Faculty and Staff News (2008)
Sudeep Bhattacharyay
I spent a significant part of my past year in teaching general chemistry (Chem. 103) as a part-time lecturer in this department. I really enjoyed my teaching job, especially by interacting with students and explaining them various fundamentals of chemistry. It was another productive year for my research too. I initiated a research work in collaboration with an undergraduate student to explore the redox chemistry of an enzyme that acts as natural activator of an anti-cancer pro-drug. This computational biochemistry project got funded from ORSP, UWEC. In addition, I had a publication (from my postdoctoral work) in Journal of Physical Chemistry A and gave an invited talk at the fall ACS national meeting in Boston. On the home front, it was another busy year for me and my wife, Sanchita, with our 5-year old daughter, Antara. Her drawing skills were improving everyday with the support from her most admired teacher, Mr. Matthew. We continued to enjoy hearing her daily activities at the UWEC child care center. In summer, my parents came to visit us from India. Together we explored various places of Wisconsin-Minnesota and had the most delightful time.
Jim Boulter
It’s hard to believe I’ve been here 4 years now, but time flies when you’re keeping busy… In the past year or so, I’ve taken four students to two national ACS conferences, in Chicago and in New Orleans. There, we presented posters on topics including the temperature dependent, microscale morphology of water ice films (representative of Earth’s upper atmosphere), related work with mixed ammonia/water ice films (representative of cloud particles in Jupiter’s atmosphere), and totally unrelated work on a new approach to sample and analyze carbonyl compounds formed in atmospheric oxidation processes and/or emitted by plants into the lower atmosphere. One of my current students, Skye Doering, was awarded the Kell Corporation Scholarship (a full ride for his senior year). Research continues to progress: we are now able to ask some interesting questions regarding the microscale morphology of these ice films, and our analytical techniques are beginning to shed some light on the answers. Outside of the department, I’ve also been heavily involved in working toward the development of a new, interdisciplinary group on campus, the Watershed Institute for Collaborative Environmental Studies – keep your eyes open to look for new developments on that front in the near future. However, the biggest change in my life is that my wife, Christine, and I recently got a new puppy. “Marty” is a lab/poodle mix (or labradoodle): specifically 3/4 standard poodle and 1/4 Labrador retriever. Check out my website to see a picture of him from earlier in the summer!
Mike Carney
I spent the last year teaching Chem 103, preparing a sabbatical proposal (which was accepted!), and getting prepared for my fall 2008 sabbatical. During my sabbatical, I’ll be working in the lab to generate new catalysts for ChevronPhillips Chemical Company (CPChem) and preliminary results to support an NSF proposal (for submission in 2009). The collaboration with CPChem, now in its fourth year, has generated three US patents and three publications; we hope the collaboration continues into the foreseeable future. Outside of teaching and the lab, I continue to bike and run – as long as my body doesn’t complain too much.
Steve Drucker
This is my 11th year on the faculty, and the job continues to provide vigorous challenge. This year I am teaching a section of very able students in Chem 115, and I am enjoying the experience of helping/forcing them to see that the octet rule does not have the same scientific stature as, say, the Law of Gravitation or the Schroedinger Equation. On the research front, we continue our investigations of small organic molecules in triplet excited states. Now we have a second dye laser as well as a molecular beam machine to enhance our experimental capabilities. I am proud to report Dr. Nathan Pillsbury as the first alumnus of my research group to earn a Ph.D. Nathan finished his graduate work at Purdue last summer and has taken a position with BP. On the domestic front, my wife Diane and I greatly enjoyed a summer of biking and strollering, with (respectively) our kids Ben (aged 8.5) and Athena (aged 1.5). Ben continues to reap the benefits of the high-quality public school system in Eau Claire. Athena, while not similarly institutionalized, can walk and talk!
Bob Eierman As you may know from the News and Highlights page, I have become the Interim Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning here on campus. Our job is to help educators to develop effective methods for teaching and assessing learning. Among other activities, we work with teachers from across campus on various curriculum development projects and we bring in education leaders to make presentations. |
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Warren Gallagher
This fall has me coming down off a one-year sabbatical leave, where I was able to focus almost entirely on research. During the summer of 2007, leading up to my sabbatical, I worked in the the lab of Gianluigi Veglia at the University of Minnesota, along with UW-Eau Claire student Lee Behling. That summer we focused on using NMR spectroscopy to study the structure and function of methanobactin, a small peptide-derived molecule produced by methane metabolizing bacteria. These bacteria use the molecule to scavenge copper from the environment for the enzyme that converts methane to methanol, and which requires copper for its activity. The NMR results we obtained turned out the be incompatible with the published structure for methanobactin. During my sabbatical, Lee and I followed up on this finding with additional experiments using our department’s new NMR and ESI-TOF mass spectrometers and were able to confirm not only that the published structure for methanobactin is incorrect, but also were able to determine the correct structure. This new structure is important to future studies on this fascinating and potentially environmentally important molecule. Our results also suggest possible pathways by which methanobactin may be synthesized by the bacteria. In September, our findings appeared as a Communication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. It was all featured as a “News of the Week” item in Chemical & Engineering News. All and all, nice ending to a great sabbatical. This Fall has me back in the classroom and teaching Chem 103, and enjoying it.
