Chemical Demonstration Program

The Chemistry Demonstration Program

Celebrating 15 years of excellence (and explosions!)

Dr. Jill Headrick and Navi The KU Chemistry Lecture Demonstration (CHEM DEMO) program, which started in August 2007 under the direction of Dr. Jill Headrick, serves and supports the entire Chemistry Department both inside and outside the classroom. The goal of this program is to develop and provide safe, high-quality demos that Chemistry instructors can use in their courses, teaching labs, and outreach efforts. The demonstrations are cataloged on a faculty-accessible website that includes descriptions, step-by-step procedures, photos, videos, reference materials, and a variety of supplemental instructor resources. Due to this extensive, contentrich library, Chemistry faculty have immediate access to information on hundreds of lecture demonstrations spanning many different topics and levels of instruction. Faculty wanting a demo or practice session submit requests directly to Dr. Headrick. She runs training sessions, prepares necessary materials, assembles all supplies for safe transport, and provides on-site delivery, set-up, and presentation (if preferred). These demos are designed to augment the instruction of difficult chemical concepts, stimulate active learning, encourage animated discussion, and address common misconceptions that may hinder concept mastery.

The CHEM DEMO program, which originally operated out of a storage room in Malott Hall, currently runs out of a state-of-the art prep room in the basement of Gray-Little Hall. Shortly after moving

to the new building, Labconco generously donated two mobile demo fume hoods to the CHEM DEMO program. These ductless hoods, which move easily between classrooms, have helped expand the repertoire of demos that can be conducted safely in our Chemistry courses. New facilities, upgraded classroom technologies, partnerships, and strong faculty support have helped this program thrive. This Fall, the CHEM DEMO program celebrated its 15year anniversary. Cheers to a decade and a half of making a difference and improving the overall quality of Chemistry instruction at KU. May the next 15 years be even more inspiring!

Prof. Cindy Berrie the actual species present. In the future, we are working to simplify and automate our expert-based approach so that more groups can analyze glycosylation on important proteins and do it in an efficient way that gives the right answer.

In addition to studying glycosylation on proteins, I am also interested in combining computational power and mass spectrometry data. In this domain, we use machine learning to search for a blood-based biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease. Right now, there is no blood test that can determine whether someone has Alzheimer’s Disease. If we had such a test, it could improve early intervention for the disease and help accelerate the development of effective treatments. My group is

collaborating with Professor Rena Robinson at Vanderbilt University on these studies; her group has quantified hundreds of proteins and lipids in blood samples from both Alzheimer’s patients and healthy controls. We have applied machine learning strategies to these data and found something unexpected: The set of proteins from Robinson’s dataset that predicts Alzheimer’s disease accurately in White patients does a poor job of predicting Alzheimer’s disease in Black and African American patients. The Robinson lab is well known for their work in championing racially diverse sample sets, and through collaboration with them, we are continuing to work on developing a biomarker panel that accurately identifies Alzheimer’s disease for everyone.

Assoc. Dean Maria Orive presents Heather with the Wilner plaque.