Dr. Mark Peczuh Receives Provost’s Teaching Innovation Mini Grant Competition Award

Dr. Mark Peczuh received a grant for the following proposal: Title: “Don’t Flip Out – It’s Just Organic Chemistry” Summary: In the project we will develop a version of second semester organic chemistry that is flipped. Lecture content will be delivered online and meeting times will be dedicated to problem solving and group work in […]

Suib & He Group Research Highlighted on Chemistry of Materials Cover

A paper entitled “Colloidal Amphiphile-Templated Growth of Highly Crystalline Mesoporous Nonsiliceous Oxides” from the Suib and He groups (Chem. Mater. 2015, 27, 6173–6176) was featured on the front cover of Chemistry of Materials. They highlighted the utilization of polymer-tethered silica nanoparticles for the preparation of thermally stable and highly crystalline mesoporous transition-metal oxides with uniform […]

Graduate Student Discusses “Resistance: How VanA Strains Get Away With It”

During the Spring 2015 semester, Graduate Student Matthew Guberman-Pfeffer had been enrolled in Dr. Mark Peczuh’s Physical Organic Chemistry class. In that class, Matthew examined the physical basis behind the difference in affinities of D-Ala-D-Ala and D-Ala-D-Lac terminating peptides to vancomycin. Thus, “Resistance: How VanA strains get away with it,” was born. Part 1 of […]

Novel “Green” Antenna Could Double Solar Efficiency

The Kumar Group and He Group have reportedly developed a unique “green” antenna that could potentially double the efficiencies of certain kinds of solar cells. Efficient solar cells maximize the absorption of the sun’s wavelengths. However, current silicon solar cells are not efficient in the blue part of the light spectrum. In response, Kumar’s team […]

New Peanut Allergy Test Goes Beyond Scratching the Surface

UConn Today Current peanut allergy tests are not very reliable when it comes to diagnosing the severity of an individual’s allergic reaction, which can range from hives to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. With an estimated three million people in the United States allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, having a more precise and reliable allergy test […]

UConn’s 500 MHz NMR Instrument Gets Smart

Over this summer, the Bruker Avance 500 MHz NMR spectrometer located in Pharmacy has undergone a major upgrade. We purchased and installed a new 5mm SmartProbe and performed the necessary console and shim upgrades to make the probe work. The probe has increased sensitivity of the 500 for 1H by several fold and also increased […]