2024 Chemistry Newsletter

Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
In Memoriam
Department Lab Updates
Alumni Class Notes
 

Message from the Chair

Dear Chemistry Department Alumni and Friends,

I always get excited for the new academic year. Our faculty are pumped too, especially in the Intro and Orgo enterprises. These challenging courses can make or break student aspirations, and the department is committed to student success. Recognizing the varied preparation levels of incoming students, Professors Tabitha Razunguzwa and Andrea Cook have labored to develop the Extra Lecture Support Instruction (ELSI) Program, partnering with Academic Commons and Peer Tutoring. The ELSI leaders provide weekly instruction and offer mock exams. This has had a tremendous impact.

We are of course thrilled to bid adieu to our 2024 graduates (seven PhD, five MS and 14 undergrads) as they move on to do great things. We are equally thrilled to welcome Dr. Lauren Pincus to the faculty. Her expertise in environmental chemistry and synchrotron spectroscopy is a welcome addition. Some departures of note include Dr. Ling Hao, who is moving to the University of Maryland, and Dr. Erik Rodriguez, who is heading to the private sector. Best wishes for their continued success!

I’d like to end on a note of gratitude for my last “Message from the Chair.” I will end my second term as chair in June 2025, when Professor Cindy Dowd will take over. It has been a genuine pleasure to serve in this regard, and I am excited about the progress we’ve made. I am grateful for all of my department colleagues and their efforts in our shared commitment to teaching and research. I am particularly grateful for our staff: Shanna Roth, Rene Shaw, Dr. Kristen Noble, Anthony Middleton and Ashley Mills-Thomson. I could/would not have served as chair without them—tireless colleagues who have operated in the face of numerous challenges. Well done, and thank you on behalf of all of GW.

All the best for a great year!

Chris Cahill
Department Chair

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Department Spotlights 

Pincus Lab Opens its Doors

Dr. Laura Pincus’ experience includes a postdoctoral associate position at Princeton University in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and two postdoctoral fellowships in the Princeton Department of Geosciences, including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Earth Sciences Postdoc Fellowship. Dr. Pincus was thrilled to welcome her first group member, graduate student Brian Beukema.

The Pincus Lab conducts research at the intersection of green chemistry, environmental chemistry and synchrotron spectroscopy. Specifically, Dr. Pincus’ lab studies reactions and interactions at the solid-water interface with applications ranging from design of sustainable materials for selective capture of inorganic ions of environmental and economic importance to developing technologies to aid in climate change adaptation and mitigation. 

One of their first research projects examines how environmental systems conditions such as salinity, exposure to UV light and terrestrial vs aqueous conditions affect microplastic degradation pathways. In September, Dr. Pincus concluded a two-year long field campaign in collaboration with the Department of Geosciences at Princeton weathering commercially available plastics on the coast of New Jersey. This research was the subject of a December 2023 episode of the NSF Discovery Files Podcast and referenced in a critical review on microplastics recently published in Environmental Engineering Science which Dr. Pincus co-authored. Brian Beukema is hard at work processing these field samples and preparing them for some upcoming beamtime at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS II) at Brookhaven National Lab in Long Island, N.Y.

The Pincus Lab is delighted to have been awarded 12 days of beamtime over the course of this year at the Submicron Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy (SRX) beamline at NSLS II to conduct experiments examining the complexation of inorganics (both naturally occurring and inorganic pollutants) by weathered microplastics. Specifically, they will use micro-X-ray fluorescence microscopy (m-XRF) to image the distribution and associations of inorganics bound to weathered plastics. They will also use X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) to examine oxidation states and mineral phases of inorganics of interest. This beamtime will enable them to better understand the risks posed by microplastics as vectors for toxic metal pollution.

The Pincus Lab is excited to join the GW Chemistry Department and looks forward to updating you all on their research contributions in the years to come! 

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Miller Lab Unveils LaHeTra for Measuring Greenhouse Gases and Analyzing Wildfires

In two seemingly disparate fields, the GW Laser Analytics Laboratory, directed by Professor J. Houston Miller, has found applications for a new analytical technique: laser heterodyne radiometry (aka LHR or LaHetRa as we refer to it.)

