Research Opportunities

Undergraduate students- are you interested in research? The Mission Statement of the Department of Chemistry emphasizes research experience as an important part of development and learning. Read about the faculty that are interested in recruiting undergraduate students to work in their labs. Refer to the faculty directory to obtain contact information and just drop a brief email to a prospective mentor to initiate communication.

OURE PROJECTS OFFERED IN DOC

The following project list was updated in February of 2022 in response to the OURE Flyer 2022-2023.  For more information, please contact Dr. Risheng Wang, the OURE Coordinator in the Department of Chemistry.  Feel free to also contact the faculty listed below about any grant-funded research projects they may have during the academic year as well as over the summer. 

1. Electrode Materials for Lithium- and Sodium Ion Batteries.

2. Complex Chalcogenides as Magnetic, Thermoelectric and Super-ionic conductor materials.

3. Metallo-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) for Gas Storage and Catalysis.

1. Effects of water treatment on redox status of fish in commercial aquariums.

2. Whole-body effects of open-field blast injury.

3. Improving penetration of antioxidant drugs for ocular diseases.

4. Investigating the link between redox status of ocular fluids and disease.

1. Rubisco-inspired biomimetic CO2 sequestration from air (peptide chemistry, carbamate formation, thermodynamics, modified amino acids).

2. Multilevel theoretical approaches to studies of enzyme reaction mechanism (ONIOM, cytochrome P450, Rubisco).

3. Video-based kinetic analysis of oscillating chemical reactions and complete simulation (Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, dynamic approach to multi-equilibria, reaction rate constants).

4. Ferroelectric crystalline organic materials (synthesis, crystallization, supramolecular chemistry, linear and nonlinear optics, periodic boundary computations).

1. Fundamental Chemistry and Physics of Low-Dimensional Materials and Rational Design of their Applications.

2. Computational Modeling of Materials: from Atomistic Scale to Statistical Ensembles.

1. Biomarkers for seed quality evaluation or traumatic brain injury diagnosis.

2. Biosensor for medical application.

3. Biopolymer from bioresources.

1. Developing non-enzymatic nanobiosensors for continuous health monitoring of patients with diabetes and neurodegenerative disorder.

2. Exploring water as a source of clean energy.

3. Developing a CO2 scrubber for cleaning the environment

 

1. Organic anticorrosion coatings for aluminum and cadmium steel substrates.

2. Synthesis of high temperature stable, water-soluble crosslinking monomers.

3. Rheological characterization of hydrated cements.

1. Carbon aerogels for high capacity and high selectivity CO2 adsorption

1. Epitaxial Electrodeposition of Transparent Semiconductors.

2. Ordered Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) Produced by Epitaxial Electrodeposition.

1. Development of DNA-based targeted drug delivery for cancer therapy.

2. Fabrication of Biomolecular-assisted biosensing system.

3. Self-assembly of environmental responsive DNA nanostructures

1. Air quality sensor data analysis in Twin Cities, Minnesota.

2. Air quality sensor calibration and deployment in underground mines.

3. Chemical composition analysis of aerosols generated from electronic cigarettes.

1. Optimizing the EXCEPT-12 NMR pulse sequence for solvent-signal suppression in testing alcoholic beverages.

2. NMR Relaxometry to Investigate the effectiveness of catalytic methanol production.

3. Alternating non-negative least-squares (NNLS) optimization to resolve distributions of multiple exponential decay time constants.

OURE SUPPORTED FELLOWS (2) and STUDENTS (12) IN AY21/22

Sara McCauley, OURE Fellow. Research Adviser: Dr. Rainer Glaser

Gladwin Labrague, OURE Fellow.  Research Adviser: Dr. Thomas Schuman

Vaughn Foreman, OURE Student. Research Adviser: Dr. Amitava Choudhury

Josie Glenn, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Garry Grubbs

Cody Patrick, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Jeffrey Winiarz

Allison Hermelink, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Klaus Woelk

Justin Chern, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Manashi Nath

Megan Percy, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Manashi Nath

Loki Cortner, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Nuran Ercal

Ethan Hay, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Rainer Glaser

Kari Knobbe, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Rainer Glaser

Emily Pesselato, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Reddy Parkash

Adam Willett, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Thomas Schuman

Claire Pohlman, OURE Student. Research Adviser:  Dr. Yang Wang