Mike Jaroszewicz awarded Marie Curie fellowship

Mike Jaroszewicz just completed his M.Sc. (Chemistry) at the University of Windsor under the supervision of Prof. Rob Schurko.  He is now heading to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel to work on his Ph.D. in the research group of Prof. Lucio Frydman.

He has been awarded an Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Marie Curie fellowship under the framework of the H2020 Innovative Training Network (ITN) entitled “Europol”.  The approximate value of the fellowship is about 200000 CAD over 36 months.  We wish Mike all the best in his new position!

Schurko receives UWindsor award for excellence in research

Congratulations to Professor Rob Schurko who received one of two University of Windsor Awards for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity - Category C - Established Scholars / Researchers.   The University of Windsor spotlights accomplishments and achievements of faculty at an annual event held to pay tribute to those who have received significant awards and honours for their research or creative activity.

Prof. Schurko was in Israel as a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute at the time of the awards ceremony; so, his two of his Ph.D. students, Chris O'Keefe and David Hirsh, accepted the award on his behalf.

His research focuses upon the development and application of techniques in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for the study of a wide variety of materials, including pharmaceutical compounds, nanoparticles, catalysts, and many more.  To learn more about his research, visit:

http://www.uwindsor.ca/schurko

High school students conduct their own chemistry magic show

About 35 students from the International Baccalaureate program at Assumption College Catholic High School participated in the chemistry and biochemistry department’sINteractive Chem ExperimentS, or INCHES program, an outreach and recruiting initiative which provides them the opportunity to conduct experiments in the University’s chemistry labs.

 “You can talk and talk, but if kids get the chance to do these things themselves, then they’re really going to remember it,” said chemistry professor Tricia Carmichael, who oversaw the students, along with colleague Rob Schurko and a group of graduate students.

If any high school chemistry teachers from Windsor or Essex County want to bring their class in for our INCHES (INteractive CHemsitry ExperimentS) laboratory program, please contact Tricia Carmichael or Rob Schurko.

Graduate students who are interested in volunteering in the INCHES project can contact Profs. Carmichael or Schurko as well!

Click here to see the Daily News article.

Outstanding chemists and biochemists receive research and infrastructure grants

Congratulations to Otis Vacratsis and Rob Schurko, who are recipients of the new Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Awards announced by VP Research Michael Siu and Dean of Science Marlys Koschinsky.  Made possible through the research stimulus fund, the two-year awards come with $40,000 a year in research funding and one course release per year.

Dr. Vacratsis said the funding will help him hire graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who will utilize a variety of analytical and biological techniques to better understand the cellular processes involved in CMT, a neuromuscular disorder characterized by loss of muscle mass and touch sensation across various parts of the body. Currently incurable, the disease is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders and affects about one in 2,500 people.
“We do very basic, fundamental science in my lab, but hopefully people will be able to use our findings in a clinical setting,” Vacratsis said.

Congratulations also to Michael Boffa and Jichang Wang, who received infrastructure grants in support of their research programs.

Click here to access the full story from the Daily News.

Chemists break new ground in molecular machine research

Nick Vukotic, left, and Kristopher Harris are two of the team members who developed and tested University of Windsor Dynamic Material, UWDM-1.


A graduate student and his team of researchers have turned the chemistry world on its ear by becoming the first ever to prove that tiny interlocked molecules can function inside solid materials, laying the important groundwork for the future creation of molecular machines.
“Until now, this has only ever been done in solution,” explained Chemistry & Biochemistry PhD student Nick Vukotic, lead author on a front page article recently published in the June issue of the journal Nature Chemistry. “We’re the first ones to put this into a solid state material.”

This schematic shows how the various elements assemble themselves into mechanically interlocked molecules.

The material Vukotic is referring to is UWDM-1, or University of Windsor Dynamic Material, a powdery substance that the team made which contains rotaxane molecules and binuclear copper centers.  The rotaxane molecules, which resemble a wheel around the outside of an axle, were synthesised in their lab. The group found that heating of these rotaxane molecules with a copper source resulted in the formation of a crystalline material which contained structured arrangement of the rotaxane molecules, spaced out by the binuclear copper centers.

“Basically, they self-assemble in to this arrangement,” said Vukotic, who works under the tutelage of chemistry professor Steve Loeb. Other team members include professor Rob Schurko, and post-doctoral fellows Kristopher Harris and Kelong Zhu.

