Category: Uncategorized

Written by Paul Alongi

Gov. Henry McMaster is honoring a Clemson University associate professor who has won international acclaim for engineering yeast in research that could help humankind reach Mars, develop new drugs and search for nuclear weapons production.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen Quattlebaum Associate Professor, has received a 2020 Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Scientific Research. The award recognizes his contributions to research and teaching.

Blenner, a member of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is the eighth Clemson faculty member in 10 years to win a Governor’s Award.

All but one were in the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences at the time of their awards.

“This is an award I’ve seen a lot of outstanding Clemson faculty win, and I’m honored to be on that level,” Blenner said.

Blenner, who joined Clemson in 2012, has raised $10 million from a variety of federal and industry sources to fund his research.

His work in engineering yeast has a wide range of potential.

It could, for example, help astronauts make omega-3 nutritional supplements they could take to stay healthy during the long trip to Mars. Yeast could also be engineered to create biopolymer PHA, a type of polyester that astronauts could feed into a 3D printer to make tools.

Blenner is also using the single-celled fungi to explore new ways of developing drugs and creating sensors that would help search for radiation from nuclear weapons production.

Much of his work has focused on a species of yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica. But his team has begun to explore another species, Cutaneotrichosporon oleaginosus, that remains largely unexplored and shows promise for turning lignin, a byproduct of wood-processing, into omega-3 fatty acids, biofuel or biopolymers.

Blenner has published 28 peer-reviewed papers and three other papers, including one that was the most read article in ACS Synthetic Biology in 2016-17. Two of his articles are classified by the Institute for Scientific Information as “highly cited,” a designation reserved for the top 1% of articles in each journal.

Blenner’s work has been extensively covered in the popular press, including stories in The Washington Post, The Guardian and BBC World News. He wrote a blog post for Scientific American, and an episode of “SciShow Space” featuring his work has been viewed more than 100,000 times.

It’s the latest in a string of accolades for Blenner, capped in summer 2019 with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest honor for researchers early in their careers.

Blenner has excelled at involving his students in prestigious programs, including the Beckman Scholars Program, the U.S. Education Department’s Graduate Assistance for Areas of National Need and the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program.

“The most meaningful part of this award is that it recognizes that I’ve educated a lot of undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers,” Blenner said. “Some stay in South Carolina, and some have gone elsewhere and are representing the state well. They show the high-quality of human capital the state has to offer.”

Previous Governor’s Award winners from Clemson over the past 10 years include John Ballato and Apparao Rao (both 2014), who received the Award for Excellence in Scientific Research. Laine Mears (2011), Brian Powell (2014) and Srikanth Pilla (2018) have received the Young Scientist Award for Excellence in Scientific Research. Joshua Summers (2012) and Barbara Speziale (2010) have won the Award for Excellence in Scientific Awareness.

Governor’s Awards are jointly sponsored by the Governor’s Office and the South Carolina Academy of Sciences.

Our department is proud to officially welcome Dr. Suzanne Roat and Dr. Ming Yang to Clemson University.

Dr. Suzanne Roat is joining our Department as a Professor of Practice. Dr. Roat enjoyed an exciting and rewarding 28-year career working in the oil and gas sector primarily for Chevron Corporation before returning to her alma mater to teach Process Design and Unit Operations Laboratory classes.

Throughout her career, Dr. Roat leveraged her undergraduate Chemical Engineering degree from Clemson (1985) and Master of Science (1987) and PhD (1991) work focused on nonlinear optimal control (both in Chemical Engineering at University of Tennessee, Knoxville) into a full career of supply chain optimization.

When she’s out of the office, Dr. Roat is enjoying more time scuba diving, including becoming a PADI-certified scuba diving instructor.  She has been as deep as 114 meters and dives with a closed-loop rebreather system.

Our department is also very excited to welcome Dr. Ming Yang to Clemson University. Dr. Yang is joining us from General Motors, where he worked as a Senior Researcher for several years. He now serves our department as an Assistant Professor.

His research interests include Catalysis, Advanced Materials, Reaction Engineering for Energy and Environmental Applications.

Dr. Yang holds two Bachelor’s degrees from Tianjin University and Nankai University. He received his Master’s from Tianjin University and holds a doctoral degree from Tufts University.

Outside of work, Dr. Yang loves soccer, sport cars, and traveling. He’s traveled to 45 of the lower 48 states in the past 5 years!

Article written by Paul Alongi. 

