Auerbach Group
The Auerbach group had an exciting year during 2023 in research and teaching. A research collaboration with Chemical Engineering professor Wei Fan yielded an article on more energy-efficient ways to produce zeolite catalysts – the most used synthetic catalysts in the world.
Zeolites derive their special properties from their regular array of molecule-sized “nanopores.” In this way, a zeolite is like a “hotel” for molecules, with hallways (channels) and rooms (nanopores). However, zeolites must be synthesized with their pores clogged with additives (such as fluoride ions) because “nature abhors a vacuum,” meaning that the nanopores must be filled with something, but this leaves the “hotel” with no vacancy. Typically, intense heat is used to drive off the additives, which opens the “hotel for business” (in catalysis and separations). But using intense heat is both expensive and emits tons of greenhouse gasses.
In this article, we reported a low-energy route to emptying zeolite pore spaces using ozone, a powerful oxidant, producing well-ordered structures. If adopted broadly, our discovery can reduce not only global catalyst cost but also global carbon emissions associated with catalyst fabrication and processing. In response to our article, a zeolite scientist said: “I am writing to congratulate you on this new and very interesting article in which you were able to remove fluoride with ozone treatment. I am very impressed with this! Beautiful work!”
We congratulate Dr. Tongkun Wang (Chemistry PhD ’23) for being first author on this ozone paper, for completing his PhD, and for landing a postdoc at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, simulating the role of fluoride in organic reactions.
Professor Cristian Blanco (Auerbach Group, PhD ’03) and Professor M. Yajaira Combariza (Vachet Group, PhD ’03) came back to campus in October 2023 for several big events: (i) giving the Chemistry Department Seminar on their sustainable chemistry methods for treating water and processing chocolate; (ii) meeting with students and faculty in the Isenberg School of Management to discuss business models for their chocolate production; and (iii) meeting with students and faculty of the UMass iCons Program at their annual “Idea Slam” to gather new ideas for sustainable uses of cacao biomass (see pg. 30 for more on the iCons Program). All in all, the UMass Amherst community was uplifted by the energy and enthusiasm brought by Profs. Blanco and Combariza. We wish them sweet success!
In closing, we wish all Auerbach group alums a wonderful year. Here is a Spanish blessing: “Salud, amor, dinero y tiempo para gozarlos!” (We wish you health, love, money, and time to enjoy them!)
J. Chen Group
This past year has been another year of many changes. We welcome Harsha Chilukuri S as a new PhD student, who joined us through the Chemical Engineering graduate program. We said good-bye to several outstanding members and leaders of the lab. Both senior graduate students Erik Nordquist and Xiping Gong successfully defended their PhD dissertations in summer 2023. Erik has moved to the University of Maryland and joined Alex MacKerell’s lab as an NIH T32 Fellow. Xiping joined his wife as Research Scientist in the Food Science & Technology department at the University of Georgia. Samantha Schultz defended her Master’s dissertation in August and joined Sanofi as a Scientist in Fall 2023. Yumeng Zhang defended her PhD dissertation in December 2023 and has now moved to MIT as a postdoctoral fellow in Bin Zhang’s lab. These four students were all role models of younger graduate students in the lab and they are dearly missed. The lab has not been the same without them.
Current and former members of the lab have received several recognitions. For example, Yumeng was selected to give a coveted talk at the Chemistry annual ResearchFest and won the prestigious Dr. Paul Hatheway Terry Endowment Award. Jian received an extremely competitive internship at Merck and will spend summer 2024 learning more about work and life in the pharmaceutical industry. We are particularly thrilled that our first PhD from UMass, Xiaorong Liu, will start her own research lab in the Chemistry Department of the University of New Mexico! We are all very proud of Xiaorong and wish her the best in this exciting new chapter of her career!
DuChene Group
The DuChene Group recently welcomed the arrival of two new graduate students, Nicholas Baker and Neumiah Massenat, to the team this year. Nick has been developing new procedures for the photoelectrochemical synthesis of metal nanoparticles and has plans to use these materials as photocatalysts for the conversion of CO2 into valuable chemicals. Neumiah has begun her work on developing new strategies for the electrochemical synthesis of well-defined catalytic nanomaterials. Her work will lay the foundation for the creation of new catalysts with improved reaction selectivity for a variety of chemical reactions related to environmental sustainability. We are also very happy to report that Neumiah was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation to support her research! We are very happy to have both Nick and Neumiah join our group, and we are excited to see what new scientific contributions they make in the future.
