News

On October 15, 2012, the recipients of the 2012 Innovation Challenge Award were announced. Among the 9 recipients was Dr. Andrew Tait, a recent graduate from the Straus group here at UBC Chemistry.

Background

Laboratories consume 10 times as much energy as other types of buildings on campus—from offices and classrooms to dorms. The biggest culprit? Fume hoods. Large amounts of energy are used to warm, cool and move air through fume hoods where researchers run experiments. A single fume hood can use over three times the energy of an entire household.

The Competition

Pierre Kennepohl co-edited a massive two-volume special issue of Coordination Chemistry Reviews (volume 257, Issues 1-2) - dedicated to the contributions of Prof Edward I Solomon (Stanford University) on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The issue was co-edited by Peng Chen (Cornell University), Daniel Gamelin (University of Washington) with Pierre. All three were doctoral students in Ed's labs in the late 1990's.

The front cover of the current issue of Organometallics features a paper that resulted from collaboration between recent UBC graduate Danielle Covelli (Kennepohl Group) and Cathleen Crudden (Queen’s University). The paper, entitled “Synthesis and Characterization of Cationic Peroxo Complexes,” explores the factors that control the relative stabilizations of Rh^III{O₂^2-} versus Rh^I{¹O₂} complexes. A combination of...

     On Saturday, October 20^th, 2012, over 70 chemists of all makes and models came together to host the UBC Chemistry Department’s 2^nd Annual Open House, entitled “Chemistry: Beyond the Magic”. The event, which saw over 200 visitors from the Greater Vancouver Area, included 9 different chemistry-themed demo shows, a full hands-on experiment room, and a complete C.S.I laboratory – not to mention a liquid nitrogen ice-cream parlour!

A paper entitled “Mechanism of Formation of Palladium Nanoparticles: Lewis Base Assisted, Low-Temperature Preparation of Monodisperse Nanoparticles” has been highlighted and featured as the back cover artwork in the November edition of Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The communication authored by R. Man, A. R. C. Brown, and Michael Wolf of the Chemistry Department reports for the first time how capped palladium nanoparticles are formed at low temperature, and with excellent control...

Congratulations to Professor Gregory Dake who was recently awarded a UBC “Sustainability Teaching & Learning Fellowship” with the USI Teaching & Learning Office for the 2012/13 academic year. Fellows of this program include UBC faculty members who are exceptional leaders in sustainability education, and are tasked with advancing the education future generations of sustainability leaders while following UBC’s Sustainability Academic Strategy.

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A paper entitled “Raman microspectroscopy of live cells under autophagy-inducing conditions” has been highlighted and featured as the cover artwork in the most recent issue of Analyst. The article, authored by S. Konorov, M. Jardon, J. Piret, Michael Blades (Department of Chemistry), and Robin Turner (Michael Smith Laboratories), focuses on the detection of autophagy in cells. Autophagy is a phenomenon exhibited by cells in response to various kinds of stress that allows cells to...