What the two application spaces share is a common approach to measuring electromagnetic radiation at very high spectral resolution using a passive laser diagnostic. Passive in this context means that laser radiation never exists in the instrument and thus is eye-safe. By far the most common use of LaHetRa has been in atmospheric studies and focused on the absorption of solar radiation of sunlight by molecules in the atmosphere.

The Miller lab’s involvement in this technique began more than a decade ago through a collaboration with Emily Wilson, a group and department alumnus, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. More recently, the team collaborated with a small business located in Santa Fe, N.M., (Mesa Photonics) through funding provided by the US Department of Energy. This last collaboration culminated in the deployment of a multi-laser, multi-molecule sensor, installed at the Global Change Research Wetland (GCREW) at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).

With new NSF funding, the lab is focusing on developing and demonstrating applications for a standoff, laser-based, fire radiometer. Instruments developed will address data deficiencies for two challenging problems associated with climate change.

The first is wildfires, which, as a response to and a cause of climate warming, are an increasing global threat. The total burned area during “fire seasons” has gone from ~1000 square miles prior to 2000 to over ~2500 square miles in the last 20 years. NASA’s FireSense program emphasizes real-time observation and characterization of wildfires as a priority focus. However, satellite characterization of fires is limited by daylight, clouds, spectral, spatial and temporal resolution. Thus, there is a clear need for “ground truthing” that can fill in data voids and provide real-time data to first responders.

A second “use case” for this technology is in the characterization of industrial flares. As with wildfires, satellite measurements of emitted light do not explicitly provide chemical information, such as amounts of unburnt fuel or concentrations of higher molecular weight compounds emitted. Satellite measurements are possible only at night when sunlight does not overwhelm thermal emission signatures and can be obscured by clouds

The lab is also building two laser heterodyne radiometers for laboratory demonstrations as well as “field-scale” demonstrations. The first system will operate in the near infrared and will focus on potassium detection. (Potassium light emission is a characteristic of only intense fires of plant materials and not fossil fuels.) Because of the close technological connection with the lab’s prior atmospheric work and the ready availability of optoelectronics for this spectral region, this system is being built first.

The second system will proceed in two generations. In the first instance, the lab will focus on detection of both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide radiative emissions using a MIR system. This sensor is expected to provide directly fire temperature as well as a measure of combustion efficiency.

In the second iteration, a second MIR laser will be used to explore radiative emissions from methane, an important fuel source industrial flares and a major emission from wildfires.

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Department Kudos

Many thanks to Drs. Edward and Virginia Caress! We launched our Caress Alumni Speaker series, which supports the return of prominent alumni to share their science and wisdom with current students, by featuring Hannah Yi, BS ’16. Her March talk was a huge success, and, of course, everyone enjoyed being able to see Dr. Yi again!

Congratulations to our research faculty who published 16 peer reviewed papers and our faculty and grad students who made numerous presentations at national and international conferences. There are 23 active grants and 16 submitted proposals. Whew! Not to be left out are our undergraduates. We strongly encourage undergraduate research—and they also get published!

Stephen Boyes has started as a rotating program director in the NSF Division of Chemistry. Specifically, he will be working in the Macromolecular, Supramolecular, and Nanochemistry program and will be at NSF for the next two years.

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Congratulations to Christopher Cahill, who was awarded the Trachtenberg Prize for Scholarship (Research) in recognition of his leadership in his field with over 160 peer-reviewed publications and for his role in nuclear science curriculum development. Well done! Dr. Cahill was also awarded the coveted Chemical Society of Washington Hillebrand Prize.

This year, the news has been all about AI, and Jakub Kostal was there to address it. At a two-day industry summit, Dr. Kostal gave a talk entitled, “Lab Tech: Is AI the Drug Developer of the Future?” where he discussed whether using AI technology in drug development is revolutionary or risky. The summit was designed for experts to share ideas and insights on the future of global health. GW was represented well by Dr. Kostal!

