With so much attention focused on the achievements of our professors and their graduate students, it’s easy to forget about the burgeoning undergraduate population that is making a big impact within UGA’s chemistry department. A culture of research has spread through a collection of our undergraduate students, with many having gained recognition for their dogged efforts in the lab. This year six students presented their research at the annual CURO symposium and one was chosen to speak at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. I sat down with a few of these students to discuss their interests and future plans, and what I found was a lively group with much hope for the future. The first undergraduate student I spoke with was Richard Weimar, who has worked in Professor Tina Salguero’s lab for the past three semesters. He’s known for being in the lab as much as any of the graduate students, and he likes it that way. One of his many projects is a collaboration with Professor Mark Abbe from the Lamar Dodd School of Art that deals with the analysis of pigments from ancient Roman statues (http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/collaborative-uga-research-project-orpheus-sculpture-2013/). He described this project as “mind-bogglingly multidisciplinary. You have the chemistry side of everything, but then on the other side you’ve got the extremely diverse humanities—identifying a pigment, and then understanding its significance.” When I asked what type of research excited him, he let out a fond sigh and said one word: “synthesis.” Happily, this semester he has been synthesizing bismuth tungstate nanosheets, which gives him the satisfaction of “figuring out how the system is behaving. We’ve got some really unusual data, and seeing the pieces fall together and it making sense, I love that. It’s so much fun trying to figure out the puzzle pieces.” He’s received several honors based on his research: he presented a poster in the 2012 ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia on the formation of nanosheets, won the Library Research Award for his work in pigment analysis, gave a speech on his pigment research at the 2013 CURO Symposium, and won one of this year’s Undergraduate Student of the Year awards from the Northeast Georgia section of the ACS. Most recently, Richard was highlighted as one of UGA’s “Amazing Students” () Sharing the Undergraduate Student of the Year award is Kasey Darley, who has been working in Professor Shanta Dhar’s lab for the past two years. While two years affords a variety of projects, her main focus has been on “making nano-therapeutic platforms for ischemic brain injury.” She has presented this research at both the 2013 CURO Symposium and the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. A fan of participating in conferences and discussing her research, she also spoke at the 2012 CURO Symposium and the Southeast Undergraduate Research Conference. She loves the free-thinking environment that Professor Dhar provides. “With Dr. Dhar you’re able to not only gain the experience of so many techniques, but you’re also able to think on your own, and that’s highly encouraged in our lab: to think on your own, to ask questions, and to come up with new ideas.” After graduation, she will spend the summer in Valdosta working for the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program. Kasey will return to UGA in the fall as a graduate student in the chemistry department. Another student, Coleman Schwartz, who has been working with Professor Geoff Smith for the past three semesters, spends his time in a make-shift lab on the roof of the chemistry building, analyzing atmospheric samples for small particulates. He gave me a tour of the roof-top lab, showing me his filter-pump setup among the endless boxes of forgotten glassware covered in thick slabs of dust. As he talked about his research, he grew increasingly impassioned about his work. “What’s been most exciting to me is actually getting to do real science. I’ve been learning about it in classes for such a long time and it sounds good in theory, but it is a lot more significant when you’re watching things happen in front of your eyes.” He says he’s enjoyed the opportunity to work with the graduate students, who provided him with much support and encouragement. “When I joined this lab I didn’t know I wanted to go to grad school, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do after college.” Next semester, Coleman will be joining the graduate population at the University of Washington, where he is enthusiastic about the research environment he encountered during visitation. Grant Moody, who has been working in Professor Gary Douberly’s lab for a year and a half, studies conformations of biomolecules through helium nanodroplet spectroscopy. He has the unique position of doing both experimental and theoretical experiments, manning the complicated pump systems and computing expected molecular structures. To him “the most exciting thing is when you can match up your calculations to experimental data. It’s like, ‘I’m actually seeing this and I actually expected this.’” He gave a talk on this work at the 2013 CURO Symposium. After graduation, he plans to attend medical school. Finally, I spoke with two junior students, Callan Brownfield and Robert Ashley, who both joined Professor Richard Morrison’s lab last summer. The pair has been working together on decarboxylation reactions of amino acids and gave a joint presentation on the research at the 2013 CURO Symposium. Not only did the pair start research at the same time and work on the same project, but they both have similar plans for the future—they want to go to medical school. Both students are excited to do chemical, rather than biological, research, as many pre-med students do. For Robert, “something I like specifically about organic chemistry research [is that] you can see physical properties change. I can see the results.” And although Callan doesn’t plan to become a chemist, she sees an intimate connection between her current research and her medical future. “It’s cool that the work I’m doing now could be applicable to my future goals down the road. They’re so different, but they’re so fundamentally connected.” Already having fulfilled their mandatory research requirements as juniors, both will continue working in the lab during their senior year. Although the students I interviewed work on different aspects of chemistry and have different plans for the future, they all have one thing in common: they enjoy research. The act of discovery and hands-on understanding is deeply satisfying and, as Robert put it, they get the excitement of “doing something that not many people get to do—doing something new.” There is no doubt that all of these hard-working and dedicated students will continue along the path of discovery wherever their careers take them. by Jenna Bilbrey
