The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a call to action for many within the scientific community. Long-time collaborators, Lloyd Smith, professor of chemistry, and Nathan Sherer, associate professor of molecular virology and oncology with the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research and Institute for Molecular Virology, set out, along with their students, to contribute to the global understanding of SARS-CoV-2 by adapting the Smith group’s Hybridization Purification of RNA-protein complexes followed by Mass Spectrometry (HyPR-MS) technology to the study of SARS-CoV-2.
Why Gifts Matter
Gellman lab works on ways to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells
Prof. Samuel Gellman and his group have been working on strategies to prevent infection by pathogenic viruses for several years. They are now using that work as a launching pad for research on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Atmospheric chemists join battle against COVID-19
When COVID-19 first hit, many people hastily adopted work-from-home protocols. Trips outside were limited to grocery runs; suddenly, fruits and vegetables became synonymous with ramen and ready-to-eat food choices. Social lives compressed to the six inches of mobile phone screens. Facetime Fridays with steaming cups of coffee, arguably with three too many shots of espresso, became routine. Today, even with the pandemic running rampant, things are very different. Slowly people are participating in more in-person activities; however, often without a complete understanding of the risks.
Postdoc starts world-wide literature discussions
Morgan Howe, a new addition to Sam Pazicni’s group at the UW–Madison chemistry department, began her postdoctoral fellowship with a bang! She initiated a popular online literature discussion group, filling a need for chemists across the world to connect and learn virtually.
Stuck at home under COVID-19 restrictions, undergraduate researchers find silver lining
In early March, I was sitting in the Union eating stir-fry, browsing through the multitude of COVID-19 articles. I spent the next hour concerned by something strange in my bowl when I really should have been concerned by the rising number of cases.
Chemistry instructional tower takes shape
The long-awaited, much-needed new chemistry tower, which will serve a growing population of undergraduate chemistry students, is rapidly nearing completion.
Institute for Chemical Education takes chemistry camps online
The Department of Chemistry’s Institute for Chemical Education offered free summer chemistry camps online, continuing a four-decade-long tradition of education, despite disruptions caused by the pandemic.
Thesis-writing program shares joy of scientific research
Several years and tens of thousands of words into writing their doctoral dissertation, you’d think few graduate students would sign on to write even more. And yet over the last decade, dozens of University of Wisconsin–Madison students have done exactly that. They’ve chosen to add one more chapter to their thesis, distilling years of hard-won scientific knowledge into prose understandable by the broader public, something rarely found in a dense document typically written for other scientists.
Grad Spotlight: Princess Merenini
Princess Merenini, a first-year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, was one of the 2019 Pei Wang Fellowship award recipients. The Pei Wang Fellowship honors the late Pei Wang (Ph.D. 1952, chemistry) by gifting this award to honorable graduate students at UW–Madison. Merenini is an international student from Nigeria. She moved to the United States in 2016 to pursue her undergraduate education at Savannah State University (SSU). Growing up in Nigeria, Merenini was taught that there were only four “prestigious” career paths: medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy.
Summer Research Snapshot: Graduate Student Leslie Rank
When you imagine Madison in the summer, it’s easy to think of a beautiful sunset at the Terrace, a picnic at Concerts on the Square, or a leisurely morning at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, …