We are pleased to announce that our very own LaKeisha McClary co-edited Inclusive STEM: Transforming Disciplinary Writing Instruction for a Socially Just Future. This collection encompasses a diversity of STEM education contexts and offers instructional strategies and assignments for creating equitable, inclusive classrooms.

Holden Thorp was named to the 2024 STATUS List, featuring 50 influential people shaping the future of health and life sciences.

Martin Zysmilich is the deputy chair, the director of Graduate Studies and has taken on the role of interim director of Undergraduate Studies for the Chemistry Department. He also serves in the University Student Discrimination Report Committee. Professor Zysmilich is currently on sabbatical working in the ACS Office of Higher Education where he participated as a facilitator in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 New Faculty Workshops.

Brian Beukema, a student in the Pincus lab, was awarded a Harden McConnell Fellowship in the Department of Chemistry.

Monica Flores, a PhD student in the Miller lab, presented her work on the development of laser heterodyne radiometry at several venues over the past year including the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO) and the 2023 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This work was previously highlighted in the CCAS Spotlight newsmagazine.

Jennifer Giaccai, who also works in the Miller lab, successfully defended her dissertation over the summer, and also published a manuscript in the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy on the application of a Raman Spectroscopy to study the properties of inksticks and artwork and artifacts without damage to the artifact. This use of spectroscopy is key to conservation science in east Asian art. Her work was previously featured in GW Today.

Erin McCaughey, who is also a PhD student in the Miller lab, presented her work in the development of a tunable diode laser absorption instrument developed at GW in the study of full scale, fire tests, in collaboration with group and department alumnus Dr. Michelle Bailey and a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology at a conference in Azizi, Italy, called Field Laser Applications in Industry and Research.

Alexa Mehlman was a recipient of a Madeleine Reine Jacobs Fellowship in 2023 and had her research poster displayed at the U.S. Secret Service Forensic Science Days. 

Sydney Reiser, an undergraduate student in the Meisel lab, was the recipient of the Madeleine Reines Jacobs Award for Summer Research.

Congratulations to Dani Rodrigues, a graduate student in the Meisel lab, who was a Tier 1 Advancing Science Conference Grant Awardee at the 51st Annual NOBCChE Conference.

Dr. Kristen Noble expressed huge thanks to Shanna Roth for taking on laboratory manager responsibilities while she was on parental leave and went on to say that she wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to keep the department operating at its maximum efficiency. She is tremendously grateful to Anthony Middleton for his dedication. Dr. Noble continued with thanks to Shanna and Ashley Mills-Thomson for keeping the stockroom functioning while she and Anthony Middleton were on leave simultaneously!

Dr. Noble is also pleased to invite you to peruse the first two issues of Chemistry’s Cautionary Chronicles, the Chemistry Department’s semi-annual safety newsletter written and curated by GW students under her direction.

Many thanks to Dr. Kara Thomas, BS ’15, for her generous gift to the Chemistry Department. Dr. Thomas was motivated by the supportive and encouraging environment in the Chemistry Department that she recalls during her years as a student with us. And wanted others to experience this. Hearing something like this keeps us energized. Dr. Thomas is currently the deputy lead for guidance navigation and control, Nuclear Mission Branch, Air Force Research Lab in New Mexico.

The MS EGC capstone project, “Green Chemistry & Environmental Justice at the Intersection of Government, Industry and Academia,” presentations were delivered at the American Chemical Society (ACS), DC headquarters to industry, associations, and government partners. Find out more about the MS EGC capstone projects!

GW marks the centennial of our former home as featured in the GW Today article “A Century of Discovery: Corcoran Hall Marks 100 years of Science Milestones.” Alumnus Robert Pellenbarg, BS ’71, read the story and was inspired to share his memories of Corcoran Hall. The entire department wanted to jump in, so we added a webpage just for everyone’s recollections. We would like to hear from you! Please share any memories of your days at GW and how they impacted your current endeavors. Or share specific recollections about your time at Corcoran Hall. The story and the recollections are worth the read!

