UTD and UTA

Around the Area

UT Arlington

After serving six years as Department Chair, Dr. Fred MacDonnell is returning to full time teaching and research. The new Department Chair will be Dr. Carl Lovely. The Associate Chair is Dr. Peter Kroll.

UT Dallas

Assistant Professor Allison Stelling and her collaborator Associate Professor Raymond Trievel at the University of Michigan won a NSF Science, Engineering & Education (SEE) Innovation award to study the Role of Tetrel Bonding in the Reaction Mechanism of Methyltransferases.

Assistant Professor Sheena D’Arcy recently facilitated a donation of about 800 science backpacks to local fifth and sixth graders.

Michael Luzuriaga (Ph.D. 2021, Gassensmith Lab) won the 2021 David Daniel Best Thesis Award. Professor Mihaela Stefan won the 2021 Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring. Dr. Stefan has also been named the new Chair of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

Dr. Robin Macaluso has received a $250,000 NSF grant for her solid state and material chemistry program. She was also elected as project coordinator for the Inorganic Chemistry Division of IUPAC.

Dr. Junha Jeon received a continuation of his NSF grant to study “Hydrogen Atom Transfer Lewis Base Catalysis.” The research of Dr. Sherri McFarland and student Houston Cole was recently featured in The Dallas Morning News. Presentations from the McFarland group at the European Society for Photobiology (ESP) meeting were given by Houston Cole and Elam Rawasamy. There were also presentations from the group at the Fall ACS meeting by Cole, Rawasamy and undergraduate Wesley McDonald.

Dr. Kayunta Johnson-Winters has been selected by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to serve on their Nominating Committee. Dr. Johnson-Winters also received a silver EXCEL Award or her opinion piece “Being Black in the Ivory Tower.”

“2021 Awards”

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tant and educational researcher during a TRIO Upward Bound Summer Chemical Research program at Texas Christian University. She received science teacher of the year award in 2013. Her Master's thesis research focus was on technology integration for immediate formative assessment feedback to students. Heather is currently focused on science language acquisition and laboratory use to enhance the acquisition of multiple science language modalities.

From the ACS Press Room Continued “Firefighter Exposure”

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(wide gaps in vegetation to stop the fire’s expansion) and personnel battling blazes in the Pacific Northwest were exposed to the highest amounts of the pollutants. Finally, the team asked the participants to qualitatively assess their smoke exposure, finding the responses aligned with the measured particulate matter exposures. To protect wildland firefighters’ health, the researchers suggest that fire management should work on reducing smoke exposures of firefighters, whenever possible. This could include incorporating self-reporting of exposure and rotate personnel from tasks that regularly experience high exposures to smoke and its pollutants to less smoky ones. The authors acknowledge funding from the U.S. Forest Service and the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Risk Management Committee and support by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation.

“Whiter Teeth”

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other biomedical applications, such as developing antibacterial materials, the researchers say. The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key R&D Program of China and the Key Technologies R&D Program of Sichuan Province.

“Baldness”

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containing microneedle patches resulted in faster mouse hair regrowth with similar coverage, density and diameter compared with a leading topical treatment and could be applied less frequently. Microneedle patches that introduce cerium nanoparticles into the skin are a promising strategy to reverse balding for androgenetic alopecia patients, the researchers say. The authors acknowledge funding from the Ten-thousand Talents Program of Zhejiang Province, National Key R&D Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, One Belt and One Road International Cooperation Project from the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China.