The DuChene lab has also been joined by several new undergraduate researchers in the past year. We welcomed Daniel Tejada Davila, Sophie En, Connor McCarthy, Athena McDonald, Joseph Piccozzi, and Tom Ruse. Daniel, Sophia, Connor, and Athena have all made important contributions towards the development of synthesis strategies for electrocatalytic nanomaterials, while Joe and Tom are both working on projects related to understanding how light can be used to control the growth of metal nanoparticles. We are also very proud to report that both Joe, Athena, and Daniel recently received undergraduate research awards in recognition of all their work! These awards are very well deserved, and we look forward to many more semesters of working together with them.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the hard work of a few of our undergraduate researchers who have recently graduated with their BS degrees in Chemistry: Anastasia Antropova, Owen Doyle, Julia Ireland, Sean Macken, and Remy Nelson. Anastasia and Owen will both continue pursuing their passion for chemistry in graduate school and we look forward to watching their scientific development in the future. The DuChene Group sincerely appreciates all the contributions from our senior undergraduates, and we wish them well in their future endeavors!
Farkas Group
It’s hard to believe how the last year has flown by for the Farkas Group. Research in the lab continues to focus on the development of chemical tools for tracking and manipulating circadian rhythms, and separately, macrophage phenotypes, while also generating cell-based delivery agents. Now in her second year as an Associate Professor, Prof. Farkas was excited to delve into teaching organic chemistry for our undergraduate majors, which she found to be a great experience; she really enjoyed getting to know our undergrads! Bishnu Prasad Joshi completed his dissertation (“Chemical Modification and Evaluation of Cells Toward use as Delivery Vehicles”) and received his PhD in September 2023. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Scientist at Gel4Med. The Farkas group is hosting Josiah Sanchez through NIH-PREP (Post Baccalaureate Research Education Program) in our lab. Josiah is a native Californian and completed their undergraduate degree at the University of California, Davis. We are also excited that
we welcomed first-year chemistry graduate student Mohamed Elanany to the group! Mohamed comes to us following his undergraduate and Master’s work at Cairo University in Egypt. In undergraduate news, we have FOUR undergraduate students who are completing their degrees and leaving us in May – Sophie Spielberger (Biology), Alara Kilic (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, BMB), and Joy Huang (Biochemistry at Mount Holyoke College) will be defending their honors theses this Spring, and TJ Caira (Chemistry) will be attending graduate school in Chemistry (location TBD). This past year, Aimee Shen received an NIH-CBI Training Fellowship and Emmanuel Rivera Iglesias attended the SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Sciences) National Meeting in Portland, OR and received an outstanding poster presentation award—congratulations to both! Lastly, we are excited for John Ferriera (BMB), who is a rising senior in the group and has secured a position in the Clinical Research Internship program at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) at the UMass Chan Medical School this summer. Until next time!
Hardy Group
The Hardy Lab is excited to welcome two new graduate students this year. Yi Zheng comes from Rochester Institute of Technology and is working on understanding how post-translational modification impacts caspase function. Muhammad Arslan Rahat completed his Masters from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan as an organic chemist. He is now working on developing inhibitors for Chikungunya virus protease. Post-doctoral associate Thomas Bregnard is pursuing the identification of disease-relevant exosites in caspase-6 and its substrates. Kristalle Cruz recently published her work with alumna Maureen Hill on an inhibitor of Zika virus protease. Sparsh Makhaik was recently awarded an IALS translational graduate student fellowship for her work on exploring the druggability of Chikungunya virus protease. Irina (Niña) Sagarbarria is collaborating with one of our undergraduate students, Jamie Seo, investigating the effect of our caspase-6 inhibitor in mice. Andrew Smith is investigating the dynamics of inhibitor binding to different proteases using HDX-MS. Nathanael Kuzio completed an NMR internship at Biogen last summer and is continuing his work on investigating caspase-6 conformational dynamics by NMR. Trisha Brady has passed her ORP, enjoyed the Genomics Lab Module offered in the spring, and is focused on investigating the conformational heterogeneity of various caspase-9 maturation states using native mass spectrometry (MS). Undergraduate student Kevin Alexander, who is supported by an award from Commonwealth Honors College, is working on Chikungunya virus protease NMR assignments with Sparsh and is using quantum chemistry to investigate the potency of Zika virus protease inhibitors.
This was a great year for conference presentations for the Hardy Lab. In June, Trisha was able to attend the 71st Annual Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in Houston. In July, the Hardy lab enjoyed the 37th Annual Symposium of The Protein Society in Boston. Prof. Hardy and the Biotech Training Program organized the first-ever retreat at the Seaport district in Boston that included visits to Ginkgo Bioworks, Vertex, Galy, Dewpoint Therapeutics and Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives. The retreat also featured five industrial speakers, alumni networking, poster sessions and the BTP signature Biotech Battles. Kevin Dagbay (PhD ’19) led one of the Biotech Battles teams. Carolyn Huang (BS ’18) and Genevieve Abbruzzese (Tech ’09) also networked with current students Yi, Rahat, Trisha and Kristalle. Derek MacPherson (PhD ’18) welcomed a second child, Raelynn Marie in March. The Hardy Lab once again hosted the annual Macromolecular Structural Biology White Elephant Holiday Party (pictured).