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In Memoriam

Alan Nadel, BS ’71, JD ’76, a Distinguished Alumnus of George Washington University, made significant contributions to both his profession and community. He was a friend and regular donor to the Department of Chemistry and was selected for the Distinguished Alumni Service award. As an attorney specializing in patent and copyright law, he played a vital role in Philadelphia’s intellectual property sector, notably securing patents for iconic inventions like the Super Soaker and the Prince extended tennis racket. During Dr. Nadel’s years as a student at GW, he was the captain of the crew team and became the first rower inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame. His dedication extended beyond his career, as he was involved with the Boy Scouts and Congregation Adath Jeshurun. A lover of skiing and travel, Alan's legacy lives on through his wife, children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews.

Sadly, we also must report that Professor Joan Hilderbrandt passed away in April 2024. While here, she took on the task of coordinating the laboratory program for Chemistry for Non-Science Students when the class grew to almost 500 students. Her empathetic approach to teaching and her organizational strengths brought order to our growing laboratory programs. As the department’s needs continued to grow, she was invited to teach a general chemistry lecture section, eventually moving to teach full time, handling both lecture and coordination of some lab programs. In her final years with the department, she taught the Quantitative Analysis Laboratory, introducing a writing component to the program. She retired from teaching after 22 years at GW to spend time with her beloved grandchildren.

She touched the lives of many GW undergrads with her dedicated work in the laboratory programs and the lecture hall. She was also involved in the Writing in the Discipline program as it was being rolled out.. Further, Professor Hilderbrandt was always actively involved in all aspects of department life and with the college, hosting many informal gatherings at her home to help strengthen the esprit de corps. As a strong advocate for our undergraduate majors, she also served as a premedicine adviser for CCAS. She cared a great deal about her role as a teacher and for the life of the department, befriending many in their early days of teaching and acclimating to the GW environment.

We’ll continue to remember her for the positive impact she had on legions of GW students.

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Department Lab Updates

Boyes Lab

It has been yet another busy period in the Boyes Lab. Nicole Conte presented her research at the National ACS meeting, two new papers have been published and we recently received a new NSF grant in collaboration with Professors Xitong Liu and Yongsheng Leng in SEAS. This summer was also the last for the very successful REU program focused on sustainability and science policy.

Cahill Lab

What a year 2024 has been! The Cahill group said goodbye to three (yes, three!) newly minted PhDs: Drs. Jordan Herder and Dominique Brager are now both Fellows at the National Nuclear Security Administration here in D.C., and Dr. Christopher Hossack is now a postdoc at Pacific Northwest National Lab. Postdoc Dr. Adharsh Raghavan has moved on to a faculty position at University of Mary Washington. This has been a big year for folks moving on to great things! Current grads Liz Decoteau and Haley Guthrie are making fantastic progress and are presenting their work at conferences. Professor Cahill has been busy, too—and that also includes winning the Chemical Society of Washington’s Hillebrand Prize and traveling to Brazil for a few invited lectures. Looking forward to 2025!

Dowd Lab

The year has flown by for the Dowd lab! We said goodbye and good luck to Dr. Dee Bague and undergrad Hisham Shawwa. Dee is now a postdoc at the NCI in Frederick, Md., so we are thrilled she is close by! Hisham is working in a Boston hospital getting ready to apply to medical school. Both are greatly missed. Our group participated in this year’s Frontiers at the Chemistry-Biology Interface Symposium, the Empowering Women in Organic Chemistry meeting in Rahway, N.J., and the fall 2024 ACS meeting in Denver.

Congrats to Lara Skibbie who received a travel award from ACS Division of Chemistry! Undergrad Henry Schrecker earned an ACS SURF fellowship to support his summer work, including a trip to Pfizer to present! Undergrad Rory Smith earned a GW Luther Rice Fellowship to support his summer work in the lab. We hosted two non-GW students for the summer as REU fellows! Evelyn and Lulu were fantastic, and we had a terrific summer.