On the family front, my kids are growing up fast. My oldest, Alex, graduates this December from the UW-Madison with majors in History, Political Science and Russian. He will be heading off to Baton Rouge next year to teach middle school science with Teach for America. My second, Nick, is a junior at UW-Madison, where he is majoring in Math and Biology. And my youngest, Molly, will be graduating from Altoona High School in the spring and is currently working on her college applications. Stella is continuing with her law practice along with serving as an Eau Claire County Supervisor.
Alan Gengenbach
My research group graduated in the Spring of 2008. Frank Emmert graduated from UWEC as a chem/math double and headed to Purdue to be a physical chemist. Frank started working with me during his freshman year as a Blugold Scholar, so it is a little weird not having him around anymore. Jeremy Hubbard worked with me for about a year and then headed to Iowa for graduate school. I will start with a new group of students in September when the ACS-PRF grant starts. I took the summer off and wrote an NSF-REU proposal. If funded, this proposal would provide generous stipends to 5 UWEC students and 5 non-UWEC students for participation in a 10-week summer research program in the Chemistry department. When not working on the grant, I was working at the poker tables since proposal writing itself doesn't pay that well. It turns out that high-low split games are pretty fun. Oh yea, I received tenure and promotion last year as well.
Jason Halfen
Work in Jason Halfen’s lab continues to focus on high-valent iron intermediates in biomimetic and catalytic systems. We published our first manuscript on the iron-mediated alkene aziridination reaction in 2007, and recently followed that paper with a mechanistic and computational study conducted in collaboration with Jim Phillips’ group. In the spring of 2008, I offered a new course in Bioinorganic Chemistry, and it was exciting for me to bring my graduate and post-doctoral training and experiences directly into the classroom. The new academic year finds me teaching Chem 103 for the first time and preparing renewal grants to keep the lights on in our lab. Away from Phillips Hall, my family and I spent the past summer remodeling our Third Ward home, and took our first family road trip to the Smoky Mountains.
Scott Hartsel
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Dr. Hartsel has finished his term as department chair and can’t wait to spend more time in the lab with students and home with family! Well, he will likely be spending even more time on stage too. Last fall he played a giant red parrot, Iago in “Aladdin” with our own Dr. Wiegel as the evil Jafar. He have also appeared in “Enchanted Sleeping Beauty”, “Brigadoon” and “Beauty and the Beast” lately. If you are brave enough, you may find the evidence here: photo ops |
Sanchita Hati
Year 2007 was a very productive year for me and my research group. This year, I taught CHEM 103 in both spring and fall semesters. This helped me to fine tune my teaching and classroom management skills. I also got some time to concentrate in our research projects. During this past year we made significant progress in our research on understanding the long-range communications in multi-domain proteins and were able to submit a NIH grant proposal. We also submitted an abstract for poster presentation at the ACS national meeting in New Orleans, spring 2008. In addition, I had a publication (from my postdoctoral work) in PNAS and one of my research students, Brianne Shane, got accepted to the graduate program in the Department of Chemistry at the Ohio State University.
At home, we also had a wonderful year too. My husband Sudeep and I had a great time with our 5-yr old daughter Antara. My in-laws visited us in the summer. We all had a great vacation in the Door County.
Fred King
I attended the US Go Championships in Portland at the start of August. Finished with a 4:2 record playing as a 4 dan, which was not bad considering how little I had played in the previous 12 months. All my opponents were at least a half-level stronger, so I was in with a tough group. I defeated a 5 dan, and lost a half-point (the narrowest possible margin) game to another 5 dan. One of the highlights was a lecture by one of the great Japanese professional master players. "Play your feelings and relax - don't focus on winning". Hard for a western player to follow this advice. I am improving my relaxation level - which does lead to a much improved performance. I continue to maintain my position as the strongest active tournament player in Wisconsin.
Dr. Ignacio Porras, from the University of Granada, Spain, is visiting UWEC again this summer. We are working together trying to wrap up some unfinished projects from his previous visit a few years back. We are also thinking about other projects.
Exercise wise I have been riding the river trail on a semi-regular basis. Also, I have been playing a bit of tennis with Ignacio. My research this past year has focused on some of the excited states of few-electron atoms. I have also started some non Born-Oppenheimer calculations on small diatomic molecules.