Kaltashov Group
2023 was a very busy year in the Kaltashov laboratory. Our work on deciphering the molecular mechanism of the dangerous side effect of the adenoviral-vectored COVID-19 vaccines (such as AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1) has culminated in publishing a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (doi.org/10.1021/jacs.3c07846). We have continued our collaborative work with Fina Biosolutions, a maker of inexpensive recombinant carrier proteins for synthetic vaccines targeting diseases that plague sub-Saharan Africa (such as malaria). We also helped a small biotech company, Helaina, characterize the protein content of the baby formula products that were generated using their innovative biotechnological platform. The entire group attended the Annual Conference of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in Houston, TX in June 2023, where five presentations were made based on our recent work.
Daniil Ivanov has received a William E. McEwen award for an outstanding poster presentation at the Chemistry ResearchFest in August, and Daniel Heron was awarded a Commonwealth Honors College Research Grant in September. Daniel Favre defended his PhD dissertation in December and took a Research Scientist position with Bristol Myers Squibb in New Brunswick, NJ. In December we also welcomed three new graduate students (Chanbopha Tho, Shinja Charkaborty and Jinan Qin).
The group’s alumni continue their steady ascend up career ladders. Casey Hannigan (BS ’21) assumed a role of a Senior Research Associate in Verve Therapeutics (Boston, MA). Yang Yang (PhD ’21) moved to Alexion in New Haven, CT, where he is now a Development Scientist II. Mingxuan Zhang (PhD ’07) has become a Senior Director of Analytical Development and Quality Testing at Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA). Wenhua Yang (a visiting student in 2015-2016 and a postdoctoral fellow in 2019-2021) joined the ranks of Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering as an Associate Professor and a Distinguished Scholar—this follows a two-year stint at Yichun University as an Associate Professor. Si-Hung Le (a post-doctoral fellow in 2022) has taken an Application Scientist position at Thăng Long Instruments (Hanoi, Vietnam).
Several generations of lab members and an old friend/collaborator met at the ASMS Conference in Houston, TX (June 2023). From left to right in the photo above: Alex Johnson (MS’ 14, currently at Visterra), Shunhai Wang (PhD’ 2013, currently at Regeneron), Igor Kaltashov, our long-time collaborator and co-author Pavel Bondarenko (Amgen), Daniil Ivanov (current PhD student), and Rinat Abzalimov (a post-doc in 2004-2008, currently at CUNY Biotechnology Center).
Knapp Group
It's amazing to see the variety of careers that Knapp lab mates have gone into. Starting from a common set of training principles and ideas in metal cofactor structure, spectroscopy, and reaction mechanisms, they have grown careers with a strong biochemistry and chemical biology theme. Recent updates: Mike Mingroni (PhD ’21) is providing enzymology muscle as a post-doc in virology research at Colorado State; Vanessa Chaplin Momaney (PhD ’18), Shannon Coates Flagg (PhD ’11), and John Hangasky (PhD ’14) work in the biotech industry; Halil Bayraktar (PhD ’08) (Istanbul Tech), Meaghan Germain (PhD ’08) (Massasoit CC), Adrienne Gilbert (PhD ’09) (Indiana St.), Cornelius Taabazuing (PhD ’14) (UPenn), and Serap Pektas (PhD ’14) (Erdogan U.), and Phil Shivokevich (VAP 2018-‘21) (UNC Asheville) are all faculty; Evren Saban (PhD ’11) (TUBITAK) and Mitchell Buckley (BS ’21) (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) are in research. Isabella Jaen Maisonet (BS ’20) (Harvard), Alex Barbato (BS ’17) (CalTech), Nayana Thimmiah (BS ’18) (Harvard), and Owen Kuklinski (BS ’22) (UCSB) are doing amazing things in PhD programs.
Lin Group
The Lin Group at UMass Chemistry has completed another dynamic and successful year!
Within the past year, the group welcomed Dr. Lin Xiong from Peking University as our new postdoctoral scholar, Xi Cheng from the University of Southern California as our latest graduate student, Chase Presz and Yanzeng Lyu as undergraduate students, and Jiongpei Zhang from Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Xianqi Deng from North Minzu University as visiting scholars. All of them have quickly picked up the research projects in the group and started to make significant contributions, which have been instrumental in our recent achievements. We also bid farewell to several important group members, including our former postdoctoral scholar, Dr. Jun Yi, who moved to Wake Forest University to join the Ding group, our former graduate student, Dieaa Alhmoud, who received her MS degree and joined her family in Virginia, our former undergraduate student, Ethan French, who received his BS and joined Massachusetts General Hospital as a technician, and undergraduate Gideon Tzafriri, who transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his sophomore year. Former visiting scholars Qiushi Ma, Chenxi Sun, and Yili Shen started graduate school at Purdue University, The University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame, respectively. All of them have made significant contributions and will be greatly missed.
