Sam McKinnon, a former undergraduate student at MSU, worked closely with Colleen Scott, an associate professor of chemistry.
$1.3 MILLION GRANT USED TO IMPACT QUALITY OF LIFE, MAKING CHEMISTRY ACCESSIBLE FOR NEXT GENERATION By Sarah Nicholas
More than $1.3 million is now helping two Mississippi State assistant professors who aim to make the field of chemistry more accessible to underserved areas of Mississippi. With a grant from the National Science Foundation Early Career Program, the project will promote chemistry’s importance, as well as its entertaining attributes, to the state’s youth. Xin Cui and Colleen N. Scott are receiving the 2020 CAREER awards from the NSF’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program, which recognizes outstanding faculty exhibiting potential as academic role models in research and education. The award also is given for leadership in advancement of departmental or organizational missions. “The NSF-CAREER Award is the pinnacle achievement for junior faculty and today remains the single most prestigious and central pre-tenure goal, measure and validation of our research and education competitiveness,” said Dennis W. Smith Jr., MSU Department of Chemistry professor and head. Cui received the CAREER award, in part, for his efforts to spotlight chemistry education, encouraging young students who need help with chemistry coursework and want to pursue STEM degrees and careers. He has a specific focus of reaching students from underserved regions in Mississippi, which he said exhibit much larger gaps in educational performance from the national average. “To grow the economy, advance the infrastructure, attract more populations are all generations-long efforts. This calls for education as its foundation. Particularly, STEM is directly related to the production, construction and innovation that leads to new products and processes that sustain our economy,” Cui said. In addition to the chemistry department, Cui partners with the
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VISION 2021 | COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
departments of chemical engineering and geosciences, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, and the T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability, while also seeking alliances with organizations beyond the university. Using a “student-to-student” format, Cui said the goal of his outreach effort is to popularize modern organic chemistry concepts and familiarize youth with real-life applications, while also encouraging MSU and other university undergraduate students “to grow into experienced future educators.” Because of COVID-19, Cui said he is focusing on popularizing scientific topics by using internet platforms, including online meetings and videos. Cui said the appeal of synthetic organic chemistry is to impact and improve quality of life, and he hopes to impact diverse groups of young generations. “The preeminent goal of synthetic organic chemistry is the efficient construction of molecules from readily available starting materials,” he said. “Obtaining new molecules brings new opportunities for the widest spectrum of developments humans are pursuing, from new pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals to next-generation materials.” “With pharmaceutically important and biologically active molecules as targets, our research investigates three-dimensional behavior of chemical transformations, which is key to stereoselective production of drug candidates and bioactive molecules,” Cui explained. Like Cui, Scott received the CAREER award for her efforts in making chemistry impactful, accessible and understandable to the next generation. Her research aims to extend the longevity of materials used in