Heating the material causes the wheels to rapidly rotate around the axles, while cooling the material causes the wheels to stop, he said. The entire process can’t be viewed with a microscope, so the motion was confirmed in Dr. Schurko’s lab using a process called nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

“You can actually measure the motion and you can do it unambiguously by placing an isotopic tag on the ring,” explained Dr. Harris, who helped oversee that verification process.
Although the team admits their findings are still very much a proof of principle, they insist that molecules in solid materials can be manipulated to form switches and machines. This could be extremely significant and could find future applications in the fields of computer storage, data transfer or controlling the electronic properties of materials at the molecular level.

“Important metal organic frameworks like this are typically named after the university in which they were created,” Vukotic said of the material’s name. “It also emphasizes that this material is a prototype for other dynamic materials to come.”

Since the Nature Chemistry article appeared, a number of leading chemistry publications around the world have been reporting on the team’s findings, Dr. Loeb said.

“It’s a starting point,” said Loeb, who first imagined the concept about 10 years ago. “It’s a blueprint, but it’s the first demonstration of motion in a solid state. Normally when you make a new material you’re done. You can’t reorient molecules in a solid state.”

This story originally appeared on the Daily News, and is written by Stephen Fields
http://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/2012-06-15/chemists-break-new-ground-in-molecular-machine-research

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

Aaron Rossini awarded Governor General's Gold Medal

Congratulations to Aaron Rossini, who was awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal for top standing as a graduating Ph.D. student at the University of Windsor. Aaron worked in Prof. Rob Schurko's solid-state NMR research group; he has 11 peer-reviewed publications and 31 academic presentations at local, national and international conferences. He was awarded a Marie-Curie Fellowship, and is currently working at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, France, in the research group of Prof. Lyndon Emsley. His wife, Erin, who has a degree in oenology, is currently working at a vinyard in Provence; they are both enjoying their time in France.

To read about how Erin and Aaron met, click here to read the Daily News Story.

Aaron Rossini awarded Marie Curie Fellowship for Post-Doctoral Studies

French fellowship promising for doctoral grad and wine enthusiast spouse

Published on UWindsor Daily News: Jan 21, 2011

Last Modified: Tue, 01/25/2011 - 9:09am

Aaron Rossini is thrilled to be heading to southern France to continue his research in chemistry, but thinks his new wife might be even more excited by the prospect.~

Dr. Rossini, who successfully defended his PhD in September, recently learned that he was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship which will begin next month at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon, France under the direction of professor Lyndon Emsley.

The fact that the facility—described by his academic supervisor Rob Schurko as one of the best in the world—is located within several hours’ drive from the globally-renowned Bordeaux wine region wasn’t lost on his new bride Erin, a UWindsor chemistry master’s graduate who recently completed a certificate program in viticulture and enology at Brock University.

“She’s pretty pumped,” Rossini said with a grin. “She’s hoping she might get some experience with some really good French wineries.”

A local native who graduated from St. Anne’s High School in Tecumseh, Rossini studies the chemical process of how certain molecules and compounds behave as catalysts in the production of polyolefin, a polymer that’s used in the production of plastic products such as shrink wrap and plastic bottles. He uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to help define the many characteristics of those molecules.

The technology used to make polymers has been around a long time, but much of the work is done by trial and error, he said.

“There’s still a lot of basic chemical understanding that is lacking,” he said. “If we can get a good snapshot of the molecular structure of these catalysts, then we can reduce a lot of the trial and error in their design and application, optimize the process and make them much more efficient.”

Throughout his career at UWindsor, Rossini has worked on the 400 megahertz NMR spectrometer in Dr. Schurko’s Essex Hall lab, but also travelled regularly to Ottawa where he used the dedicated solid-state 900 megahertz spectrometer at the National Ultrahigh-field NMR Facility for Solids. The machine he’ll be conducting his research on in France is rated at 1,000 megahertz and worth an estimated $16 million, Schurko said.

“This is one of the best research environments France has to offer,” said Schurko, who spent part of his sabbatical there in 2007. “It’s just phenomenal. This is just a huge opportunity for him.”

Rossini and his wife depart for France on January 25.