Present and former group members have received numerous awards for their scientific achievements in the last year. Prof. Zhou Lin received the Young Investigator Award from the 63rd Sanibel Symposium, a prestigious international conference organized by the University of Florida Quantum Theory Project, for her independent contribution to “First-Principles and Machine-Learned Electronic Structures for Emergent Materials.” Grad student Hongshan Bi received the Marvin D. Rausch Fellowship, and fellow grad student Guo Ling the poster award (first place) from the Chemical Engineering Recruitment Poster Session. Ethan won the prestigious American Chemical Society (ACS) Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry and Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award, Gideon won the Professor Jack Ragle Research Fellowship, Kevin Alexander won the prestigious Department of Defense Barry Goldwater Scholarship and the Tarselli Family Research Award, and Shuyi Chen won an ACS Membership Award.
Prof. Lin recently returned from her maternity leave, and the group has made significant progress in several vibrant projects involving the development of quantum mechanical and machine learning models for real-life systems. Our research projects can be classified into three areas: decoding reaction mechanisms in heterogeneous photocatalysis and electrocatalysis for carbon neutrality, predicting unconventional photochemical dynamics in organic electronic materials, and integrating state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms into quantum mechanical models. The group also collaborates with computer scientists and experimental chemists within and outside UMass. Our former visiting scholar Cheng-Wei Ju led the development and calibration of ML-ωPBE, a machine-learned density functional, on organic semiconductor radicals. This paper, titled as “Accurate Electronic and Optical Properties of Organic Doublet Radicals Using Machine Learned Range-Separated Functionals,” was published as a cover article in a recent issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. Jun and Gideon collaborated with the Thayumanavan Group from UMass Chemistry to decode the reactivity of zwitterionic functionalities in amphiphilic assemblies through intramolecular electrostatic interactions, with a revised manuscript submitted to Angewandte Chemie. Hongshan collaborated with the Lin group from Tsinghua University to design a high-performance nitrogen dioxide (NO2) sensor using nickel-doped indium oxide nanoparticles, with a manuscript submitted to Applied Surface Science. Our research has continued to be supported by three research grants, the ACS Petroleum Research Fund (PRF), the NSF-UMass ADVANCE Collaborative Research Grant (with Prof. Hui Guan from UMass Computer Science), and the RCSA Scialog Team Award in Negative Emissions Science (with Prof. Yayuan Liu from Johns Hopkins University and Prof. Sen Zhang from the University of Virginia).
The Lin Group is filled with optimism and excitement for the coming year. With a larger research group and more research funds, we are well-positioned to tackle even more ambitious projects. With our continued dedication to computational chemistry research, the Lin Group is poised to make even greater strides in the field, and we are confident our future achievements will surpass our past successes.
Martin Group
Back in 2004, Eddie Esposito (PhD ’05) designed an experiment to test a hypothesis regarding mechanisms in RNA polymerase initiation. His result was the opposite of what we expected and led us to some interesting conclusions. (The unexpected is often more interesting than the expected.) Twenty years later, we are exploiting Eddie’s finding to generate a flow system for RNA manufacturing (who would have thought?!). In a collaboration with Sarah Perry’s lab in Chemical Engineering, we have a “bread board” prototype in hand. This approach not only simplifies the manufacturing (enzyme synthesis) of mRNA for vaccines and therapies, but also completely eliminates, at initial synthesis, the generation of an impurity that currently must be (incompletely) removed, post-synthesis.
Kithmie Malagoda Pathiranage (PhD ’22) wrapped up her PhD-turned-postdoc and is now Scientist at ReciPharm (making RNA!). Ruptanu Banerjee and Purnima Mala have been making—and characterizing—lots of RNA to demonstrate and advance the foundational technology behind our efforts and Purnima has made 8.4 kb mRNA (a bit longer than our lab’s work horse 40-70 base RNA from years past). Ruptanu has been working with collaborators to demonstrate the immune-silent nature of our RNA, with great success.
In parallel, Jamuna Vaishnav has developed a novel molecular beacon assay for characterizing RNA quality. Unlike any other analytic, it functions equally well on short RNA and on very long RNA constructs, and functions well both off-line and on-line. Diwakaran Rathinam Palaniswamy is developing novel flow reactor designs and will incorporate Jamuna’s assay directly into our chip. Sonu Kizhakkepura is developing in-line, on-chip downstream processing of the RNA.
On a somewhat different note, Amin Abek is applying deep sequencing and selection approaches towards a much deeper understanding of factors that impact fidelity and yield of RNA and may be finding some previously unknown “terminator” and pause sequences. This will ultimately help folks who custom design RNA therapeutics, but is also providing new mechanistic insights into a complex biological phenomenon.
In November, Craig gave an invited presentation at Singapore’s A*Star Institute (with whom Amin has some collaborative interactions). We continue our outreach to the RNA therapeutics community through targeted conferences (Boston is a hot bed of RNA), while learning more about the medical and business aspects of RNA. (Hint: RNA has an exciting future, well beyond vaccines!)
