State of Mississippi Awarded $20 Million to Establish Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics (CEMOS)

A $20 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation will spur creative discovery and economic opportunities through Mississippi’s research universities.  The University of Mississippi will receive about $5.5 Million in funding.  Profs. Tschumper, Hammer, Delcamp, Watkins, and Jurss in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry.

With the grant funding, the state of Mississippi will establish the Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics, an inter-disciplinary, multi-institution materials research program. Mississippi State University (MSU) will serve as the project’s administrative lead, and the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) will serve as the science lead. Along with MSU and USM, Jackson State University (JSU) and the University of Mississippi (UM) will be a part of the new center, which will facilitate the development of research capabilities and educational opportunities in the growing optoelectronic, energy and biotechnology research fields.

 Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics (CEMOs)

The NSF grant comes through the organization’s EPSCoR (Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) program, which enhances the research competitiveness of states and jurisdictions by strengthening STEM capacity and capability.

“This initiative will be a tremendous benefit to the people of Mississippi and to our research universities,” MSU President Mark E. Keenum said. “Increasing our university research capabilities makes our state and our institutions more competitive, increases educational opportunities and keeps us at the forefront of emerging technologies. This new center and its focus on organic semiconductors will make existing Mississippi industries more competitive and help the state attract new companies. I am proud that MSU is playing a lead role in this endeavor.”

MSU Vice President for Research and Economic Development David Shaw is the principal investigator and project director for the grant. Sarah Morgan of USM is the science director. Co-principal investigators include Jason Azoulay from USM, Jared Delcamp from UM and Glake Hill from JSU.

“I am so pleased that the National Science Foundation selected our faculty as the science lead for this important project,” said University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney D. Bennett. “With USM’s Center for Optoelectronic Materials and Devices serving as the mission center for this grant, our internationally-renowned polymer science and engineering experts look forward to partnering with Mississippi’s other research institutions as they examine far more complicated processes than ever before. I am confident their work will impact our communities positively for many years to come.”

Prof. Jared Delcamp is co-PI on the $20 Million NSF grant to create the new Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics (CEMOS)

The Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics will develop new, unified research methodologies on organic semiconductors, an area that is vital to the advancement of diverse areas such as technology, electronics and biomedicine. To facilitate the research, the center will establish state-of-the-art research instrumentation for common use across the state and support collaborative research among institutions. The new scientific infrastructure will fill a void for the state and facilitate advanced basic and applied research.

“The University of Mississippi is pleased to be a member of this dynamic, multi-institutional team for the Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics and help develop pivotal research capabilities that will be benefit Mississippi, our nation and the world,” said UM Chancellor Jeffrey S. Vitter. “This initiative will bolster collaborative research efforts and continue pioneering STEM workforce development, which is critical for attracting high tech industry to the state.”

New optoelectronic functionality developed by center research will support the basic knowledge necessary to bring new technologies to reality, resulting in new intellectual property and potential job creation.

Profs. Nathan Hammer and Davita Watkins are participants in the new Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics (CEMOS)

“Jackson State University is elated to be a partner of this groundbreaking venture for the state of Mississippi and Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” said Dr. William B. Bynum Jr., president of Jackson State. “It is my hope that we continue to expand on these opportunities to spur economic growth for Mississippi and enhance educational opportunities for our students.”

The new center will benefit from connections to national laboratories, NSF Top 100 research universities, state development officials and representatives from industry. The grant will also fund K-14 outreach efforts aimed at creating a stronger, more diverse pipeline of STEM students.

“The grant from the National Science Foundation demonstrates the incredible capabilities housed within our research universities,” said Dr. Alfred Rankins Jr., Commissioner of Higher Education. “Working together, these capabilities are amplified. The research conducted through this grant will put Mississippi on the forefront of emerging technologies.”

