Message from the Department Head

Welcome to another edition of ChemDawg Quarterly! It was an exciting fall semester. National Chemistry Week was a big win for the Department of Chemistry. Please take the time to renew your association with the department. When close by, come see us. If far away, catch up online. Wherever you are, please take the opportunity to give us your thoughts on our progress; send us updates on your accomplishments, and please consider supporting your department and fellow ChemDawgs. Hail State Chemistry!

Upcoming Events

January 24-25 - Southeast Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC) - Tuscaloosa, AL
February 21 - Seminar - Dr. Joe Gilroy - University of Western Ontario
March 22-26 - National Meeting of the America Chemical Society - Philadelphia, PA
April 17 - Seminar - Dr. Haibo Ge - Purdue University

National Chemistry Week 2019

National Chemistry Week kicked off this year on Oct. 19th with the annual NCW Tailgate! It was full of demos on the big stage, a kids table with interactive experiments and crafts on the side, and an abundancy of fun! It would not be able to be as successful as it was if it was not for the SMACS team. The demos drew in a crowd of anywhere from 30 to 70 people for each show! It mainly attracted children who might now be interested in chemistry!

ChemDawg crew at NCW Tailgate

Make-a-Cloud with liquid nitrogen

This year was the most successful National Chemistry Tailgate yet, everything went smoothly and we had a great crowd!

– Ruby Hall, SMACS Treasurer

Touching a cloud

Future chemistry majors

Elephant toothpaste

The week continued with more events. Sunday was spent decorating Hand with balloons, streamers, and stars! The sweetest bake sale was held on Monday with an ample amount of goodies. Demos on the Drill, held on Tuesday, attracted many student to see what was smoking or being set on fire! From elephants toothpaste to blowing up a trashcan full of ping pong balls, there was always something to stop students in their tracks to watch some live action chemistry!

Decorating Hand

Bake sale

Demos on the Drill Field

Ping-pong ball explosion

Wednesday saw the National Chemistry Week cookout and Dunk Your Professor took place in front of the Union. Students passing by could grab lunch, as well as dunk their chemistry or lab professor! Many students just stood by to watch them get dunked. Then on Thursday, students could take their chance at throwing darts at certain elements to win a prize. This also served as a way to get the word out about our escape room for that coming weekend! Friday was spent prepping our escape room, which was the perfect end to National Chemistry Week!

Dunk your professor

Dunked

Periodic Table of the Elements dartboard

The Escape Room

On Saturday and Sunday, National Chemistry Week was wrapped up with the very first Escape Room held in the Hand Chemical Laboratory! Over 100 tickets were sold for students, friends, and family, to have their shot at escaping from the mad scientist! The escape room was put entirely on by SMACS members, and the hard work definitely paid off!

“It was very successful event, that sold over 100 tickets! This was something that the Chemistry Department has never done before, and for the first time, it went extremely well!” - Olivia Murtaugh, SMACS President Elect

Charles Pittman 80th Birthday Symposium

Dr. Charles Pittman joined the faculty at MSU in 1983 and retired in 2007.

Throughout Pittman’s career, he directed more than 40 Ph.D. students, 25 masters- level students, and 40 postdoctoral fellows. Pittman developed the research area known as metal-containing polymers. He is the co-founder of the Journal of Inorganic and Organic Polymers and Materials and the book series Macromolecules Containing Metal and Metal-Like Elements.

Pittman is a contributing editor for numerous journals and is the coeditor of 18 books. He remains active today with 10 publications this year to date. Pittman boasts over 29,000 citations, with nearly 10,000 citations over the last four years – approximately 10 citations a day.

Born in Rahway, NJ, in 1939, Pittman earned his bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College in chemical engineering in 1961. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Pittman then earned his Ph.D. in 1964 in organic chemistry from Pennsylvania State University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 1965 with George Olah, winner of the 1994 Chemistry Noble Prize. Olah cited Pittman’s work from in his Nobel Award documents.

During his MSU career, Pittman assisted the private sector with commercial development, aiding the economic growth in Mississippi. He developed three patents on hydroxylamine-based plasma etch debris cleaners which led to more than $100 million a year in business in the semiconductor industry.

At age 80, Pittman maintains his dedication to his craft by continuing active collaborations around the world while also mentoring graduated students and fellows on the MSU campus.

Dennis Smith, professor and head of MSU’s chemistry department, said “Pittman’s prolific publication record and pioneering production in many areas of chemistry and materials science is the stuff of legend.” “Dr. Pittman has devoted his life to science for nearly 60 years,” Smith said. “This symposium is dedicated to him in recognition of his unprecedented achievements in research, his famous rigor and high expectations in training of students and the mentoring of his colleagues.”