Finally, joint with Sarah Perry, we have just received word of the successful funding of a new NIH grant to harness our flow reactor to generate RNA with site-specific base modifications, a goal of our lab that dates back to Eddie and to Luis Ramirez-Tapia (PhD ’13). This arose from our response to a joint call by NSF and NIH for “creative, cross-disciplinary research and technology development proposals to accelerate understanding of RNA function in complex biological systems and to harness RNA research to advance biotechnology.” Wish us luck!
Metz Group
It’s been a busy year in the Metz group. Congratulations to Dr. Justine Kozubal (PhD, ’24), who defended her dissertation on using vibrational spectroscopy to study the interactions of early transition metals with methane! This includes studies of sequential reactions of Zr+ with methane and on interactions of Ti+, V+ and vanadium cluster ions Vx+ with methane molecules. Graduate student Arnab Das and undergraduates Joe Gerrior (Chemistry) and Angelina Rivera (BS, Chemistry ’24) are extending this work, using vibrational spectroscopy in the C-H stretching region to characterize the products of C-H activation in sequential reactions of Nb+ with methane. Graduate student Apakorn Phasuk is writing up her dissertation, which describes studies of reactions of aluminum oxide cations with ethane, as well as work on how metal cations and di-cations are solvated by acetone, and how the interaction with the metal affects the C=O and C-C bonds in acetone. She also observed that Al+ catalyzes a pinacol coupling reaction between two of the acetone ligands. Graduate students Carmen Wiggin and Gaurav Singh and undergraduate Wyatt Fajkowski (Chemistry) are using our photofragment imaging instrument to measure covalent bond strengths and photodissociation dynamics in metal carbonyls and carbenes.
We love hearing from group alumni — please send us a note to let us know what you’re up to!
Rotello Group
Things are going full speed ahead now in the Rotello Lab. Vince picked up his 2023 Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society at the Fall ACS meeting in San Francisco. He gave a keynote lecture at the 14th International Symposium on Frontiers in Biomedical Polymers, Portsmouth, NH. Additionally, Vince has been named a Clarivate “Highly Cited” researcher again in 2023. The publication total is ticking up, with the current count at 663.
A lot of exciting things happened since the last lab notes. Mingdi Jiang presented a poster at the 2023 Cancer Nanotechnology Gordon Research Conference to spread the word about her exciting research on biosensing and make great connections with other researchers in the field. Yagiz Anil Cicek, Harini Nagaraj, Ritabrita Goswami, Ahmed Nabawy, Aritra Chattopadhyay, Aarohi Gupta, Mingdi Jiang, and Cristina-Maria Hirschbiegel went to the 2023 Boston Symposium on Organic Synthesis. Jungmi Park and Elizabeth Pena presented a poster at Bristol Myers Squibb as part of the ACS Bridge Program.
There were a number of awards received by the group. Jungmi won the 2024 PPG fellowship. Last year Cristina-Maria won the William E. McEwen Prize (Second Place) for an outstanding poster presentation and the Runner-Up award for a poster presented at the world-wide RSC Twitter Poster Conference in the category #RSCNano. Also, our lab’s research articles published between 2021-2022 were among the ACS’s most cited publications!
Derek Rainboth, Maged Abd Elaziz, and Kanwal Nazir have officially joined our group as graduate students. Three visiting scholars, Avijit Maity, Deepthika Saravanan, and Vardhan Palapally, also joined the group. Welcome! We bid farewell to our graduating students, Dr. Jessa Marie Makabenta (Avient), Dr. Rui Huang (Ionis Pharmaceuticals), and Dr. Taewon Jeon (MIT), and wish them all the best on their way to new and exciting challenges! We also bid farewell to our post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Victor Lehot, and our visiting scholars, Ignacio Jose Garcia Peiro, Kevin Telliez, Andres Machuca Marcos, and Enkhlin Orchibat. All the best!
We had a lot of fun last year and (after a decade or so) designed a cool new mug for the lab. For up-to-date news, please check out http://www.umass.edu/rotellogroup/ or see what is up on our social media accounts: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rotellogroup and Twitter https://twitter.com/RotelloGroup.
Thayumanavan Group
The Thayumanavan group enjoyed another productive year in 2023 with many highlights.
Graduate students update: early in 2024, Badal Singh, Aniket Majee, and Arpan Ghosh officially joined our group as PhD students. In the fall of 2023, Trinh Nguyen joined the group as a PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering department. Dr. Myrat Kurbanov has finished his PhD and has taken on new position as Scientist at Scholar Rock. Dr. Uyen Huynh finished her PhD and has taken a job as Discovery Pharmaceutics Scientist at Johnson & Johnson in CA. Dr. Pintu Kanjilal finished his PhD and joined LNP Discovery in Strand Therapeutics.