See also:

http://www.jsumsnews.com/?p=37127

https://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2018/09/state-mississippi-awarded-20-million-establish-center-emergent-molecular/

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1757220

http://news.usm.edu/article/state-mississippi-awarded-20-million-establish-center-emergent-molecular-optoelectronics

http://www.mississippi.edu/pr/newsstory.asp?ID=1437

Advice from a Recent Successful Pre-Med Chemistry Major

Austin Carroll graduated from the University of Mississippi Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Spring of 2018 with a B.A. in Biochemistry degree. He was fortunate to receive interviews and acceptances from a number of medical schools including Georgetown, Tulane, the University of Mississippi, and the Mayo Clinic. He started as a first year medical student in the fall of 2018 at Georgetown University.   According to the US World News, the average acceptance rate of US medical schools was a staggering 7% in the 2017-2018 school year. This number drops even lower at prestigious, private medical schools like the Mayo Clinic, Georgetown, Emory, or Harvard where the average rate hovers between 1.4% to 2%. It thus comes as no surprise that applicants must set themselves apart and build a resume with extraordinary characteristics. As generally science-minded, type A individuals who like to accomplish specific goals, gaining these “extraordinary” experiences is no easy feat. Many students simply say “well, just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it.”  The problem with this logic is that this set path just doesn’t exist. There is no exact major, GPA, MCAT score, or collection of extracurricular activities that are guaranteed to gain one acceptance into medical school. Austin learned this over the course of his four years in college and he spent a lot of undirected and anxious energy looking for the nonexistent picture-perfect opportunities that would guarantee him an acceptance.  Below are Austin’s recommendations on how to best approach being pre-med  at the University of Mississippi.

Austin Carroll Graduated from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry in 2018 and went to Medical School at Georgetown University

“Through the process, I learned that the key lies in finding what you are passionate about and participating in opportunities that reflect this passion to your fullest ability. With regards to medical school, it is specifically important that this passion is reflected in service to other people. I’ve detailed my path here in hopes that you will use it as an example as you create your own.  I looked around anxiously my freshman year but found little to nothing until I came across a summer medical mission trip to Lima, Peru with an organization called MedLife on campus. To be honest, I had no idea what the trip would be like, but I thought it would be a good chance to see another part of the world and to participate in medicine. Once there, I immediately recognized that I had a passion for serving those in communities that faced poverty and health inequalities. When I returned to Mississippi, I saw a vast need for this type of service all around me, and I began searching for opportunities. I soon began volunteering at Oxford Medical Ministries Clinic, a free clinic for those in poverty, and spent my summers and winter breaks working as a patient transportation technician at Baptist in Jackson. I also applied for a two-year program on campus called the Catalyzing Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) program with the McLean Institute but felt almost sure that I would not be accepted. With so little previous service experience compared to others applying, why would they want me in the first place I thought? To my surprise, however, I received a call a few weeks after my interview and had been placed in the program. This is where things really began to move. With this program, I was able to learn about the effects that health care (or the lack thereof) has on the Mississippi economy and how we can use education and entrepreneurship to combat poverty.  As part of completing my CEED requirements, I was able to take the knowledge I had learned and to create a four-week summer program for 5^th-8^th graders based on chronic disease prevention, general health and wellness, financial literacy, and career readiness. I then reached out to and worked with numerous organizations across Mississippi as I taught the CEED program to fifteen students in the Mississippi Delta.

While I can only speculate, I believe it was this [CEED] opportunity that really solidified my “extraordinary” path and gave me the ability to tell my unique story of discovering and carrying out my passion for serving others. Overall, I was able to demonstrate leadership, a passion for service to those in need, and the capacity to work well with others in my personal statement and secondary essays and how those things translate into becoming a great physician. Sure, I also had the standard things that any pre-med advisor worth their salt will tell you to have like research, volunteering at the local kid’s club, a significant amount of shadowing, a study abroad experience, TAing experience, and a great GPA and MCAT. All these things on their own simply aren’t good enough anymore, though. You must have something that differentiates you and allows you to craft powerful essays because those are the things that get you an interview at Harvard or Georgetown (or insert name of “prestigious” private school).

I would also like to encourage you by saying that each of my opportunities came after being turned down numerous times by other clinics, hospitals, and volunteer organizations. The supply of willing and gifted students is greater than the demand, but I promise you the opportunities are out there. You just have to be passionate and persistent, and you will be given sufficient chances over your time in college. So don’t worry so much about choosing the major that will give you an advantage or copying the exact route of extracurriculars that your friend “X” completed to get into “Y” school. Find what you’re passionate about and then pursue opportunities that allow you to translate that passion into service to others, so when application time rolls around you will have a unique story backed up by concrete experiences to tell the admissions committee.”

Professor Delcamp Receives Major Grant from Department of Energy

OXFORD, Miss. – A highly selective $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science will continue funding a University of Mississippi professor’s research into improving solar energy technologies.

Assistant Professor Jared Delcamp

Jared Delcamp, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been awarded the grant funding through the department’s prestigious Early Career Research Program.