David Lewis
A considerable number of things have happened since the last newsletter in the Lewis family and the Lewis group. In the last year, I have begun a collaboration with Marshfield Clinic researcher, Michael Caldwell, to investigate the design and synthesis of new oral anticoagulants. As part of this effort, Dr. Yousef Mirzaei has joined my research group as a Research Specialist. We are now well represented by alumni at several universities in the upper Midwest: Michigan (Nick Deprez and Grant Sormunen), Minnesota (Leah Groess and Ashley Dreis have now joined Glen Gullickson as Lewis alumni at Minnesota), Iowa State (Robyn Laskowski), and North Dakota State (Kelsey Dunkle). Kristy McNitt, who just got married this year, has graduated from Indiana with an M.S. degree, and she is working at Cortec in the Twin Cities.
On the home front, Debbie and I have just celebrated our 30th anniversary, and we are now officially empty nesters, with both our kids now at UW-Eau Claire (although Veronica has applied to her Dad’s alma mater in Australia).
Cheryl Muller
Cheryl Muller has picked up the reins of the Chem Demo Show, and thus far, is getting up to speed with the current show for elementary kids. She hopes to add demonstrations and that will appeal to middle and high school students. The crew of UWEC students continuing from last year is great: both organized and wanting to innovate. In lab, she’s enjoyed working out the bugs of a new synthetic carbohydrate lab for the new upper level synthetic course. The 420 students are putting the upgraded NMR probe and software through its paces to determine the precise position and conformation of atoms on the sugar rings. For organic lectures, she’s rolling out case studies to pull students out of the memorization trap. Her favorite ones are about bilirubin, jaundice, and poop (somehow poop gets student attention, but the topic is really hydrogen bonding, acid/base chemistry, and the inductive effect), and about Nerve agents (nerve “gasses”), acetylcholine, and antidotes (which is really about leaving groups and conjugate bases.)
Jim Phillips
The Times They are A Changin’. That pretty much sums up what has and will be going on in Dr. Jim’s personal and professional life. The big (perhaps not so big) news is that he has taken the reins from Hartsel and stepped in as Department Chair. Beyond that, teaching CHEM 433 (the “new”, lab-free 431) for the first time and working with a mostly new research group complete this “aura of change”. Things continue to move along in the lab, and if you are an old research student wondering about old papers finally getting published, I am nearly caught up (and would be if it weren’t for one pretty snarfy reviewer).
At home, the big news is that Maggie and Ellie are now in middle school. Both are otherwise quite well, somewhat busy, and learning to play music – bass guitar and trombone for Ellie, piano and choir for Maggie. They are getting to the point where they can jam with Dad! Speaking of which, Dr. Jim has been playing around town in a rock/blues group called “Little Willie” (http://profile.myspace.com/littlewillieband), so if you are in town, and out on it, come see us. He has also been playing some hockey for the first time in a several years with the UWEC “Hockey Profs”, http://www.uwec.edu/newsreleases/08/oct/1001hockey.htm), and managing to catch a fish or two every now and then. Katy has been biding her time a Chair of the EC County Democratic Party, and just finished a busy election season in which she oversaw six State Assembly campaigns. Yes, that has kept us quite busy, and also meant that I spent many afternoons last Fall hangin’ out with Maggie and Ellie instead of with my research students.
Kurt Wiegel
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This year has been really good for us. It started with a trip to the Boston ACS meeting for a pair of invited papers given by Clinton Cook and David Witte. All in all, it was a very good meeting, except for a 6 am flight back and the pickled jellyfish- Best left undescribed. The Spring meeting in New Orleans was a lot of fun as well. Clint, Jason Greuel and Paul Yanzer went from our group, and bout 10 total UWEC undergraduates were in attendance. The meeting was very good, even if it was strange being back in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. We also discovered during this meeting that Clint was allergic to something in the rabbit stew we ate at a restaurant- Jason suspected it was flavor. I got my first NSF grant this summer, and I had thee students working off of it (Clint, David and New Guy Phil Schieffer- nicknamed Phil of the Past because of his love of love of early 80s music) and two more on |
other sources of funding (Jason and the other new guy Tim Andrews). Eight people in one summer is a lot, but we got a lot of work done and had fun as well (ask them about the Noah's ark trip and how the Black Anaconda slide made me curl up in the fetal position and weep). In more personal news- my wife Jackie got a job as an elementary special education teacher, Emma (7), Eliza (5) and Joshua (3) are all doing well at their schools. My brief and tragic career in theater has also been fun, with roles ranging from Jaffar in Aladdin (Hartsel was Iago, the annoying parrot- typecasting I swear, but the buddy parts were a lot of fun), Dr. Scott in the Rocky Horror Show and Schroeder in You're a Good Man Charley Brown. The fall semester has gone very well, and we're looking forward to another fun year. Best wishes to everyone. |
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Thao Yang
My kids are growing up. You guess it where I am at my biological clock, if you remember me your chemistry prof., who was from Laos. My first daughter (Dala) is now a junior in High School; Mina is a sophomore, and Kim is a 7th grader. We managed to find time to take a trip to the Yellowstone Park last year. It was a great and wonderful drive, and the family enjoyed it. Let us know how you are doing, and you are always welcome back for a visit. Have a great year in 2009.