Undergraduate lab members Riva Deodhar, Liliana Florino, Amelia Isabelle, and Ramita Kommuru have all graduated from UMass. Izzy Shook, Lucy Xu, Sarah Rashid, Nanditha Kumar, Tanmaya Mahesh, Caleb Drummond, and Jenny He joined our group as undergraduate researchers.
We congratulate Theo Prachyathipsakul and Jithu Krishna for winning the William E. McEwen Fellowship Award for Outstanding Posters at the 2023 Chemistry ResearchFest. Special congratulations to Sriya Munugoti, who works in our lab studying RNA delivery, for winning the Crowley-Nowick Award. Munugoti is a rising junior on the biomedicine/biosystems track.
Past members of Thai group are thriving, including Dr. Bin Li, who has been selected as a 2023 PMSE Future Faculty by PMSE and ACS.
We will have our group’s 25th anniversary get together at the Mt Ida College Campus of UMass Amherst in Boston in the summer of 2024. Also, follow our group on Facebook or Twitter (links provided on our website). Please visit us also at http://www.umass.edu/thaigroup for more on our news and achievements.
Thompson Group
It’s been a great year in the Thompson lab. Katie Wahlbeck and Jessica Allen presented posters on their work at the Protein Society Meeting (Boston, July 2023), where Katie won an award for her poster! Jessica won a Chemistry Department Ambassador Award and visited her alma mater, UMass Lowell, to present a research seminar. Both Katie and Jessica also presented posters at the Biophysical Society Meeting in Philadelphia in February 2024, and Lynmarie began her role as President-Elect of the Biophysical Society. We were excited to publish our PNAS paper on HDX-MS analysis of the kinase CheA in functional chemotaxis signaling complexes. This work by Thomas Tran and Aruni Karunanayake Mudiyanselage led us to propose that kinase activity is controlled by stabilization of the catalytic domain of CheA, a powerful mechanism that could enhance both substrate binding and catalysis by an
enzyme. Our undergraduates are also thriving: Sarah Tobia was awarded the Linda Slakey award in Spring 2023 and Stanley Yuan was awarded the Tarselli Family Award in Spring 2024. In January 2024 Lynmarie was happy to complete a rewarding 23+ years of directing the UMass Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) program. As she transfers the baton to the new CBI Director, Eric Strieter, she is eager to see both what new directions CBI will embark on and the continued success of our CBI students and alumni on their many career paths. Last but not least, the lab had a
fabulous “field trip” to Puerto Rico, where we joined a wonderful celebration of the wedding of Katie Wahlbeck and Michael Lu-Diaz (DV group). Katie and Michael hosted a beautiful wedding, with great chemistry touches like a Periodic Table seating chart, and a large UMass contingent in attendance. Congratulations Katie and Michael!
Vachet Group
Group research continues in two general areas: (i) protein higher-order structural analysis by mass spectrometry and (ii) mass spectrometry imaging of nanomaterial therapeutic delivery systems. Important breakthroughs included a new mass spectrometry-based method to study membrane protein binding in live cells and quantitative imaging of protein distributions in tissues.
We recently celebrated the successful defenses of Zachary Kirsch and Dheeraj Agrohia. They are the 33rd and 34th PhD students to graduate from the group. Unfortunately, that also means we said good-bye to them. Zack has taken a position as an applications chemist at Bruker in Billerica, MA, and Dheeraj is now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Both Zack and Dheeraj provided great group leadership, and they will be sorely missed.
We welcomed two new graduate students to the group: Lucy Grigorian and Monika Mahmud. Lucy graduated from nearby University of Connecticut and will study β-2-microglobulin amyloid formation. Monika is originally from Bangladesh and will work on nanomaterial imaging. Dr. Ina de la Fuente also joined the group as a postdoc in July 2023. Ina did her PhD work at the University of Connecticut with Prof. Jessica Rouge synthesizing and characterizing nanoscale materials that are used for nucleic acid therapy. Ina is extending our work on membrane proteins in cells.
In alumni news: Angela Fahey is now Director of Technical Services and Quality at Cyalume in West Springfield, MA. Nathaneal Park (BS ’17) is at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. Xiao Pan (PhD ’21) started a new position as a Senior Scientist at Regeneron after two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Genentech.
Venkataraman Group
The Advanced Laboratory for Iontronic, Electronic, and Nanomaterials (ALIEN) group, aka DV group, had a fantastic 2023-2024 academic year. Like UMass, we now have a new logo for the group. Michael Lu-Díaz won the top prize for his presentation at ResearchFest. Subhayan Samanta presented a poster at the Fall 2023 MRS meeting on doped polymer blends and was nominated for the Best Poster Award. Zhaojie Zhang received the prestigious PPG Fellowship from our Department. Sravan Surampudi, an alum of the DV group and Senior Lecturer in our department, received the University Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest honor for teaching on our campus. Sam Knight, an alum of the DV group and currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago, received the 2023 Wayne C. Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Chicago. Mitchell Willsey advanced to candidacy after defending an excellent ORP on hydrogen storage.