The award will support Delcamp, along with a post-doctoral student and a graduate student, in their research to better understand how to use high-energy visible light efficiently in relation to solar energy.

Delcamp was among 84 scientists this year from across the nation – including 54 university researchers – to receive a research grant through the program, which is in its ninth year.

“It is very exciting to me to get an Early Career Research award,” said Delcamp, who joined the UM faculty in 2013. “The division it is coming from is full of the best solar energy researchers in the U.S.

“It is a fierce competition to become part of the group, and I’m honored to be a part of it. I’m excited to start contributing research progress to the division.”

The Early Career Research Program is designed to develop the individual research programs of outstanding scientists at universities and Department of Energy national laboratories early in their careers and stimulate research careers in the disciplines supported by the department’s Office of Science.

No more than 10 years can have passed between the year the principal investigator’s Ph.D. was awarded and the year of the deadline for the proposal. A native of Monticello, Kentucky, Delcamp graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with his doctorate in chemistry in 2010.

Delcamp is the first UM faculty member to receive the award.

“We are so proud of Dr. Delcamp’s accomplishments at Ole Miss,” said Josh Gladden, UM interim vice chancellor for research and sponsored programs. “Early Career Research awards are extremely competitive and a true mark of a faculty member who has established themselves quickly on the national stage. Dr. Delcamp’s research has enormous potential, and we can’t wait to see what he will do next.”

Delcamp runs the Delcamp Group, a renewable energy research lab at the university. The lab focuses on using sunlight to separate charges across two materials, Delcamp said.

With sunlight energy being wasted in the visible region just after the ultraviolet region in a lot of solar technologies, Delcamp’s research is studying ways to stop this loss. New discoveries in this field potentially could improve dramatically technologies used in the fields of solar cells, direct solar-to-fuel devices and solar-powered batteries.

Since joining the Ole Miss faculty, Delcamp has won several awards and grants, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2015, several NSF awards and a NASA Research Infrastructure Development award.

“Dr. Delcamp’s research is addressing a major unmet need for improved efficiency in capturing and converting solar energy,” said Allyson Best, director of the university’s Office of Technology Commercialization. “The university has filed patent applications covering novel chemistry discovered in his laboratory and has received very promising feedback from potential commercial partners.”

In 2017, Delcamp received a Michael L. Edmonds New Scholar Award, presented annually to junior faculty at UM demonstrating exemplary performance in research, scholarship and/or creative achievement.

The funding allows Delcamp to focus on training the best scientists possible while making important discoveries that are being recognized internationally, he said.

“We have been atypically successful in terms of funding,” Delcamp said. “We use our funding very carefully to ensure important experiments are being done and science is being progressed responsibly.

“This level of funding being used responsibly has allowed us to focus on how to best solve a science problem rather than a funding problem. This is incredibly freeing in terms of mentoring students and getting research done.”

Delcamp’s project, titled “Controlling Interfacial Charge Separation Energetics and Kinetics,” is funded through DOE grant No. DE-SC0019131, which runs through Aug. 31, 2023.

Click Here for the original story by Shea Stewart.

Professor Cizdziel Receives Major Grant from USGS

OXFORD, Miss. – Congratulations to Dr. Cizdziel for a $220,000 grant award from the USGS to study microplastic pollution in the Mississippi River System and at Oyster Reefs in the Mississippi Sound. This is the first time that Mississippi has received this highly competitive award. In the 3 year project, Dr. Cizdziel and graduate student Austin Scircle will systematically quantify the concentrations and loads of microplastics and characterize their shapes, size distribution, and chemical composition in the Mississippi River System—a source of drinking water to over 18 million people, and at oyster reefs along the Gulf Coast. They will also determine the role microplastics play in the transport and fate of Hg species in aquatic systems by conducting fundamental studies on the uptake/leaching of methylmercury with the particles

Welcome 2018 Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Students and Scholars!

REU Students/Teachers 2018

UM Summer Chemistry Scholars

Professors Hammer and Watkins Recognized during Commencement Exercises for Research Awards

OXFORD, Miss. – Two chemistry faculty members in the University of Mississippi’s College of Liberal Arts were recognized for their creative research and scholarly activity during the 2017-18 academic year.  Prof. Davita Watkins received the Dr. Mike L. Edmonds New Scholar Award for junior faculty and Prof. Nathan Hammer received the College of Liberal Arts Award for Research, Scholarship and Creative Achievement for senior faculty.