— Stephen Fields

Originally posted at the following link:

http://www.uwindsor.ca/thinkingforward/french-fellowship-promising-for-doctoral-grad-and-wine-enthusiast-spouse

Hiyam Hamaed is awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal

Although she enjoys all the sciences, Hiyam Hamaed chose to specialize in chemistry because it has so many applications to everyday life.

"I love chemistry because it goes beyond numbers—you can do it by hand, you can touch it, you can feel it," says the doctoral graduate, who volunteered for years performing a chemistry magic show for local schoolchildren. "I love to show everybody that chemistry is fun."

Dr. Hamaed received the Governor General's Gold Medal as the top graduate student in her cohort at Convocation ceremonies on Oct. 17, 2010. She received her B.Sc. with distinction in chemistry from the University of Windsor in 2005. She began graduate studies at the Master’s level in September 2005 and transferred to the Ph.D. program in 2006, completing her doctorate in June with a grade point average of 12.4 over her graduate career.

Her graduate supervisor, Robert Schurko, describes her as passionate about the science."She loves the work. That sort of attitude carries through in what she does," he says.

He points to her idea to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to distinguish between polymorphic forms of pharmaceuticals."She pushed us to think outside of the box," Dr. Schurko says. "Four people are now working on a project she started."

Read more about this story on the UWindsor Daily News website

Process could help drug companies with simpler quality assurance, student finds

[Excerpt from the University of Windsor Daily News - to see the full article, click here]

Pharmaceutical companies may find it faster and easier to assure the quality of their drugs, thanks to the findings of a PhD student in chemistry.~
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—technology normally associated with medical diagnostics—is a simpler method than the time-consuming techniques pharmaceutical companies currently use to make sure drugs such as painkillers or allergy medications remain effective through the manufacturing process, said Hiyam Hamaed.

When drugs are made, they're created in liquid solution and then transformed into a solid state for manufacturing, packaging, and shipping. Some substances crystallize in varying forms; each of these polymorphs has different properties which can influence the way people metabolize drugs, as well as their shelf life, packing, and handling. To see what final form the polymorphs have taken, pharmaceutical companies will try to make single crystals out of their drugs for molecular X-ray analysis, which can be painstakingly slow or sometimes impossible, Hamaed said.

"The problem is obtaining a single crystal," said Hamaed, who defended her thesis last week. "This can be very difficult. Crystals can be very hard to make."

Hamaed said NMR can be used to analyze the molecular structure of solid pharmaceuticals, eliminating the need to form crystals. Her work focused on the hydrochloride salts, often the most stable forms of many solid pharmaceuticals. She found that NMR is a better method for determining the identity and purity of these pharmaceuticals when standard methods, such as X-ray diffraction, fail.
"These are very fast experiments," said chemistry professor Rob Schurko, Hamaed’s academic advisor. "We can take a snapshot and quickly confirm whether a polymorph has formed. Each NMR signature acts as a fingerprint for each type of pharmaceutical or polymorph."

[Excerpt from the University of Windsor Daily News - to see the full article, click here]

To read more about Dr. Schurko's research, visit his homepage at:

http://www.uwindsor.ca/schurko

A new method for 14N NMR spectroscopy

Luke O'Dell and Rob Schurko have been investigating a new method of acquiring 14N NMR spectra in the solid state, and the work is described in J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 6658–6659, DOI: 10.1021/ja901278q. 14N NMR spectrosocpy is very difficult experiment to conduct on most solid-state samples, because 14N is a quadupolar nucleus, and most cases the 14N NMR patterns are hundreds of kHz to several MHz in breadth. The new method involves the use of special pulses called WURST pulses, which are capable of sweeping wide frequency ranges, along with the collection of long echo trains to further enhance the signal to noise. They have also reported that the swept pulses actually enhance the overall S/N of the spectrum, and have dubbed the method as "DEISM" (Direct Enhancement of Integer Spin Magnetization). You can read more about Rob Schurko's research group by clicking here.

University honours outstanding researchers

Professors Siyaram Pandey, Rob Schurko and Otis Vacratsis (pictured L-R) were honoured by the University of Windsor on Feb. 12, 2009 for their outstanding research contributions. Drs. Pandey and Vacratsis have recently obtained funding for major health-related research grants, and Dr. Schurko was awarded a University of Windsor Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (mid-career). Click here for a full listing of honours, and visit their web pages by clicking their names above.