Chemistry faculty a national leader in gender diversity

chem.cst.temple.edu

Chair’s message Late last year, a committee composed of four eminent scholars reviewed the Department of Chemistry. In preparing for the review, the department produced an extensive self-study report. The document underscored the department’s success in enhancing its core mission: The development and maintenance of a world-renowned educational and research presence in the chemical sciences. The success in both these areas was reflected in the positive external review.   

First, the department’s faculty exhibits impressive gender diversity, with the percentage of tenure-track female professors exceeding that of our highly ranked peer institutions nationwide.

Second, both the department’s scholarly output and grant funding have more than doubled during the past 10 years. Not surprisingly, these increases have occurred concomitantly with the hiring of stellar faculty, including newly arrived biochemist Carol Manhart, and a doubling of our outstanding graduate student population in the past decade.

Finally, the development of new courses, the introduction of new teaching methodologies and further enhancements to research-based courses have led to an ever-improving educational environment for our talented undergraduate students.

While we are proud of our accomplish-ments, there is an intense desire by everyone in the department to further add to our list of achievements. I am excited about the prospect of sharing with you some of these still unrealized accomplishments in future newsletters.

Daniel R. StronginChair

CHEMISTRYCollege of Science and Technology

UPDATE 2018

Chemistry faculty (clockwise from l to r): Professor Ann Valentine; Associate Professor Kallie Willets; Assistant Professor Carol Manhart; Assistant Professor Sarah Wengryniuk; Professor Stephanie Wunder; and Professor Spiridoula Matsika

With the arrival of Assistant Professor Carol Manhart, seven of the department’s 24 tenure-track faculty, or 29 percent, will be women. That’s a significant increase from just 11 percent in 2003—and one of the highest, if not the highest, female percentage at any Research 1 university in the country. The national average is 19 percent.

“It’s something to be proud of, and it didn’t result from a special university or department initiative,” says Ann Valentine, the department’s vice chair. “It just happened with department and college support, through hiring the best people.”

The department now has female faculty at every stage of their careers and in every area: organic, inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry and biochemistry. “It totally normalizes the business of being a woman in chemistry, which is all you want,” adds Valentine. “It’s unremarkable, which is remarkable.”

“It’s not something you see at other chemistry departments,” adds Manhart. “It’s nice to have other women as mentors and as models for developing your own career.”

Two of the original seven members of the department—F. Elizabeth Rumrill, hired in 1927, and Hazel Tomlinson, hired in 1928—were women. The next female faculty hired, however, were Professor Stephanie Wunder in 1985 and Professor Susan Varnum in 1987. Both are currently the longest serving chemistry professors in the department

“It’s just more normal now,” agrees Wunder. “You’re treated more as a colleague and it’s just easier to interact about the science.”

With 51 percent of undergraduate majors and a third of PhD students now female, the faculty’s gender diversity also has had a positive influence on students, both male and female.

Of the latter, says Wunder, “I think it does make a big difference if you are a female student and you see a woman who is successful and interested in the same things that you are and you then see a path for yourself.”

Next Step: Trio of chemistry graduates headed for even bigger things

Laura Dassama: From Liberia and Temple to a Stanford professorshipWhen Laura Dassama (BS ’07, Biochem) arrived at Temple as a sophomore in fall 2004, the Liberian native and daughter of a nurse wanted to become a medical doctor. This fall, however, she will become an assistant professor of chemistry and a faculty fellow of Stanford University’s ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health) institute.

Why the change in career direction?Dassama credits two Temple chemistry

professors: David Dalton, now professor emeritus, and Professor Robert Stanley. When Dalton, her organic chemistry professor, asked her what she wanted to do with her life, she said, “I’m interested in finding cures for different diseases, so I think I need to go to medical school.”

“No, you don’t, you need to do research in a laboratory,” he replied, and introduced her to Stanley, a biophysical chemist who immediately put her to work in his lab.

“After spending a summer working with a DNA repair enzyme, I realized that I did not want to do anything else,” says Dassama, who remained in Stanley’s lab until she graduated. “It completely changed my career trajectory.”

Subsequently, Dassama: earned a PhD in biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology from Pennsylvania State University and served briefly as a postdoctoral fellow there; was a postdoctoral fellow for four years at Northwestern University; and served this past year as a research associate investigating sickle-cell disease at Harvard Medical School, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.

At Northwestern, she used physical and structural approaches to understand how certain bacterial cells traffic natural products—chemical compounds manufactured by living organisms often used as antimicrobial or anticancer drugs. In March, she returned to the Chemistry Department to lecture on her research focus and techniques.

At Stanford, her research will concentrate on multi-drug resistance by bacteria: “I want to understand how some bacteria acquire multi-drug resistance, and also work on designing new drugs that can be used to target these bacteria.

“For me, chemistry is the easiest way to explain the world. When I learned ChEM-H was looking for someone who has been trained as a chemist and structural biologist but is interested in human health problems, it seemed like the perfect place for me.”