The group welcomed Albin Saj Padikkaparambil as a graduate student. Albin has a Master’s degree in physics and is working on charge transport measurements of organic and hybrid semiconductors. We also hosted James Landeryou an Amherst resident and undergraduate from Brandeis U for the summer. James worked with Mitch on the synthesis of new monomers for electron accepting polymers and worked out key kinks in the synthesis. We also welcomed several new undergraduates: Thomas Baricatu, Yuri Diniz Catta Pretta, Kyle Uchneat, John Dunn, and Matthew Lowe. Anna Chatterji continues to build our database on doped organic semiconductors.
The group said goodbye to Simon Harrity. He is currently a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, working with Rebekka Klausen. Michael Lu-Díaz successfully defended his doctoral dissertation and will head to Wolf Greenfield in Boston, an IP Law firm, to pursue patent law.
In terms of research, our collaboration with Zlatan Akšamija and his group has provided some deep insight into the role of dopants in organic semiconductors. We published a key paper in Physical Review Letters (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.248101). According to PRL, “it is the most-cited journal in physics and 8th most-cited in all of science.” The research also garnered some press coverage (see https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/electrons-screen-against-conductivity-killer-in-organic-semiconductors/).
As you may know, DV had been working with a diverse team on the issues of equity and energy transition. In April 2023, the team met at the University of the District of Columbia, in Washington DC and released the final report and a white paper that identifies research priorities for NSF and other funding agencies. If you are interested in accessing these documents, visit https://www.energytransitionumass.org/nsf2026.
From the alumni side, in summer 2023, Jay Field (PhD '03, DV group alum) and Lora Field (PhD ’03, Lahti group alum) visited Amherst. It was great to catch up with both of them and with Prof. Paul Lahti. Jay is the President and CEO of Life Science Ontario. Rattan Gujadhur PhD ’03) is now Vice President-CMC at Bluejay Therapeutics. Amarnath Bheemaraju (PhD ’11) decided to move from academia to industry and is now a Senior Manager at Reliance Industries. Dipankar Basak (PhD ’12) also had a job change and is now a Team Lead at TCG Lifesciences India. DV is proud of your achievements and loves to hear from all of you. So, drop a line when you can via email: dv@umass.edu. For group updates and news, visit us on the web at URL: dvgroup.umasscreate.net or follow us on X @dvgroupumass.
Walsh Group
The Walsh Lab has continued to grow as it enters its fifth year, and now totals eight graduate students and three undergraduate students.
We welcomed Tracey Nelson to the group, and specifically to our transition metal carbides subgroup. Tracey joins us from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where she worked in the lab of Prof. Elodie Marlier studying novel catalysts based on tetradentate N2P2 ligands. In the Walsh Lab, she will become a key part of our experimental high-pressure synthesis team.
The Directed Energy Professional Society awarded Kim Pereira a $10,000 research grant to support her collaborative work with LLNL on laser shock compression. Kim was also honored as a Livermore Lab HEDS Fellow during her summer internship. Back on the UMass campus, Kim was chosen as one of four student speakers at the Department’s 33rd annual Researchfest, and was honored with a William E. McEwen Scholarship Fund Award for Outstanding Oral Presentation. Also at ResearchFest, Scott Thiel was awarded a William E. McEwen Award for Outstanding Poster. Nick Manganaro earned a CNS Teaching Fellowship that allowed him to design and then teach three sections of a 1-credit course to first-year undergraduates. He developed a course on game theory and game design that was very well-received by his students. James Walsh was selected as one of eight recipients of the 2024–25 Lilly Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.
The lab received a kind donation from the University of Arizona in the form of a QUICKpress hydraulic large volume press once owned by the late Prof. Mike Drake. The press has been refurbished by Depths of the Earth Co. and is now installed in the Physical Sciences Building. John Arigbede has been working to get it up and running so that it can support the large-scale synthesis of our newly discovered carbides, enabling bulk characterization to investigate a host of properties including their catalytic properties as well as their hardness and magnetism. This has been a wishlist item for the group for a long time and we are excited to finally have this capability.
Several of the group traveled to the 23rd American Physical Society Biennial Topical Group on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter in June 2023. James, Paul Marshall, and Kim gave oral presentations on their research, and Scott Thiel presented in the poster session. Later in June, the group traveled to Boston for the American Chemical Society Northeastern Section Regional Meeting, where Paul and Scott Thiel gave oral presentations. In March 2024, Kim participated in the DyCoMaX Workshop at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, where she presented her research and attended a training session for the BM23/ID24 beamlines. A month later, Kim also presented at the American Physical Society April Meeting, in addition to serving as a session chair.
