe Hope Young
Guikai Zhang
Tianyu Zhu
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322
The Lab Report
Spring 2012

Faculty News
Joel Bowman won the 2013 Dudley Herschbach award for “Bold
Architectural Works Inspiring and Empowering in the field of the
Dynamics of Molecular Collisions” and is currently serving as Vice-
Chair of the PHYS division of the ACS. The Bowman group published
several notable papers this year: “Dynamics of the O(3P)+CHD3(vCH
= 0,1) Reactions on an accurate ab initio potential energy surface,” G.
Czakó and J. M. Bowman, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci, USA, in press (2012).
“Intersystem crossing and dynamics in O(3P)+C2H4 multichannel
reaction: Experiment validates theory,” B. Fu, Y.-C. Han, J. M.
Bowman, L.Angelucci, N. Balucani, F. Leonori, and P. Casavecchia,
Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci, USA, in press (2012). “Roaming reactions: The
third way,” J. M. Bowman and A. G. Suits, Phys. Today 64, 33-37
(2011). And “Dynamics of the Reaction of Methane with Chlorine
Atom on an Accurate Potential Energy Surface,” G. Czakó and J.
M. Bowman, Science 334, 343-346 (2011) (Learn more about this
research).
Dennis Liotta received several awards in the last year, including the
Uncommon Courage Award from Queens College and the Intellectual
Property Legends Award from King and Spalding, Georgia State
University College of Law and the J. Mack Robinson College of
Business. He was named one of Emory’s 175 History Makers and
received the “Significant Event of 2011” Award from the Office of
Technology Transfer at their annual Celebration of Technology and
Innovation. Liotta is now part of the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of
Fame, an ACS Fellow, and a member of the Cerecor Inc. Scientific
Advisor Board.
David Lynn and post-doc Jay Goodwin, at the request of NASA and
the NSF, led an international group of scientists in workshop called
“Alternative Chemistries of Life: Empirical Approaches” in Washington
in April. More information.
The Emerson Center director, Jamal Museav, Emeritus Professor
Keiji Morokuma, and coworkers’ April publication in JACS on
removal of aromatic and aliphatic thiols, sulfides, disulfides,
thiophenes, etc. from mixture in crude oil by nano-scale Pd-catalyst
for subsequent use in organic synthesis was highlighted by C&E
News.
Al Padwa has been awarded a Heilbrun Distinguished Fellowship by
the Emory University Emeritus College for 2012-2013 in support of his
work on finding “New Synthetic Routes toward Nigrogen Alkaloids.”
His mobiles, which can be found throughout Atwood and Emerson,
were featured in C&E Magazine in July.
Khalid Salaita, graduate students Daniel Stabley, Carol
Schumacker Jurchenko, and undergraduate Stephen Marshall
(12C), published an article in Nature Methods on their discovery of a
new method to measure the molecular tugs applied by cell surface
receptors. The work was highlighted with a video depiction by C&E
News, a Nature Methods author profile, and it was listed as one of
the Top Ten Discoveries at Emory for 2011. This new technique is
broadly useful for understanding how mechanical tugs can be used
in cell to cell communication, which is generating excitement around
its potential to facilitate investigation of how proteins function in
cells. (Read more about it). Consequently, the lab received a 5 year
R01 grant ($1.5 million) from the NIH National Institute of General
Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to study the role of these tugs in the
functions of the Notch pathway. The Notch pathway is very important
in development and their dysfunction contributes to T-cell Acute
Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL). The Salaita group bids farewell and
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
good luck to Stephen Marshall (12C) who is heading to Caltech to
work on a PhD in Chemistry.
Susanna Widicus Weaver received the Faculty Early Career
Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science
Foundation. Members of her group also received several awards,
including Jay Kroll (12C) who received the distinction of highest
honors fro his undergraduate research; James Sanders (14C) was
awarded the Emory Chemistry Early Career Research Achievement
Award; and doctoral candidate Jake Laas was awarded an Emory
University Chemistry Quayle Research Fellowship.
Jeremy Weaver was one of two faculty in Emory College to be
named “Honor Council Faculty Advisor of the Year. ”
Student News
Congratulations to graduate student Ana West (Kindt group)
for winning the poster prize sponsored by the journal Soft Matter
for “Effects of Defects on Stress Relaxation in Self-Assembled
Protein Networks” at the 2011 International Symposium on Stimuli-
Responsive Materials.
Clay Owens (Blakey group) was awarded an Amgen graduate
internship.
Tony Prosser (Liotta group) received an NSF Graduate Fellowship
for 2012-2015.
Jordan Sumliner (Hill group) was selected for a Curriculum
Development Fellowship through the Center for Science Education
and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
Felicia Fullilove and Katie Chepiga (Davies Group) were selected
to participate in the Center for Science Education Problems and
Research to Integrate Science & Mathematics (PRISM) Program
beginning this summer. They will be working with Atlanta middle/high
school teachers to develop and implement innovative K-12 lessons
into their curricula.
Phoebe Young (12C) was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to support
her first year of study at the Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena,
Germany. She will be working on a Masters in Chemical Biology with
a focus on optimizing mass spectrometry imaging to answer questions
about metabolite function on plant surfaces in the context of chemical
ecology. She also received the “Excellence in Undergraduate
Research” Award
10 of our 2012 Chemistry Majors will be attending top research
programs this Fall:
University of Pennsylvania
Geraint Davis (12C)
David Primer (12C)
University of Colorado-Boulder
Jay Kroll (12C)
California Institute of Technology
Kelly Burke(12C)
Stephen Marshall (12C)
Harvard University
Charlene Chan (12C)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Duncan Wood (12C)
Hye Kyung Kim (12C)
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

