News and Announcements
Congratulations Alumnus Brian P. Coppola
It has been announced by Baylor University that Dr. Coppola, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has been named as the 2012 recipient of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. The award is the only national award for teaching excellence presented by a college or university to an individual and carries with it the largest monetary reward of $250,000 as well as an additional $25,000 for the awardee’s home department. Brian earned his B.S. in Chemistry at the University of New Hampshire in 1978, having carried out undergraduate research with Professors Robert E. Lyle and Gary R. Weisman. Brian’s outstanding contributions to the teaching of chemistry have been recognized with a number of previous awards including the ACS James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry in 2006 and the U.S. Professor of the Year Award from the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in 2009.
New Faculty Member, Erik Berda
Dr. Erik Berda joined the UNH Chemistry Department faculty in August of 2010 as an Assistant Professor (Organic Chemistry) with a joint appointment in the Materials Science Program. Erik received a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2008 (Advisor: Prof. Ken Wagener) studying polymer chemistry. Following graduation, he headed to the Netherlands as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Bert Meijer’s research group (Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindohoven) working on complex materials. At UNH, Erik’s research includes the design and synthesis of shape persistent polymeric nanostructures from single polymer chains, the hierarchical self-assembly of polymeric nanoparticle building blocks into nano, meso, and micro scale architectures and devices, and functional polymeric materials for advanced applications (e.g. molecular machinery, catalysis, energy, and medicine).
Sustainable Science: Undergraduate Thesis Research on CO2-Reduction Catalysis
Solar reduction of carbon dioxide to regenerate fuels or other useful materials is an area of intense international research toward the goal of sustainability. Photochemical processes based on catalysis by rhenium and other transition metals are well develope
d, but mechanistic details of some catalytic cycles have remained poorly understood. Professor Gonghu Li and his UNH collaborators, undergraduate Jay Agarwal and Professor Richard Johnson, have provided a key to this puzzle through the recent publication of a research article in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. The UNH team utilized density functional theory and many hundreds of hours of supercomputer time to model a catalytic cycle for formate production via CO2 reduction mediated by a rhenium(I) tricarbonyl complex.
Read More