Allison Cutri, Alex Bruefach and Aaron McLeod

FACULTY NOTES

Sarah Wengryniuk, assistant professor of organic chemistry, earned an NSF CAREER Award. She is exploring new approaches to the construction of challenging oxygen-containing bioactive molecular scaffolds. The award also supports the Temple OWLS (Outstanding Women Leaders in Science), a mentorship network that promotes young women in science.

Professors Eric Borguet, Michael L. Klein, Daniel Strongin and Associate Professor Michael Zdilla gave invited lectures at the 2017 Winter School, Frontiers in Materials Science, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India.

Zdilla also earned the Dean’s Distinguished Excellence in Mentoring Award, presented at CST’s Distinguished Faculty Awards.

Professor (Instructional) Steven Fleming received the 2018 Philadelphia Section, ACS Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching presented annually by the Philadelphia Section of the ACS.

Ann Valentine has been promoted to the rank of professor, effective July 1, 2018.

James Bloxton, Allan Thomas and Vladimira Wilent have been promoted to the rank of associate professor (instructional), effective July 1, 2018.

Recent Temple graduates Alex Bruefach, Allison Cutri and Aaron McLeod are poised to enter some of the finest PhD programs available in their fields.

“Aaron, Allison and I have been friends since freshman year, and it’s so amazing to see how far the three of us have come with each other’s support,” says Bruefach, who has majored in both chemistry and biology.

After serving as an undergraduate research assistant the past two summers in the materials science program at Stanford University, she will be pursuing her PhD in materials science and engineering at the University of California Berkeley. The National Institutes of Health MARC U-STAR awardee from Long Island has also been an undergraduate research assistant in one medical and two chemistry labs at Temple.

With Professor and Chair Daniel Strongin, she has been studying the ability of ferritin, a mammalian protein, to reduce chromate, an environmental toxin. “I’ve been able to work pretty independently,” says Bruefach. “It’s been a great experience for an undergraduate.”

Cutri, who wants to work for the FBI as a forensic analyst, has been accepted into the University of Notre Dame’s analytical chemistry program. As part of Associate Professor Kallie Willets’ lab, she has presented two posters on her work, which includes studying block copolymer lithography and surface-enhanced Raman scattering, at two national American Chemical Society meetings.

“I’ve learned things in the lab that undergraduates never get to see or even hear about in classes,” says Cutri, who connected with Willets through CST’s Under-graduate Research Program. “ And I’ve definitely learned from Dr. Willets how it is to be a woman in science.”

McLeod has been accepted into the physical chemistry PhD program at the University of California San Diego. Also with Willets’ lab since September 2015, he has investigated silica-coated gold nanoparticles using a super-resolution imaging technique. McLeod was the first-place recipient of the College of Science and Technology’s 2016 Undergraduate Research Symposium and also presented posters on his work at two ACS national meetings.

Says McLeod, who envisions a future in the technology industry, “Presenting on the national level really validates what you’re doing.”

Researchers making advances in splitting water for energyChemistry Department researchers who are part of CST’s Center for the Computational Design of Functional Layered Materials (CCDM) are making promising advances in their quest to split water to produce green, renewable hydrogen fuel.

The process involves extracting electrons out of water for use in fuel production by using readily available metal oxides—such as manganese, iron and cobalt oxides—as catalysts that are much cheaper than the current benchmark standard, iridium oxide.

The research team includes two world-class theoretical chemists: John Perdew, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics and Chemistry, and CST Dean Michael L. Klein, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science. They are working closely with three of the department’s experimental chemists: Daniel R. Strongin, professor and chair; Eric Borguet, professor; and Michael J. Zdilla, associate professor.

“The theorists have been able to make really important predictions about what might improve the systems and what they think is responsible for making the catalyst work,” says Zdilla, a senior investigator on the project. “As a result, we’ve been able to take a cheap, poor catalyst like manganese and turn it into a cheap, great catalyst by applying unique approaches that only the theoretical chemists could have given us. I could never have intuited or worked this out with chalkboard chemistry.”

Among the advances suggested by the computational calculations of Haowei Peng, assistant professor of physics (research): layering slightly different, thin manganese sheets in a specific order to speed up the catalytic reaction—a prediction confirmed by a new experimental technique for layer-by-layer assembly invented by Strongin’s laboratory.

Ultimately, says Zdilla, the hydrogen resulting from the process possibly could be burned or used in fuel cells, which are like “hydrogen batteries,” to power automobiles and homes.

CCDM is one of 36 Energy Frontier Research Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The center’s four-year, $12 million grant expires later this year, but Temple has submitted a proposal to continue the funding. The team also wants to explore modifying methane produced by hydraulic fracking, and to possibly explore new ammonia production approaches.