Miguel Munoz joins as Associate Professor

Miguel Munoz, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Dr. Munoz joined the faculty of the Center of Chemical Research at the Autonomous University of Morelos in Mexico (1999) as Research-Professor (U.S. Assistant Professor equivalent). In 2010 he was promoted to Professor-Investigador Titular C (U.S. full Professor with Tenure equivalent) where he remains today administering a very productive laboratory exploring Main Group Complexes and their catalytic activity for a range of important polymerization and other industrially relevant reactions. In addition, he was Visiting Professor at the Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry at Toulouse, France working with Prof. Michel Etienne (2012).

“Miguel brings a rich and diverse array of chemistry to our program which will no doubt be highly competitive and collaborative to our program.”, says Prof. Edwin Webster, inorganic and computational chemistry expert at MSU and Associate Head of Chemistry.

Dr. Munoz has co-authored 81 refereed publications, graduated six Ph.D., six M.S., and ten BSc. students. He serves on the Scientific and Technological Council of CONACY-Mexico and he is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI- Mexico, Level 3 out of 3).

In addition to his accomplishments as an international researcher, Miguel joins his wife and children (2018 MSU Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Dr. Virginia Montiel- Palma) and immediately establishes an invaluable team for the promotion of our Department and graduate program to students and collaborators from Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries.

Prof. Dennis Smith, Head of Chemistry states, “Dr. Munoz represents an immediate impact in teaching and research maturity with demonstrated success in mentoring students and faculty. His teaching experience alone is a much needed drop- in for Main Group and catalyst chemistry not represented currently and his polymerization expertise is a special gift to our materials chemistry programs.”

Barn Party

The 3rd annual Barn Party by SMACS was held on Nov. 21st. Food, games, a fire pit, and trivia were held despite a light rain that moved in that evening. Zoe Fokakis, current SMACS president gave a presentation summarizing the amount of money spent, raised, and community members engaged for the 2019 Fall semester. The NCW 2019 video was also unveiled for the first time. The Barn Party serves as a post- National Chemistry Week get together to celebrate the success of all those involved.

Alumni Spotlight: Verna B. Baron

Originally from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean (not to be confused with the Dominican republic), Verna graduated from Mississippi State’s Department of Chemistry with a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in synthetic organic chemistry). For the past few years she has mainly be focused on teaching chemistry courses, however she is ready to get back into research again. She currently is a chemistry professor at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Her advice about studying chemistry is, “Chemistry can be a challenge but it is not impossible once you are willing to work hard. The hard work will certainly be worth it. Embrace you failures and struggles, as you learn more from them than individual successes”.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Chanaka Navarathna

Chanaka M. Navarathna’s work is primarily focused on engineering exotic carbonaceous adsorbent composites with metal oxide nanoparticles and metal- organic frameworks for water remediation. He has extensively involved himself with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), utilizing it for the study of sorption mechanisms. The recent research work that he has conducted on “Magnetite Nanoparticles Dispersed on Douglas Fir Biochar for Phosphate Sorption” got featured in the ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Currently, his research interests are centered on addressing global environmental issues such as oil spill cleanup, microplastics and trace perfluoro compound analysis and mitigation. Driven by the motto “Be all you can be”, Chanaka has dedicated himself wholeheartedly to research and also helps in mentoring undergraduate students on research techniques. He serves as the instrument teaching assistant for the Department carrying out trainings and troubleshooting of analytical instrumentation. Upon his graduation, he plans to pursue a post doc in the field of environmental analytical chemistry, after which he wishes to lead a research team of his own as an accomplished academic in the arena.

Undergraduate Student Spotlight: Olivia Murtagh

Olivia Murtagh is a senior chemistry major with an American Chemical Society concentration. Upon graduation, Olivia plans on attending graduate school to obtain a PhD. in either inorganic or biological chemistry and subsequently pursue a career in academia. At MSU, Olivia is doing research in the Emerson Lab, where she is performing kinetic and biophysical studies on the di-manganese protein AurF. This summer, Olivia completed a ten week Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity at the University of Georgia, where she focused on the crystallization of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase.

Olivia is very active in the chemistry department, where she is the current President-Elect and former Vice President of Mississippi State’s Student Members of the American Chemical Society (SMACS) as well as a general chemistry tutor. She states that her favorite undergraduate experience was attending the ACS National Meeting in San Diego this August, where she presented research and was present to receive the ChemLuminary awarded to SMACS.