Liz Cote and Tracey will jointly spearhead the Association for Professional Development of Chemists for the 2024–2025 year as co-presidents. This will be Liz’s second year serving in the leadership of APDC. Meanwhile, in the lab, Liz, Tracey, and John have successfully carried out beamtimes at NSLS-II studying novel carbide synthesis using a large-volume press. In October, Kim participated in beamtime at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in collaboration with LLNL to study the high-pressure behavior of metal, metal alloy, and binary oxide systems.
The group also celebrated the publication of Paul, Scott Thiel, and Liz’s chromium–carbon paper in the December 2023 edition of ACS Materials Au. This work included first-principles calculations performed on the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Cluster and experiments undertaken at HPCAT (Sector 16) of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Nick, Scott Ambos, Scott Thiel, and Wyatt Mitchell’s paper on new polymorphs of AgFeO2 will appear in Inorganic Chemistry. This paper includes a suite of techniques carried out across Sectors 13 and 3 of the Advanced Photon Source, the National Synchrotron Light Source II, and the basement of PSB in the lab of Prof. Jun Yan in Physics. Paul, Scott, Liz, and John's paper on the discovery of a novel manganese carbide will also soon appear in Chemistry – A European Journal.
Finally, our two senior undergraduates were successful in their graduate school applications this year. Wyatt accepted an offer from Michigan State University to attend their PhD graduate program in chemistry. He is very excited about continuing his studies and honing his skills at MSU! Zeynep Alptekin accepted an offer to join Northwestern’s graduate program in Materials Science and Engineering. They will both begin their graduate studies in the fall. We are very proud of them both and excited to see their careers unfold!
Wu Group
It has been a busy but very exciting year for the Wu Lab. This is our first year at UMass Amherst and we can’t wait to embark on our exciting research journey here! Our research lab is interested in exploring the fascinating world of RNA and leveraging our understanding to advance therapeutics. We invent cutting-edge molecular tools to track when RNAs are being transcribed, how they are trafficked within cells, and what other biomolecules they encounter during their life cycle. Our goal is to decipher the functional roles of RNA in both health and disease. In addition, we
Maeve Tucker, Omoyemi Aj
are also highly interested in leveraging these insights to develop functional molecules for therapeutic applications. We harness the power of molecular engineering to develop functional proteins and nucleic acids that can modulate cellular processes and target disease-specific pathways, with a goal of advancing our discoveries into therapeutics.
We are close to finishing setting up our lab space in the Life Sciences Laboratories. We welcomed our first two graduate students, Daisy Pham and Omoyemi Ajayi, and two undergraduate students, Jake Rosen and Maeve Tucker. In February, Daisy and Prof. Wu published the lab’s first review article about recent advances in RNA imaging methods in Nanoscale. We are excited to get research going and are looking forward to making new discoveries in the coming years!
You Group
This past year, the You Lab has continued our effort in developing next-generation RNA-based biosensors for cellular imaging and regulation, as well as DNA probes to measure mechanical forces at cell-cell junctions and membrane dynamic interactions among lipids and proteins. Some critical achievements include Zhaolin Xue et al., being published in Nucleic Acids Research with the development of a type of genetically encodable RNA triplet repeat tags that can be used to reprogram cellular condensate formation and recruit various RNA molecules for cellular modulation; Qian Tian et al., published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology with the demonstration of DNA probes that can be used to visualize and detect mechanical forces in three-dimensional spheroids and embryoid bodies for the first time; and Mahmoud Amouzadeh Tabrizi et al., published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics with the first class of smartphone-based electrochemical DNA sensors for measuring cell-generated adhesion forces. These efforts have been supported by an NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, an NSF CAREER award, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, and a Dynamic Imaging grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Two new postdoctoral fellows, Dr. Mahmoud Amouzadeh Tabrizi and Dr. Murali Mohana Rao Singuru, together with two graduate students, Hari Priya Sriramakrishnan and Yizhan Guo, joined the lab this year. We also welcomed a new undergraduate researcher, Qinge Liu. On the other side, we graduated two PhD students from the lab: Qian Tian is now a scientist at Dyne Therapeutics, and Ahsan Ausaf Ali will be a scientist at Spear Bio. We will miss both of you! Our lab members have also received several awards and other achievements in the past year. Ahsan Ausaf Ali received a Paul Hatheway Terry Scholarship in recognition of his research and academic standing, as well as a William E McEwen Scholarship Award for his presentation during ResearchFest 2023. Lan Mi was awarded a very prestigious two-year $100K SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship, given to only one outstanding student pursuing a graduate degree related to life sciences R&D nationwide! Prof. You continues to serve as an associate editor of Frontiers in Chemistry and on the editorial board of Membranes and Biosensors. Meanwhile, for the fourth time in a row, Prof. You was named to Stanford’s List of World’s Top 2% Scientists.
We are expecting another fruitful year for the You Lab! For more information, please visit our website
https://elements.chem.umass.edu/youlab/
Stay in touch with your mentor or share your alumni updates at ggazette@umass.edu.