Student News cont.
Undergraduate Awards
Excellence in Chemistry
Charlene Chan (12C)
Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Phoebe Young (12C)
Excellence in Undergraduate Educational Support
Boru Wang
Bhavesh Patel
Samantha Green
Outstanding 1st year Chemistry Student
Zonair Khan
Early Career Achievement Research Grant
James Sanders
Hypercube Outstanding Physical Chemistry Student
Kelly Burke (12C)
Undergraduate Research Symposium Poster Awards
1st prize: Kelly Burke (12C)
Excellent: Matthew Birnbaum
Kevin Harrell (12C)
Duncan Wood (12C)
Graduate Awards (Read more about these awards)
ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists)
Danny Mancheno (Blakey group)
Johnston Award
Teddy Huang (12G)
Lester Awards
Yajing Lian (12G)
Quayle Fellowships
Haiming Zhu (Lian group)
Jake Laas (Widicus Weaver group)
Yoshie Narui (Salaita group)
Aidi Kong (Blakey group)
Changming Qin (Davies group)
Outstanding TA Awards
Neha Ahuja (MacBeth group) - Gen Chem Lab
Jake Laas (Widicus Weaver group) – Pchem Lab
Jason Bothwell (Scarborough group) – Organic Lab
Alumni News
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
Lingfeng Liu (09G) who is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Wendell
Lim’s lab at UCSF, received research fellowship from the Cancer
Research Institute.
Erika Milczek (10G) will be completing her postdoctoral training in
John Groves’ laboratory in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton
in May and has accepted a position in the Biocatalysis Division at
Merck in Rahway, NJ. She will begin her new position in June.
Scott Davis (90G) is currently serving as Sr Vice Provost and Dean of
Graduate Studies at Mercer University in Macon, GA.
Obituary
We send condolences to Hilda Razzaghi (03OX, 04C, 07G) for the
tragic death of her husband Dr. Payman Houshmandpour in April and
to the family of Mickea Rose (07G) who died in February.
We are also saddened by the recent death of former Chemistry
Professor Larry Clever who died May 15th at his home in Atlanta.
Prof. Clever joined the department in 1954 and retired in 1992.
Stay in touch.
Keep us updated
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Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322

2011-2012 Graduates
*August 2011 **December 2011
Mark Baillie** (Liotta Group)
Dissertation: Towards the Development of Non-Toxic Therapeutics in
the Fight against Cancer
Spandan Chennamadhavuni (Davies Group)
Dissertation: Synthesis of Small Molecule Therapeutics Utilizing
Rhodium Carbenoid Chemistry
Teddy Huang** (Lian Group)
Dissertation: Charge Transfer Dynamics in Homogeneous and
Heterogeneous Artificial Photosynthetic Systems
Haipeng Hu* (Liotta Group)
Dissertation: Validation of ReceptorBased Drug Design and
Applications in the Study of IKKs, Truncated Taxane, and LRH-1
Yajing Lian** (Davies Group)
Dissertation: Rhodium Catalyzed Asymmetric Transformations of
Vinylcarbenoids
Yi-Han Lin* (Lynn Group)
Dissertation: The Broad-Host Range Pathogenesis of Agrobacterium
tumefaciens: Successful Coupling the Motions and Domain
Interactions within Vira to Integrate Signal Sensing
Yichen Liu* (Lutz Group)
Dissertation: Engineering Kinases for Dual Thymidine and
Thymidylate Kinase Activity
Yue Liu (Lynn Group)
Dissertation: Comparing and Contrasting Two Plant Pathogens
Provides a Unique Window into the Differences in the Innate Immune
Responses between Dicots and Monocots
Mi-Sun Kim (Liotta Group)
Dissertation: I. Design of a Novel Class of Reversible Non-Covalent
Small Molecule Inhibitors for Human Granzyme B (hGrB); II. Curcumin
and Mimics as Proteasome Inhibitors; III. Design of Novel Coactivator
Binding Inhibitors (CBIs) for the Estrogen Receptor α: Break the 1μM
Barrier
Samantha Adkins Radford (Ryan Group)
Dissertation: Degradation of Insecticides in Food and Beverages:
Implications for Risk Assessment
Melissa Ann Patterson** (Conticello Group)
Dissertation: Synthesis of Protein-Based Polymers with the Potential
to Form Physically and Covalently Cross-Linked Networks
Weilin Peng (Conticello Group)
Dissertation: I. Expanding Genetic Code in S. cevevisiae with an
Orthogonal tRNA Trp/UCA/Tryptophanyl tRNA Synthetase Pair; II.
Synthetic Yeast Prions Based on a Non-NQ-Rich Amyloidogenic
Sequence Derived from the NAC Protein Sequence of α-Synuclein
The Lab Report
Spring 2012
James Austin Simmons** (Lynn Group)
Dissertation: Conformational Exchange: A Common Mechanism for
Amyloid Assembly
Jie Song* (Hill Group)
Dissertation: Exploring Catalytic Properties of Polyoxometalates in
Aerobic Oxidation and Water Oxidation
Colleen Knight Reynoso (Gallivan Group)
Dissertation: Development and Application of Synthetic Riboswitches
as Tools to Study Bacterial Pathogenesis
Fuchang Yin*(Kindt Group)
Dissertation: Simulations of Lipid Sorting Effects near Transmembrane
Peptide
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322