Fall/Winter 2022 Alumni Magazine

Photo of Irene Manning by Megan May for endeavors

Irene Manning receives 2022 Impact Award

By UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School

Each year, The Graduate School honors graduate students in programs throughout our University for their powerful discoveries that contribute to a better future for people and communities in North Carolina. Irene Mulloy Manning, now a member of UNC Chemistry Staff, was a recipient of 1 of 11 Impact Awards for 2022 — below includes her own descriptions of the research project.

“The Cape Fear watershed region is home to more than two million North Carolinians. Due to the prevalence of industry along the watershed, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), otherwise known as forever chemicals, now contaminate the watershed. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) of exposure to two PFAS known to cause adverse health effects. However, PFAS have been found at a total concentration of over 250 ppt in Pittsboro, North Carolina and 600 ppt in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A recent study of Wilmington, North Carolina residents’ blood serum found significant levels of PFAS in 99 percent of samples,” said Manning

Manning then continued, “Motivated by the lack of a way to reduce the level of PFAS in the water, we’ve used chemistry to develop a technology that we call Ionic Fluorogels. These Ionic Fluorogels remove a variety of PFAS from water, including water collected at treatment plants in the Haw and Cape Fear watersheds. We designed Ionic Fluorogels to be easy to implement both at treatment plants and in the home. Furthermore, we designed Ionic Fluorogels by intentionally working with materials that do not exacerbate PFAS contamination or environmental concerns. Ionic Fluorogels demonstrate considerable promise in affecting quality of water, and we’re working to continue more pilot tests in our state.”

Katelyn and Alexis earn Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

By UNC Chemistry Communication

Photo by Laura Yurco

Two doctoral students in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North at Chapel Hill were selected to receive fellowships by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP).

This prestigious and competitive fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines who are pursuing researchbased master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial and educational support.

Congratulations are also extended to the seven students who received special recognition from the review panels in earning honorable mentions.

NSF Graduate Fellowship Program Award Winners:

Katelyn Kitzinger, Johnson Research Group

Alexis Harvey, Atkin Research Group

Honorable Mentions

Guillermo Sebastian Colon, Dick Research Group

Karen Ehrhardt, Weeks Research Group

Caleb Kozuszek, Leibfarth Research Group

Eliza Neidhart, Leibfarth Research Group

Justin Neu, You Research Group

John Migliore, Dingemans Research Group

David Qiu, Weeks Research Group

Nicholas, Rayshell, Tsian, Sarina, Kriti, and Kelvin earn Eastman Chemical Company Fellowships

By UNC Chemistry Communication

The Eastman Chemical Company Fellowship program is an award bestowed to first year graduate students for their committed effort to enhance the departmental mission to create a diverse and inclusive community. Sponsored by the Eastman Chemical Company, Eastman Fellows receive a stipend that supports the continuation of their contributions to the Carolina Chemistry community. The group of students form a cohort to further fellowship and continue on their educational endeavors together.

Below are the recipients of the Eastman Chemical Fellowship 2022 award:

Nicholas Calzadilla – Nicholas worked on responsive disulfide linked polymer-drug nanoparticles for cancer therapy while at the University of Miami. He looks to expand his Organic Chemistry skills in areas of synthesis for potential environmental and medicinal benefit.

Sarina Jones – Sarina’s research interests lie in the broad topics of protein-protein interactions and drug mechanism/drug discovery. She is passionate about how drugs interact in the body and how chemists can manipulate and control these interactions to develop and design new drugs that improve treatment and disease.

Kelvin Idanwekhai – As an undergrad at Obafemi Awolowo University, Kelvin worked to design dyes that could be used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) by tuning their electronic properties, using theoretical and computational methods. After he graduated, he worked as a software/machine learning engineer. As part of UNC Chemistry, he plans to work on developing fast and accurate models/algorithms for high-throughput molecular property prediction.

Left to right: Nicholas Calzadilla, Rayshell Torres-Santana, Tsian Ramrattan, Sarina Jones, Kriti Shukla, and Kelvin Idanwekhai

Tsian Ramrattan - Tsian spent her time at Emory University working with pharmaceutical data with the Liotta Group, and as part of the Salaita Lab, which focuses on the role of mechanical forces in cell biology and tumor development.

Rayshell Torres-Santana – Rayshell’s time at Radford University was focused on forensic chemistry and toxicology, where she examined epinephrine degradation using liquid and gas chromatography.

Kriti Shukla – As an undergrad at UCLA, Kriti used computational chemistry techniques to determine the mechanisms of organic reactions and also used bioinformatics to look at how diet affects fish gut microbiome. She remembers her summer research programs fondly, when she had opportunities to work on optimizing statins to treat mRCC and explore the phototactic properties of thermophilic cyanobacteria. Now at UNC, she hopes to use bioinformatics and computational chemistry techniques to look at how mutations in proteins affect downstream expression.

Award recipients with Jillian Dempsey, director of undergraduate studies (far right) and Wei You, department chair (far left)

2022 Fall Banquet

By UNC Chemistry Communication

Carolina Chemistry’s annual Fall Banquet celebrates the academic and research achievements of juniors and seniors. This year, the banquet was held on November 7th and the featured speaker was Dr. Crystal Waters, BS in Chemistry, ’14, who is the lead chemist in battery research development at Chemours. Awards were given out by Jillian Dempsey, director of undergraduate studies and Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor. The Spremulli Award was bestowed by the co-chairs of the Chemistry Diversity Committee, Nita Eskew, teaching associate professor, and Marcey Waters, Glen H. Elder, Jr. Distinguished Professor. The banquet concluded with closing remarks by Wei You, department chair of chemistry.

Tanya R. Ellison Scholarship

Meredith Daughtridge

Elsa Huebsch

Linda Spremulli Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

Melissa Yu

James H. Maguire Memorial Award

Jamil Andrade

Meredith Daughtridge

Ruta Petrikis

The Sophomore Chemistry Award Presented by Alpha Chi Sigma

Elsa Huebsch

Linda Spremulli Honorable Mention

Elizabeth Choi

Elizabeth Redding

Maya Spencer

David L. Stern Scholarship

Anna Eblen

Fiona Gable

Jason D. Altom Memorial Award for Undergraduate Research

Vittal Bhat

Kailyn Lowder

Hans Oh

Alan Wong