Rachel Getman became the first woman to receive tenure in Clemson University’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the same year the department celebrated a century of granting degrees.

That was three years ago. Now Getman is first through the door for another honor, one that reflects her national prominence in research, scholarship and teaching.

Getman is the first recipient of the Murdoch Family Endowed Professorship in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

The professorship comes with funding that Getman said she expects to put into hiring a graduate student to help further her lab’s research.

“Every person that you have doing research is an opportunity to work on and explore another problem,” Getman said. “It’s very helpful. I thank all those who have mentored and supported me, those who nominated me for the professorship, and the Murdoch family for their support of Clemson University faculty.”

Larry Murdoch provided the endowment that made the professorship possible. Murdoch received his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Clemson in 1963 before going on to graduate school at Iowa State University and a successful career, first in chemical plant operations and then the engineering and construction industry.

He has traveled the world and once lived in Europe for five years, but he hasn’t forgotten what Clemson has meant to him. Murdoch said the quality and dedication of the faculty, led by then-Department Chair Charles Edward Littlejohn, Jr., inspired him and helped lead him to success.

“That’s why I wanted to dedicate the endowment to recognize faculty,” he said. “The quality of an educational institution really boils down to the quality of the faculty, and I know it’s difficult to attract and retain good faculty. There is a lot of competition, and I just want to do a small part to help in that area.”

Murdoch also said that since he began supporting the department in 2011, he has been impressed and inspired by the commitment and improvements implemented by former Department Chair Douglas E. Hirt and the current department chair, David A. Bruce.

Getman’s research is helping lay the groundwork to create more efficient, more effective and less expensive catalysts. Catalysts accelerate the rate of chemical reactions and are crucial to mass-producing a vast range of products from gasoline and diesel fuel to fertilizer and plastic.

“Everything that you’re touching right now has probably seen a catalyst,” Getman said.

Getman’s main contribution has been to develop a multiscale modeling method for quantifying thermodynamics and kinetics of aqueous phase reactions at solid interfaces.

“It’s something that isn’t well established in my field but needs to be to understand a large class of catalytic chemistry,” she said. “To perform simulations at the molecular level is pretty challenging. You have to predict ahead of time all of the correct features that you would want to incorporate into your model. Because no one has a microscope that can look at that level and tell you what’s going on, you have to use your own intuition. Usually, you’re learning as you’re going.”

Getman’s lab includes two post-doctoral researchers, five Ph.D. scholars, one master’s student and one honors undergraduate. Her lab took in 11 interns over the summer when other research opportunities were cancelled because of COVID-19.

Much of her lab’s work involves creating models of chemical reactions on computers and can be done virtually.

“We offered a lot of positions to give people experience doing research they wouldn’t have had otherwise because of the pandemic,” Getman said.

Bruce said Getman is well deserving of the professorship.

“Dr. Getman receives funding from multiple agencies, publishes research in high-quality journals and has an excellent record of mentoring undergraduates,” he said. “Clemson is better off for having her here, and I offer her my deepest congratulations for this professorship.”

Getman’s lab is also collaborating with O. Thompson Mefford, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Clemson. Their work to design magnetic materials could have applications in biomedicine and electronic devices, Getman said.

“We use our methods (created in the Getman lab) to calculate magnetic properties at the molecular level and learn how we can tune those properties to optimize the material for a particular function,” she said.

Getman said what she likes best about her work is helping people reach their potential and achieve their career and personal goals, a value that she sees reflected in her colleagues at Clemson.

All of the students and post-doctoral researchers who have worked in Getman’s lab have been placed in positions that have closely aligned with their goals, she said.

“One of my best accomplishments is that the people who come through my group create a career goal and then they achieve it– and I can’t see how there can be anything better than that as a professor,” she said.

About the Murdoch Family:

Three consecutive generations of Murdochs have graduated from Clemson University. Larry Murdoch, whose donation funded the Murdoch Family Endowed Professorship, was the second generation. He arrived at Clemson after growing up in Abbeville County and received a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering in 1963, a degree that he credits with preparing him for graduate school and a successful career. His father, Earle Murdoch, was the first in the family to graduate from Clemson, receiving an agronomy degree in 1929.  Three of Larry Murdoch’s children also went to Clemson. Jeffrey Murdoch received a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering in 1994 and then a Master of Science in computer science in 2000. Brian Murdoch received a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry in 1997. Lindsay Murdoch White received a Bachelor of Science in health science in 2000. A fourth generation is represented by a grandson who is a freshman starting this year. Larry Murdoch retired from full-time work in 2014 but at 79 years old continues to work as a consultant. He and his wife, Pat, live on Greenville’s Eastside.

