Chemistry grad Michael-Anthony Ferrato is the 2012 President’s Medal winner

Before he even got to the University of Windsor, Michael-Anthony Ferrato was helping new students get oriented to campus. It was a habit he kept up through his undergraduate career.

That level of involvement helped to earn the chemistry graduate the 2012 President’s Medal, awarded each year to a graduating student who has made significant contributions to campus and community activities while maintaining a superior academic record.

After his acceptance to the University in the summer of 2008, Ferrato produced videos documenting his experiences with academic orientation and course registration.

“We were looking for ways to get students involved and then we were pleased to find out Michael-Anthony was there ahead of us,” recalls liaison officer Tim Brunet. “He was helping to orient students by sharing his own experiences.”

After he started classes, Ferrato joined the recruitment team, acting as a guide for campus tours and working alongside staff and faculty to represent Windsor at the Ontario Universities Fair. He says that experience helped him see the many opportunities available on campus.

“I tell anyone who asks that the University of Windsor has everything they could want,” he says.

Ferrato made the most of his time here, holding an appointment as an Outstanding Scholar, getting involved in Lancer athletics, and pulling down top grades.

His work in the research lab of chemistry professor Tricia Carmichael brought him two summer research awards from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and earned him credit as a published author in a top academic journal.

He served as video coordinator for the Lancer basketball program; the broadcast he produced of the 2011 Canadian Interuniversity Sport women’s championship tournament was the primary feed for fans across Canada.

Ferrato is just as excited about his role as a co-founder and co-captain of the men’s baseball team: “With the talent we have in  this part of the province, it could be a powerhouse.”

And he earned places on the Dean’s List and President’s Honour Roll with a cumulative grade point average of 12.70 and a major grade point average of 12.90. Ferrato will continue his University of Windsor career in September as he pursues a masters degree in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

See the original story on the Daily News:
http://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/2012-06-13/involvement-started-early-for-president%E2%80%99s-medal-winner

Chemists develop new method to make stretchable light-emitting devices

Chemistry student Heather Filiatrault and professor Tricia Carmichael examine a light-emitting device fabricated in their lab.

A common method of treating babies born with jaundice is phototherapy, which involves bathing the infant in light from fluorescent bulbs, halogen quartz lamps, light-emitting diodes, and even fiber-optic mattresses.

Tricia Carmichael can see a day when those babies can simply be wrapped in a light-emitting blanket.

An associate professor in chemistry and biochemistry, Dr. Carmichael spends most of her lab time studying ways of making flexible and stretchable electronic devices. In a recent Advanced Materials journal cover article – whose first author was grad student Heather Filiatrault – Carmichael and her colleagues describe an emerging method used to make light-emitting devices designed to tolerate strain so that they can stretch, bend and wrap.

“There are all kinds of cool applications for this technology, but the idea is to be able to make it inexpensively,” Carmichael said.

The challenge with making stretchable conventional organic light-emitting devices, which rely on technology currently used in cell phones, cameras and digital media players, is the device complexity, Carmichael said. The display screens on those devices consist of thin film layers and each one needs to have an element of elasticity.

Carmichael’s approach has been to reduce the device complexity by using light-emitting electrochemical cells, which rely on materials that give off light when voltage is applied, sandwiched between electrodes. Along with her team, Carmichael developed a way to make a light-emitting material—an organometallic ruthenium complex—stretchable by blending it with an elastic silicone rubber.

“It’s actually a fairly simple idea but no one has ever really done it before,” said Carmichael.

Under lab tests to measure its “stretchability,” the team found the material could achieve about 25 to 30 per cent elongation before the device failed to emit light.

 The concept is still in its infancy, but if developed it could have a wide range of potential applications from electronic display signs that could wrap around the corners of buildings to such health applications as light therapy used for healing wounds or activating certain chemotherapy drugs, Carmichael said.

See the original story and a video describing the process on the Daily News:
http://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/2012-05-23/chemists-develop-new-method-to-make-stretchable-light-emitting-devices

Chem Prom!

It's that time of year again!

Chem Prom (our end of the year dinner and dance) takes place:

Friday, April 27, 2012

Caboto Club: Verdi Hall

Doors Open: 6 pm

Dinner: 7 pm

Tickets: $30/person

Please see Heather (EH 373-5), Chris (EH 367), Corey (EH 372-3) or Marlene for tickets

Undergrad researchers score at SOUSCC

Chris O'Keefe, left, Stephanie Kosnik and Rami Gherib all brought home chemistry conference awards from the University of Guelph on March 24.

