Anindita Das, Southern Methodist University "Tuning Atomically Precise Materials for Sustainable Chemistry" Abstract: With the advent of nanotechnology in the mid-1980s, nanomaterials have attracted tremendous interest due to their unique properties which make them suitable for diverse applications. However, the inherent polydispersity of conventional nanoparticles has precluded an atomic-level understanding of their structure-property relationships. This, in turn, has greatly hampered the complete realization of their […]

Jun Ohata, North Carolina State University "Protein bioconjugation and chemical evolution in nonaqueous systems" Abstract: Selective and efficient reactions of polypeptides in living systems are enabled by a range of enzymes and molecular machinery even in a complex mixture of cellular components. During the past decades, nonenzymatic reactions or chemical modification of polypeptides have been […]

Victor Outlaw, University of Missouri "New orthogonal strategies for chemoselective peptide macrocyclization" Abstract: Although peptides are ideal candidates to modulate protein function and disrupt protein-protein interactions, their biological applications have been limited by low intracellular stability, poor cell permeability, and rapid in vivo clearance. Peptide macrocyclization has been shown to be an effective strategy for mitigating these […]

Joseph Bennett, University of Maryland Baltimore County "Database-Driven Discovery of New Ferroics by Combining First-Principles Methods and Solid-State Inorganic Chemistry" Abstract: The design and discovery of new materials to be used as platforms for ferroic properties can be expedited by investigating already synthesized and characterized compounds whose merits may have been previously overlooked. Here we use a database-driven methods that combine searchable databases, applied […]