Earlier this month, Dr. Jessica Larsen was selected as the recipient for the 2020 Bradley Faculty Award for Mentoring in Creative Inquiry. She is the first receipt in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the 13 years of the award. When asked to describe her mentoring style, Larsen described it as “radical vulnerability”.

“I am open and honest with my students about my expectations of them and will admit when I fall short of their expectations of me. Because of this, students feel safe to be open and honest with me, calling themselves out when they fall short of expectations and letting me know when I may not be the best version of myself. On day one, I let my students know that I am also capable of making mistakes, and it is our job to work together as a team where members all have equal value. We have created a mutual, safe space for our team.”

Larsen understands that mistakes happen and believes that they should be treated as learning opportunities, not as identifying characteristics of the students. As a team, Larsen and her students focus on the value of the mistake in their meetings and take steps to move forward together.

Currently, Larsen and her CI students are working on several different projects, such as the identification of potential noninvasive biomarkers for GM1 gangliosidosis and using Polymersomes to Deliver Gold Nanoparticles to Enhance CT Imaging Applications in the brain. In general, their lab works to understand, treat, and diagnose brain diseases, using polymeric materials to respond to pathological stimuli that occur in each disease. The team’s end goal is to bring next-generation nanomedicine to the clinic, developing treatments for currently untreatable disease.

Larsen believes that her students are driven to make progress because they can see that the work they are doing is extremely important and could have a positive impact on society. There is a clear goal that her team is working towards together.
One of the most important impacts that Larsen has been able to deliver is the strong and constant belief that her researchers are capable of “so much greatness,” especially when her team works together and are able to identify the talents of each individual. Larsen ensures to tailor projects towards the individual passion of her students. She believes that this improves the synergy of their lab and the evidence is shown in the confidence that she extends to her students.

“I cannot thank you enough for the positivity you have in our meetings,” a student shared with her. “It genuinely makes my day and has really helped me build my confidence when it comes to looking into graduate programs. Having your vote of confidence has given me such a boost of energy and has made me more confident in my ability to do research”.

It is obvious that Dr. Jessica Larsen is a well-deserved recipient of 2020 Bradley Faculty Award for Mentoring. We are proud to have her as a member of our department and extend our congratulations!

Article written by Paul Alongi, College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences

Clemson University researchers are volunteering their time and resources as part of a statewide effort to develop serologic tests that could play a key role in reigniting South Carolina’s economy and protecting healthcare professionals on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A test on track to be ready this week would be aimed at detecting antibodies that form in the bloodstream when someone has been exposed to the novel coronavirus and is therefore thought to have a lowered chance of re-infection.

Clemson researchers are developing the South Carolina tests with colleagues from the University of South Carolina, Prisma Health and the Medical University of South Carolina. Commercial labs are also developing the tests, but some South Carolinians are concerned that the tests will be in short supply and that the lion’s share will go to larger states with more purchasing power and more cases of COVID-19.

Delphine Dean is overseeing the Clemson portion of the work as the Clemson lead for the state’s Serological Testing and Diagnostic Working Group.

“We’re all working on it together,” said Dean, who is the Ron and Jane Lindsay Family Innovation Professor of bioengineering. “Many of the barriers between institutions that sometimes slow down collaboration have been removed. Everyone has been working around the clock to make these things go much faster than typically happens.”

Before any test is deployed, it would need to be validated for effectiveness to meet Food and Drug Administration regulations.

The test that will be available this week is aimed at checking healthcare professionals for antibodies. The idea is that those who test positive for the antibodies could be cleared to re-enter public life, allowing them to work with minimal concern they could come down with COVID-19 or infect others.

About 500-1,000 tests could be ready as early as this week, less than a month since the project started, researchers said.

The two Clemson researchers working on the test are Mark Blenner, the McQueen Quattlebaum Associate Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Sarah Harcum, professor of bioengineering.

Blood samples would need to be tested in a lab, which limits how many can be done. In a parallel effort, Clemson researchers are working to create tests that could take saliva, urine or blood and show results with a color change in as little as 15 minutes, similar to a home pregnancy test.