New Research GrantsRodrigo Andrade• Asymmetric Synthesis of Alkaloids Enabled

by Novel Methodology, NSF

Eric Borguet• Design, Synthesis and Characterization

of Hybrid Stratified MOF-Plasmonic Nanoparticle Materials for Detection and Destruction of Chemical Agents, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

• Emerging STEM Scholars, NSF

Graham Dobereiner• Ion-Paired Cooperative Catalysts for

Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation, NSF

Michael Klein• Interaction of Inhalational Anesthetics,

University of Pennsylvania

• MRI: Acquisition of a Flexible High-Performance Computing System for Data and Compute Driven Scientific Discovery, NSF

Ronald Levy• HIV Interactions and Viral Evolution,

The Scripps Research Institute

Christian Schafmeister• Atomically Precise Membranes for the

Separation of Hydrocarbons, Mainstream Engineering Corporation

• Molecular Lego Based Organophosphatase Mimics, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

• Synthesis of Selective Water Permeable Biomimetic Aquaporins, Department of the Army

Francis Spano• SusChEM: Collaborative Research, NSF

Yugang Sun• Self-Assembled Nanocellular Composites

with Super Thermal Insulation and Soundproof for Single Pane Windows, University of Chicago

Robert Stanley• DNA Repair under Extreme Conditions - Extended Studies, NASA

Vincent Voelz• Markov State Model Approaches for Folding,

Binding and Design, NIH

Rongsheng Wang• Development of Chemical Probes to Study

Post-Translational Modifications Key to Human Disease, Fox Chase Cancer Center

Sarah Wengryniuk• Cationic Nitrogen-Substituted lambda3-

Iodanes for the Functionalization of Chemical Feedstocks, American Chemical Society, Petroleum Research Fund

• Simplified Approaches to Medium-Sized Heterocycles for the Synthesis of Bioactive Small Molecules, NIH

You can contribute to the continued success of the College of Science and Technology and the Department of Chemistry by supporting scholarships, undergraduate research and innovative programs. Make your gift at giving.temple.edu/givetocst.

Biochemist investigates repair of DNA mismatch mutations After serving since 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University, biochemist Carol Manhart has joined the Chemistry Department as an assistant professor. Funded by a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship award, her research at Cornell focused on DNA mismatch repair and genetic recombination in S. cerevisiae, or baker’s yeast.

Manhart earned her BS degree from the University of Arizona and her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder. While in Boulder, she won the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry’s Graduate Teaching Excellence Award three different years. “Teaching is a passion of mine,” says Manhart, who will be teaching both undergraduate and graduate students.

Furthering her postdoctoral research, at Temple Manhart plans to “investigate how the proteins involved in the repair of DNA mismatches or mutations are activated in order to fix errors in the genetic code.”

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Snapshot from a molecular dynamic simulation of water in a layered manganese oxide water oxidation catalyst (courtesy of Remsing/Klein)

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For more news, go to chem.cst.temple.edu

Instructional faculty members excel at teachingRoy Keyer and Vladimira Wilent—both recipients of the CST Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award—are among the Chemistry Department’s 18 teaching faculty members.

“I like working with students, feeding off of their energy because they are excited to start their careers” says Keyer, associate professor (instructional). “I want to help them get off on a good start.”

Keyer first taught chemistry at Temple between 1994 and 1998, after earning his PhD in organometallic chemistry from the University of California Irvine and spending two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory. After three years as a visiting assistant professor at Villanova University, he returned to the Chemistry Department in 2001. The 2013 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award recipient has developed and improved numerous instructional experiments and led the creation of advising nights for undergraduates.

Wilent has been an assistant professor of instruction since 2011. She earned her PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Previously, she taught at Allegheny College and Bryn Mawr College.

“It’s easy for me to connect with students because I love teaching and talking about biochemistry,” says Wilent, a 2015 Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award recipient. “It’s not just about theories. I talk about the importance of the field and how it can affect human health and development.”

Wilent, who teaches the capstone biochemistry course, appreciates her undergraduates’ “Philly grit” ethos. “They understand the level of rigor that chemistry and biochemistry require,” she says. “I value not just teaching them about the mechanisms of enzymes but also talking about what’s next for them.”

TU Chemistry Reception in Boston!

News and notes • More than 350 middle- and high- school

students from eight Philadelphia public schools and the Cheltenham School District in attended the local American Chemical Society section’s Herb Basso Memorial Lecture hosted by the Chemistry Department in Beury Hall. Designed to interest students in science careers, the day included chemistry demonstrations and hands-on activities.

• The Chemistry Department offers two new graduate programs with Asian institutions, increasing opportunities for Temple faculty to establish international collaborations and for attracting excellent international graduate students to Temple.

With the Southern University of Science and Technology of China, there is a dual PhD program, where students usually spend their first two years at SUSTC in Shenzhen, China, taking coursework while also beginning their research under the joint guidance of a SUSTC mentor and a collaborating Temple faculty member. Two years are then spent conducting research in the laboratory of their Temple faculty mentor. The rest of their doctorate is completed at SUSTC. The first two SUSTC students arrive at Temple in fall 2018.

With the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research-Pune. there is a new accelerated dual master’s-doctorate degree program, where students earn their master’s degree from IISER-Pune and a doctoral degree from Temple. After studying four years in India, the first student arrived at Temple last fall to complete their master’s degree and concurrently start on their doctoral degree program.

During the American Chemical Society’s national meeting, please join our reception at Rosa Mexicano, 155 Seaport Blvd. in Boston on Monday, Aug. 20, between 6 and 8 p.m.

To register, please call or email Barbara Fles, CST’s director of special events, at barbara.fles@temple.edu or 215-204-3378.

ACS