Group News!

The World Piano Day Celebration takes place on Thursday, March 28th! Don’t miss the WPD science talk by Prof. Victor Batista (Yale University) titled, “Quantum Leaps: Unveiling the Mysteries of Quantum Dynamics and Quantum Computing”! Nam Vu will participate in the WPD student panel and will perform in the WPD Concert! Check out this article for more info!

 

Congratulations to Zhixiang (Damon) Kang for graduating with an A.B. in Biochemistry, 2023!

 

Our group and some friends visited the Schrödinger, Inc office in Times Square, and then went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a tour of the Photography and Time-based Media Labs!

 

This summer we held a campus-wide tie-dye event! President Hurd made a shirt too! The shirts look great everyone!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor and Zoey Bragg for publishing their recent paper on determining the chromophore identity in turtle melanopsin in Vision Research!

 

Congratulations to Zoey Bragg, Haleigh Marzano, Caroline Schaeffer, and Yixiang Zeng for graduating with a B.S. in Biochemistry, 2023!

 

Congratulations to Theresa Chua for graduating with a B.S. in Neuroscience and A.B. in Chemistry, 2023!

 

Congratulations to Zheyu (Marc) Cui for graduating with a B.S. in Computer Science (minor in Chemistry), 2023!

 

Congratulations to Eman Shahzad for graduating with a B.A. in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, 2023!

 

Congratulations to Zoey Bragg for receiving the Carl J. Staska Prize!

 

Congratulations to Haleigh Marzano for receiving the American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry!

 

Congratulations to Theresa Chua for receiving the American Chemical Society Prize!

 

Congratulations to Nam Vu and Theresa Chua for publishing their recent paper on information transfer in prostaglandin receptors in ACS Applied Bio Materials!

 

Congratulations to the LV-SCIE Organizing committee for a successful symposium! The symposium program incorporated faculty speakers from multiple institutions across the Lehigh Valley, two prestigious keynote speakers, and an interdisciplinary student poster session. Over 150 people attended the symposium (including members of the general public) and 27 undergraduate students from four different colleges, in fields across the sciences and humanities, presented posters on their research.

(Photos from Lafayette News)

 

Registration is now open for the Lehigh Valley Symposium on CRISPR Implementation and Ethics! Join us Saturday, Sept. 17th at Lafayette College for student and faculty presentations, including keynote lectures by Dr. Sam Sternberg (Columbia University) and Dr. Rina Bliss (Rutgers University). Registration is open to everyone!
Free poster printing is available for poster presenters, so make sure to submit your abstract for the interdisciplinary, student poster session!
Dr. Hendrickson, Michael O’Connor, Zoey Bragg and Kelsey Wong are members of the LV-SCIE organizing committee.

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for graduating with a B.S. in Biochemistry, 2022!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for receiving the American Institute of Chemists Award (Biochemistry)!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for receiving the American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for receiving Honorable Mention for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Receiving Honorable Mention will enable Michael to apply for computational resources available on the NSF XSEDE cluster to support his graduate research! (The ability to apply for resources on XSEDE is otherwise reserved for post-docs and faculty.)

 

Congratulations to Alex Qian for graduating with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, 2021!

 

Dr. Hendrickson is holding a chemistry book club this summer! We are reading A Crack in Creation by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna. See Dr. Hendrickson’s book recommendation in Lafayette Today!

 

Congratulations to Zahra Gandhi, Maria Giambruno-Fuge, Ella Kaplan, and Philip Weiss for graduating with a B.S. in Chemistry, 2021!

 

Congratulations to Rachel Petzoldt for graduating with a B.S. in Biochemistry, 2021!

 

Congratulations to Zahra Gandhi for receiving the American Institute of Chemists Award (Chemistry)!


(Photo from Lafayette News)

 

Congratulations to Maria Giambruno-Fuge for receiving the Daughters of the American Revolution Award!

 

Congratulations to Rachel Petzoldt for receiving the Carl J. Staska Prize!

 

Congratulations to Philip Weiss for receiving the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry and the American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry Awards!

 

Congratulations to Theresa Chua for receiving the Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize!


(Photo from Lafayette News)

 

Congratulations to Dr. Hendrickson for being selected to join the Google Cloud Project Research Innovator Program!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for receiving the 2021 Goldwater Scholarship!

Scholarship Story: Michael O’Connor ’22

 

Congratulations to Emily Lugos for graduating with a B.S. in Chemistry, 2020!

 

Congratulations to Emily Lugos for receiving the American Chemical Society Division of Physical Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Physical Chemistry!

 

Congratulations to Michael O’Connor for receiving the Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize!

 

The Spring 2020 National ACS Meeting was canceled due to Covid19. Emily Lugos’ oral presentation abstract had been accepted. Zahra Gandhi’s and Michael O’Connor’s poster presentation abstracts had been accepted.

 

Michael O’Connor gave a talk on his work with turtle melanopsin at the Amber Developers Meeting in Safety Harbor, FL. We learned a lot about recent developments in Amber, and we were happy to gain valuable feedback from other meeting attendees!

 

Congratulations to Zahra Gandhi for obtaining an REU position at the University of Michigan for Summer 2020!