Researchers involved in developing those tests are: Blenner, Terri Bruce, research assistant professor of bioengineering and director of the Clemson Light Imaging Facility; Dean; Harcum; and R. Kenneth Marcus, University Professor of chemistry.

The tests would be an improvement on current methods. Antibody tests that check for immunity require a blood draw and are inaccurate and scarce, Blenner said. Testing directly for the virus itself requires an uncomfortable nasal swab and puts healthcare workers at a heightened risk of catching the virus, he said.

Martine LaBerge, the chair of Clemson’s bioengineering department, said all the researchers are volunteering their time, efforts and resources to help the state, as it faces the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They are working tirelessly to protect the health and safety of South Carolina’s healthcare professionals and the general public,” said LaBerge, who is playing a central role in coordinating Clemson’s research response to the pandemic. “Institutional barriers are coming down so that we can work together as one South Carolina. I offer all those sacrificing sleep and time with family my deepest gratitude.”

The process to develop the tests starts with Blenner, who is making spike proteins, which give the novel coronavirus its distinguishing feature and is believed to be how the viral infection is mediated.

In his lab, Blenner puts the DNA for the spike proteins inside of human or hamster cells. When the cells grow, they produce the spike proteins, which will ultimately serve as the key reagent in the antibody tests.

“Our group is going to make a stable cell line that we can scale up,” Blenner said. “Right now the procedure is not meant to make a lot of protein. It’s meant for quick protein production. I’m going to make a productive cell line and work with Sarah Harcum to get that in larger bioreactors.”

Harcum said she will put the cells in computer-controlled bioreactors that can sense oxygen and pH levels. Pumps carefully control the nutrients that feed the cells.

“I grow cells to make them happier so they make more protein,” Harcum said. “Normally, I look at how to make pharmaceuticals, but the pharmaceuticals I make are proteins, which makes this COVID-19 work a good fit for what I do.”

Once she has the protein grown, Harcum will then purify it so that it can be used in the diagnostic tests.

Meanwhile, Bruce, Marcus and Dean are starting to lay the groundwork for simple tests that could reach large numbers of people.

“What we really need is something simple that’s a colorimetric test that can be done in under 15 minutes at the point of care,” Bruce said.

The team is working to improve upon a commercially-developed enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay, or ELISA, that checks blood samples for antibodies.

Antibodies are plentiful in blood but less so in saliva. One of the challenges in developing a saliva-based test is isolating the antibodies.

To do so, Marcus and Bruce are turning to capillary-channeled polymer fiber-based films, a technology they have been researching for years.

“Antibodies exist in this tremendously complex soup, and what you would like to be able to do is pull them out of the soup selectively in a fairly high-throughput fashion,” Marcus said.  “We can modify our fibers so that the only things that stick are the antibodies.”

Clemson researchers are working to make a prototype, but a manufacturer would be needed to produce large quantities of the test, Bruce said.

Dean, who is helping develop the optical portion of the test, said it could also be possible to use the fibers to capture the virus itself from urine. There is evidence that the virus comes out in urine after it is no longer detectable in blood, she said.

“Patients could maybe test themselves at home,” Dean said. “The same principle could be used to test waste streams. If you wanted to do population monitoring, you might be able to get a sense for what percent of the population has the virus.”

Researchers said they are finding ways to pay for the development of the tests with existing funds but that eventually they will need financial support, particularly when the semester ends next month.

“We are going to need lab supplies and graduate student salaries, and we could accelerate development by outsourcing some of the work,” Dean said. “Typically, when we launch big projects, we apply for federal funding, a process that normally takes months, if not a year or more. But time is of the essence, and we are finding ways to quickly ramp up work. What we need most now is the funds to help keep the work going.”

Congratulations to Apoorv Balwani for successfully defending his dissertation titled “Impact of Nanoparticles on the Segmental Dynamics and Transport Properties of Ionomer Nanocomposite Membranes”.  Apoorv’s advisor is Dr. Eric Davis.

Nanocomposites of perfluorosulfonic acid ionomers and silica nanoparticles play a pivotal role in large scale, grid integratable Vanadium redox flow batteries. Impregnation of these ionomers with inorganic nanoparticles has gained prominent standing in recent years due to the ease and scalability of fabrication of ionomer nanocomposites and a desirably tuned vanadium ion selectivity, although the specific mechanisms underlying the slowdown of vanadium ion transport by these inorganic moieties presently elude us. In this work, Nafion-silica nanocomposites were characterized to investigate the correlation between their aqueous transport properties and their segmental dynamics as a function of heat treatment and nanoparticle concentration in order to elucidate the mechanism of vanadium ion crossover suppression as a function of structural dynamics, hydration state and nanoparticle sequestration and loading.