We are grateful for opportunities to share our work with the wider scientific community, as well funding from NIH and DOD to support our projects. In addition to research and teaching, Cindy continues to chair graduate recruitment and admission for chemistry. We have welcomed one new undergraduate student this fall and look toward expanding our projects—making molecules against exciting and important human pathogens.

Kostal Lab

Over the past year, Jakub Kostal’s research group at George Washington University has made significant contributions to the field of green computational chemistry, focusing on the development of sustainable chemical processes and materials. Their work has aimed to minimize the environmental impact of chemical industries by advancing computational methods to design safer, more sustainable chemicals and processes. The current team includes three graduate students, Jillian Brejnik, Diana Garnica Acevedo and Geetesh Devineni. One of the group’s key accomplishments is the refinement of computational models used to predict the toxicity and environmental persistence of chemicals before they are synthesized, working on predicting the photodegradation and biodegradation routes of depletion. These models, when fully validated, allow for the design of "green" chemicals with reduced ecological risks, enhancing the ability of industries to shift toward sustainable practices. By integrating machine learning algorithms and quantum mechanical calculations, the team has created powerful tools to predict the environmental behavior of biobased compounds to potentially replace existing pesticides. This predictive capacity helps identify potential hazards early in the design process, ensuring that safer chemicals are selected for manufacturing.

The Kostal group has also been increasingly interested in optimizing chemical reactions along green metrics and sustainability considerations. These efforts are made possible by collaborating with the Lapkin group at Cambridge University in the UK, which focuses on sustainable process engineering using AI.

Massiah Lab

The Massiah group has been actively developing and sharpening their skills on protein biochemistry. The group consists of two graduate students, Suley Abdul Rauf and Ayodeji Adedayo, and two undergraduate students, Clarke Gilmore and Dru Nisbett. The group is active with their structural and functional studies of the human MID1 protein, which contributes to proper midline development during embryogenesis. Since the MID1 protein regulates the concentration of protein phosphatase 2A, an enzyme that regulates metabolism and the cell cycle, there is interest to focus on therapeutically targeting MID1’s function as a liver target with diabetes and as a target with hormone inducible breast cancer. The group continues to investigate the enzymatic activity of MID1 and are using bioengineering to alter and understand its mechanism of action.

Meisel Lab

Chris Grubb and Brysa Alvarado passed their PhD candidacy exams. Fai Alotaibi earned her MS (with thesis) and has now joined the PhD program. Undergraduates Natalie Clay, Rose Milano and Cesar Pagan graduated—they will be missed! Natalie will join the Chemical Engineering PhD program at Ohio State U., and Rose will join the Chemistry PhD program at Boston U. The lab welcomed REU students Kiersten Buck (NW Missouri State U.) and Maria Benigno (Catawba College) as summer researchers. Undergraduates Haley Bolton and Sydney Reiser were awarded fellowships to continue research over the summer, and Dani gave an oral presentation at the annual NOBCChE Conference.

Miller Lab

This past year saw our laboratory finalizing several projects and launching in a new direction through funding from the National Science Foundation (as described in a CCAS Spotlight article). In addition to the talented graduate students highlighted in the Department Kudos section, we were joined by REU student Eliza Cattaneo, who is an undergraduate chemistry major from the University of Michigan. Erin and Eliza worked together to perform preliminary experiments on atomic and molecular flame radiation from fires and flames, the focus of our new NSF Grant.

Sadtchenko Lab

Over the past several months, the Sadtchenko group has continued its groundbreaking research on dynamics in rapidly heated condensed molecular phases. On October 1, the team published an article in the Journal of Chemical Physics, which describes the advanced applications of the fast scanning calorimetry (FSC) technique to studies of molecular dynamics and phase of ultrathin glassy films. The manuscript was praised by reviewers, which led to its selection as an “editor’s choice” for the October issue. The team's current focus is on FSC studies of deeply supercooled water. This effort is spearheaded by undergraduate student Tanya Ryzi and graduate student Chloe D. Wald, who joined the Chemistry Department in August 2024. 