 

Congratulations to Emily Lugos for being featured as a STEM Star: The Poet Scientist!

https://news.lafayette.edu/2019/11/08/stem-star-the-poet-scientist/

(Photo from Lafayette News)

 

Zahra Gandhi was awarded the Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee (GSSPC) Travel Award to present her work on using MD simulations to model SFG spectroscopy in proteins at the Spring 2020 National ACS Meeting in Philadelphia, PA! Congratulations Zahra!!!

 

Zahra Gandhi, Ella Kaplan, Emily Lugos, and Michael O’Connor presented their work at the Lafayette College Fall 2019 Poster Session!

 

Thank you to Laramie Jensen for visiting our lab! Your Geology Department seminar on the role of dissolved metals in the ocean was intriguing and well-received by a multidisciplinary audience! Students sincerely appreciated your insights and advice related to graduate school during the Women & Inclusion in The Sciences (WITS) session. Thanks again for visiting Lafayette College!

 

Zahra Gandhi, Ella Kaplan, and Emily Lugos presented posters at the Mercury Conference 2019, held at Furman University in Greenville, SC. As usual, they obtained valuable insights and advice from interactions with other conference attendees!

 

Emily Lugos gave a talk on her work using density functional theory to investigate brown carbon species in atmospheric aerosols as part of the Lafayette College ARC Student Research Presentations series, 2019!

 

Congratulations to Liza Welch for graduating with a B.S. in Chemistry, 2019!

 

Liza Welch presented a poster at the 2019 MACC-NYAGIM Symposium held by the Mid-Atlantic Computational Chemistry group and the New York Area Group for Informatics and Modeling in Manhattan, NY. She also got to meet  Prof. Hendrickson’s former lab mate, Ben Rudshteyn!

 

Zahra Gandhi, Ella Kaplan, and Emily Lugos presented their work at the Lafayette College Spring 2019 Poster Session!

 

Thank you to Dr. Kira Armacost for visiting our lab! The Women & Inclusion in The Sciences (WITS) group and  many other students were incredibly interested in hearing about your career path during your seminar for Lafayette College’s Women in STEM week! We appreciated getting to share our research posters with you as well! Thanks again for visiting Lafayette College!

 

Emily Lugos and Liza Welch presented posters at the Spring 2019 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, held in Orlando, FL. They had many people visit their posters, and received some helpful comments and suggestions from conference attendees!

 

Emily Lugos was awarded the ACS – Bridge Program Travel Award to attend the Spring 2019 ACS National Meeting. Congratulations Emily!!!

 

Emily Lugos was selected as the winner of the Jean Corrie Competition in Poetry for her poem “Bruises, Tongues, and a Funeral.” Emily will read her poem at the Jean Corrie Poetry Reading and Ice Cream Social on April 25th at 4:10pm in the Marlo Room. Congratulations Emily!!!

 

Thank you to Dr. Spencer Stober for visiting our lab! Your chemistry department seminar and biophysics research group talk sparked our scientific curiosity! We appreciated the individual research discussions as well! Thanks again for visiting Lafayette College!

 

Thank you to Ellen Mulvihill (PhD candidate, University of Michigan) for visiting our lab! We enjoyed your department seminar, guest lecture in General Chemistry II, and WITS information session on graduate school! We also had a great turnout for the Compute-to-Learn Workshop! Thanks again for visiting Lafayette College!

 

Zahra Gandhi, Ella Kaplan, Emily Lugos, and Liza Welch presented their work at the Lafayette College Fall 2018 Poster Session!

Congratulations to Liza Welch for being featured as a poster presenter!

Lafayette College held it’s annual Fall Student Research Poster Session in the Kamine Gymnasium of the Kirby Sports Center on Friday October 19, 2018.
© 2018 Douglas Kilpatrick / Zovko Photographic LLC

 

Congratulations to Liza Welch for giving an excellent departmental talk on her research!

 

Prof. Hendrickson presented a poster the Gordon Research Conference on Computational Chemistry in July 2018. At the conference, she was able to meet up with new friends, Dr. Togo Odbadrakh and Prof. Dmytro Kosenkov, from the MERCURY Consortium! She also talked with old friends from her graduate and postdoctoral studies, including  Prof. Victor Batista and Subhajyoti Chaudhuri (a graduate student in the Batista group) as well as Prof. Frank Vazquez (a former Geva group member)! It was great to hear about the ways their research interests and ideas have evolved over time, as well as how their work is contributing to our fundamental understanding of chemistry!


   

 

Zahra Gandhi and Ella Kaplan presented their work on identifying the binding sites in G-protein coupled receptors at the Mercury Conference 2018, held at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Their presentation was fantastic, and we were able to obtain valuable insights and advice from the questions asked by other conference attendees!

 

Prof. Hendrickson, Ella Kaplan, and Zahra Gandhi attended the MolSSI coding workshop prior to the Mercury Conference 2018. Thanks to Prof. Theresa Windus, Prof. Paul Nerenberg, and Prof. K. Aurelia Ball for putting together such an excellent workshop!

 

Congratulations to Ella Kaplan for giving a fantastic departmental talk on her research!

 

Congratulations to Zahra Gandhi for giving a spectacular departmental talk on her research!