The water sorption kinetics of Nafion-SiNP nanocomposites were investigated with in situ time resolved attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (tATR-FTIR) while the impact of nanoparticles on structure dynamics of the nanocomposites were characterized with neutron spin echo spectroscopy (NSE) and broadband dielectric  spectroscopy (BDS). The hydration kinetics and viscoelastic swelling behavior were seen to be highly concomitant in the tATR-FTIR studies, while investigations with NSE and BDS correlate this change in viscoelastic behavior to the molecular scale nanoparticle-ionomer interactions.

Finally, quasielastic neutron scattering is employed to quantify the vanadium ion dynamics in fouled membranes with varying degrees of silica incorporation. The results from this study enlighten the mechanism of slowdown of ionomer segments due to electrostatic ionomer-nanoparticle interactions, and present an investigative framework which can be translated across different ionomer-nanocomposite systems to characterize water-mediated transport.

Professors David Bruce and Amod Ogale received the prestigious University Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award (URSAA) from President James Clements this past year.

The award recognizes Clemson University faculty whose work has been acknowledged at the highest levels nationally and internationally. URSAAA winning faculty are lifetime appointees and participate in a yearly celebration of faculty achievements.

Dr. David Bruce, Professor and Chair of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, has been a faculty member at Clemson for 25 years.  Prof. Bruce was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being an author of a paper that has received over 1,000 citations.  The referenced work was a collaborative effort between Dr. Bruce, Dr. Jim Goodwin (former ChBE Chair), Dr. Edgar Lotero (post-doctoral fellow), and graduate students Y. Liu, D.E. Lopez, and K. Suwannakarn. The article titled “Synthesis of Biodiesel via Acid Catalysis” was published in the journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research in 2005 and has to-date received over 1850 citations. This review article is one of the most highly cited articles on the production of renewable fuels from plant based materials. While at Clemson, Dr. Bruce has taught 15 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 26 PhD and MS students, and mentored 4 post-doctoral research associates.

Dr. Amod Ogale, Dow Chemical Professor of Chemical Engineering, has served on the Clemson faculty for over 33 years. He also serves as the Director of Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF). Prof. Ogale was honored with Clemson URSAA Award for being inducted as a FELLOW of three different professional societies for his life-time achievements and contributions to the American Carbon Society (ACS), Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE), and Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). He has also won the Graffin Lecturer Award from ACS, and the SABIC Composites Educator Award from SPE.  While at Clemson, Dr. Ogales has taught 12 different undergraduate and graduate courses, graduated 41 PhD and MS students, and mentored 8 post-doctoral research associates. Prof. Ogale has published over 150 refereed papers and been the principal investigator or co-investigator on over 50 research grants worth over $ 40 million.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen-Quattlebaum Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, was named Junior Researcher of the Year.   Dr. Blenner received his Junior Researcher of the Year award from Clemson University President James P. Clements and was honored again at the College awards ceremony in October.

“The Researcher of the Year awards were created to recognize the efforts of high-achieving faculty whose work is improving society through the generation and dissemination of new knowledge. Drs. Marcus and Blenner offer wonderful examples of the impact university faculty members can have,” said Tanju Karanfil, vice president for research.

Blenner is a biotechnology expert whose innovations using metabolic engineering and synthetic biology are facilitating the conversion of low-value renewable substrates into more valuable products like biofuels, bioplastics, pharmaceuticals and omega-3 fatty acids for supplements and fish feed. His diverse research portfolio has applications in space exploration, waste utilization, covert surveillance of nuclear weapons development and much more. Blenner also is leading a statewide effort to attract more chemical engineering students with an eye toward diversifying the profession.

“I am honored and humbled to receive this award. In addition to all my research students, research mentors and collaborators, I would like to share my award with my colleagues at Clemson,” Blenner said. “Having a vibrant and intellectually stimulating working environment has been a critical driver of my achievements.”

Blenner’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies.

Anand Gramopadhye, dean of the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences, congratulated Blenner on the award.

“One of the most heartening aspects of Dr. Blenner’s work in the college is the level of student engagement he provides, not only for graduate students but also undergraduates,” Gramopadhye said. “His lab — one of the largest in the college — provides fertile ground for research and innovation at all levels.”