Voutchkova-Kostal Lab

The Voutchkova-Kostal group focuses on the design and implementation of more sustainable practices for both processes that already exist and novel ideas. Our major focus is designing catalysts in the hydrotalcite (HT) class that can facilitate several sequential transformations in a single pot. This class of catalysts are cheap, robust, tunable, and recyclable. The multifunctional nature of such catalysts drastically increases efficiency and minimizes waste and purification steps. Processes that historically required two, three, or four discrete individual steps can now be completed with a single catalyst. For years this workflow was focused on biomass valorization. However, we have recently shifted towards synthetic applications and jet fuel production from longer chain waste alcohols such as heptanol. The key transformation we have taken advantage of is that of decarbonylation or the removal of CO from carbonyl groups. This type of chemistry has historically been carried out with homogeneous catalysts, but heterogenous decarbonylation with catalysts such as HTs is underexplored.

Currently, we are focused on aldehyde and thioester decarbonylation as both routes have significant synthetic applicability. We are also exploring how the electronics of added functional groups effect the kinetics and thermodynamics of such a transformation. Through both experimental and computational methods, the aim is to be able to design catalysts with predictable reactivity depending on which substrate/s are present.

Wagner Lab

Michael Womble successfully defended his PhD dissertation in the fall 2023 and is now pursuing an MS in data science at GW. Ritu Manickavelu has taken over Michael’s Li-O2 battery project, studying this next generation chemistry as her dissertation research. Kevin McKenzie defended in summer 2024 and has stayed on in our lab as a postdoctoral scientist working on our graphitization project. Michael Scarberry joined as a graduate student and is working closely with Kevin and, recently, Dr. Nathan Banek, who returned as a research professor. We would like to sincerely thank the three undergraduate researchers who have helped out in lab: Adrian (AJ) Wood, a member of GW’s swim team; Zach Weeks; and especially Jack Poland, who has been particularly engaged and helpful.

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Alumni Class Notes

And they’re off! Updates on our most recent alumni:

• Natalie Clay, BS ’24, is in the PhD program for chemical engineering, Ohio State University.
• Amina Edmiston, BS ’24, is continuing her interest in music with her band.
• Jack Gibson, BS ’24, is continuing clinical work to prepare for medical school.
• Liz Hartmez, BS ’24, is in the PhD program for geosciences, University of Texas.
• Keke Lu, BS ’24 is pursuing a PhD.
• Alexa Mehlman, BS ’24, is in the GW Masters in Forensic Chemistry program.
• Rose Milano, BS ’24, is in the PhD program, Boston University.
• Cesar Pagan, BS ’24, is an ER tech as preparation for medical school.
• Jamie Reynolds, BS ’24, is in the GW Masters in Forensic Chemistry program.
• Vicky Wang, BS ’23, MS ’24, is a forensic chemist.
• Vishal Win, BS ’24, is a lab tech at Kennedy Kreiser Institute at Johns Hopkins preparing for medical school.
• Yuansen Wu, BS ’24, is working in industry with his eye on a graduate degree in chemistry.
• Rebekah Brucato, PhD ’23, is a scientist at Kraton Corporation.
• Ben Walusiak, PhD ’23, is a Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Lab.
• Michael Womble, PhD ’24, is pursuing an additional degree in data science at GW.
• Rhys Dickhudt, PhD ’24, is a review chemist, FDA.
• Marjan Dolatmoradi, PhD ’24, is a research scientist at LinusBio.
• Sara Mattson, PhD ’24, is a technical specialist at Hylton-Rodic Law PLLC, a patent law firm.
• Dominique Brager, PhD ’24, is in the Graduate Fellowship Program at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
• Zachary Basile, MS ’24, (EGC) is at the EPA.
• Madeline Pandos, MS ’24, (EGC), environmental conservation.
• Tyler Amrine, MS ’24, (EGC) is at the EPA Office of Pollution, Prevention and Toxics.
• Nancy Fahmy, MS ’24, (EGC) is an intern at the Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance, EPA.
• Morgan Ward, MS ’24, (EGC) is a program manager for Change Chemistry.

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