A trio of fourth-year students who recently brought home some impressive awards from the Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference say they couldn’t have done it if they didn’t work in such a supportive department.

“We’ve got great supervisors who are excellent at helping you understand your subject matter and grad students who have been super helpful,” said Stephanie Kosnik, who works in professor Charles MacDonald’s lab and earned a second-place prize in the inorganic chemistry session for her project on the isolation and synthesis of novel phosphenium.

The conference, held at the University of Guelph on March 24, saw two other students win certificates. Rami Gherib, who works in James Gauld’s lab, took first prize in theoretical computational chemistry, while Chris O’Keefe, who works in Rob Schurko’s lab, took second prize in that category. Gherib’s project was a computational analysis to investigate the properties of LuxS, an enzyme that’s present in many types of bacterial pathogens.

“If we can determine how it works, we can develop pharmaceuticals to help control it,” he explained.

All three students said they put a tremendous amount of work into their projects. They each had 15 minutes to make an oral presentation about their work, followed by a Q&A session with a panel of judges.

“I was a little nervous but I had prepared myself pretty well,” said Kosnik, who like her colleagues, has applied to graduate school. “But it was fun and it’s intellectually challenging and rewarding, especially when you win a prize like this.”

Click here to see the original story on the Daily News

Dr. Pandey discusses disease-fighting natural compounds on research talk show

Siyaram Pandey was skeptical when he was first approached by a local oncologist who was curious about cancer patients who had been drinking dandelion tea and seemed to be getting better.

“To be honest I was very pessimistic,” said Dr. Pandey, a professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry who researches the effects that a variety of natural compounds have on the process of cell death. “She said it could be coincidental but it couldn’t hurt to see if there is anything.”

Pandey, who will appear today on CJAM to discuss his research, conducted a literature review and could only find one journal article suggesting dandelions may have cancer-killing properties. But he and his team of graduate students collected a bunch of the weeds anyway, ground them up with a mixture of water in a food processor and developed a simple formula they could experiment with.

Click here to read the full story on the Daily News!

Student researchers inspired by legacy of cancer patient

Every morning when they go to work in their Essex Hall biochemistry lab, Ph.D. students Pam Ovadje and Dennis Ma get an inspirational reminder of why they’re there. Mounted on the door to that lab is a plaque dedicating the space to the memory of Kevin Couvillon, who died at the age of 26 in November 2010, after a three-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia.

Last week, Ovadje, Ma and other graduate students from the lab of professor Siyaram Pandey met with Couvillon’s parents to give them an update on their research into how such natural products as dandelion root extract and pancratistatin – derived from a Hawaiian spider lily plant – cause certain cancer cells to effectively commit suicide.

After an emotional presentation in the Toldo Health Education building on what would have been Kevin’s 28th birthday, his father Dave discreetly handed Dr. Pandey a cheque for $20,000 to help fund the research, bringing the total the family has donated to the lab to $40,000. It was gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the students.

Read more of this story here on the Daily News.

Rio Tinto Alcan Award Winner: Stephen Loeb

Congratulations to Prof. Stephen Loeb (Canada Research Chair in Supramolecular and Inorganic Chemistry), who was awarded the Rio Tinto Alcan Award for distinguished contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry.

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Stephen Loeb is clearly reticent about tooting his own horn, but as far as friends and colleagues are concerned, it’s high time the chemistry professor was recognized for a career of consistently producing cutting edge research and cranking out top quality graduate students from his lab.

A professor and Canada Research Chair in Supramolecular and Inorganic Chemistry who joined UWindsor in 1990, Dr. Loeb recently learned the Canadian Society for Chemistry awarded him the highly coveted Rio Tinto Alcan Award for distinguished contributions to the field of inorganic chemistry or electrochemistry.

“He’s clearly among Canada’s elite in chemistry, and because of his low-key nature this has been a long time coming,” said Doug Stephan, a past recipient of the award and former UWindsor professor who nominated him for the award. “He’s been quietly publishing stellar material but not making a lot of noise about it.”

Click here to read the full story on the University of Windsor Daily News!