The Researcher of the Year awards were announced at the university’s annual Research Symposium, which brings together faculty from across the Clemson footprint to share ideas and explore the creation of interdisciplinary research teams that can tackle complex societal problems. The awards program was created with input from the Vice President of Research Faculty Advisory Board.

For the Researcher of the Year awards, each college nominated a senior faculty member and a junior faculty member who received his or her terminal degree within the past 10 years. Winners were selected by an interdisciplinary faculty committee.

Junior faculty nominees included David Jachowski from the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; Eric Morris from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities; Greg Cranmer from the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences; Sandra Linder from the College of Education; Blenner from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and Xian Lu from the College of Science.

Senior faculty nominees were John Rodgers from the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences; Will Stockton from the College of Architecture, Arts and Humanities; Catherine Mobley from the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences; Phillip Roth from the College of Business; Antonis Katsiyannis from the College of Education; Laine Mears from the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and Ken Marcus from the College of Science who was named Senior Researcher of the Year.

Graduate student Xiaohong Zhang’s research (along with her advisor Dr. Rachel Getman and collaborator Dr. Aditya Savara from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) recently made the cover of the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation.   Their journal publication titled “A Method for Obtaining Liquid-Solid Adsorption Rates from Molecular Dynamics Simulations: Applied to Methanol on Pt(111) in H₂O”, explains the new methods they developed to measure adsorption rates.

Industrial-scale chemical reactions routinely employ heterogeneous catalysts to more efficiently produce the desired chemical product(s).  In these processes, the reactants adsorb on the catalyst surface and are converted to the desired products, which are later collected and purified. Thus, adsorption is an important step in heterogeneous catalysis as it predetermines how many reactant molecules can participate in a surface reaction, which directly impacts catalyst performance. While adsorption processes are well studied in both theory and experiment for systems with gaseous reactants (gas-solid adsorption), such processes are much less understood for systems having liquid phase reactants (liquid-solid adsorption).  This is partly because of the difficulty in studying the ever-changing environment of the liquid reaction medium.

In this project, Zhang and her fellow researchers developed a method that combines molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and mathematical modeling to calculate adsorption rates for species binding to a solid catalyst surface from liquid solvent. These MD simulations explicitly model the liquid environment, enabling the trajectories of the reactant molecules to be followed as they adsorb on the catalyst surface. The mathematical modeling analyzes the essential behavior of the adsorbing process and provides quantitative studies of the adsorption rate.  This combined model supplants the prior state-of-the-art, which was derived from ideal gas collision theory.

As the new methods developed by Zhang et al. take into account intermolecular forces from the liquid reaction medium, they are up to 4 orders of magnitude more accurate than the prior state-of-the-art models, providing an example of the importance of atomistic simulations in understanding adsorption and catalysis.

Overall, their approach turned out to be more accurate than the prior methods and can be expanded to arbitrary catalyst surfaces and liquid solvents, providing a useful tool for evaluating and screening catalysts.

The authors also provide methods for accurately estimating rates of adsorption in cases where access to molecular dynamics simulations is unavailable, expanding the impact of the manuscript.

We are often faced with the unexpected in life. But no one could have foreseen the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on our students, faculty, staff, and our university.

The May 2020 commencement has been pushed to this upcoming summer or fall, our Ph.D. students are delivering their defenses via Zoom, our students and faculty are learning how to communicate and adjust to online learning, and our staff and student advisors are finding new ways to advise students electronically.

“For me, the transition to online classes has been fairly difficult,” ChBE Undergraduate, Emily Miller shared. “I learn best by being able to talk through challenging concepts with my peers and professors. While I can still do that to a certain extent, it’s not as flexible as being able to stop by a professor’s office for a quick question or as efficient as sitting in the student lounge working through UO lab reports with my group members.”

However, despite the challenges, Emily is finding a way to make things fun. “I also really miss talking to my friends throughout the day to break up my schedule. I am coping with all of this by using fun Zoom backgrounds. It’s an easy way to add a little light and laughter to a rather gloomy time!  Plus, I enjoy when my classmates (and professors) get a laugh out of them. Some of my favorites so far have been The Krusty Krab, a toilet paper aisle, and Rick Astley dancing.”

These circumstances have reminded Emily of one of her favorite quotes and she’d love to share that with our Clemson Family:

“When life gets tough and you’re faced with defeat, remember somewhere in the world a flower is popping through some concrete.” – Brad Montague

We will get through this!