A theoretical study was recently performed by Gagliardi group postdoc and Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC) scientific coordinator Varinia Bernales, within a collaboration of the members of the ICDC, on the NU-1000 metal-organic framework (MOF).
This study resulted in a major achievement – the discovery that the adsorption processes of glucose and cellobiose on the NU-1000 MOF occur at the hydrophobic sites. Until now, only enzymes have demonstrated the ability to selectively bond the β-linked dimer of glucose (cellobiose), while completely rejecting the bonding of glucose itself. Great work, Varinia!
A collaborative team of researchers that includes Laura, along with Eray Aydil and Chris Leighton from the Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science (CEMS), have received a research grant to explore pyrite iron disulfide as a low-cost solution for renewable electricity.
This team was one of four at the University of Minnesota to receive a $717,360 grant from the Institute on the Environment’s Renewable Electricity for Minnesota’s Future grant program.
Laura is the recipient of the 2016 Bourke Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, honored for her contributions to quantum chemistry.
This award honors the top scientists in their fields for the originality of their research, the impact of their research, quality of their publications, patents or software, innovation, professional standing, and collaborations and teamwork.
Graduate student Chad Hoyer is one of ten recipients of the Department of Chemistry’s 2016-17 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships (DDF).
The DDF program provides a stipend, tuition, and special travel grants to its awardees. Congratulations, Chad!
Collaborative research led by Laura and Chris Cramer has been selected for publication in a special American Chemical Society (ACS) virtual issue on atomic layer deposition (ALD).
Ph.D. students Liam Wilbraham of Chimie ParisTech, France and Ági Szécsényi of Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, join the group as visiting scholars during Spring 2016.
They will collaborate with Gagliardi Group members. Welcome to Liam and Ági!
The Gagliardi and Cramer groups recently elucidated the mechanism of a single-site nickel catalyst synthesis and the catalytic activity thereof in an article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
A collaborative team within the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center presented an approach called nanocasting to provide a more thermally stable scaffold for MOF-based catalytic metal sites, making them suitable for high temperature catalysis.
Laura was one of the contributors to the U.S. Department of Energy: Winter 2015 Frontiers in Energy Research newsletter article, “Perspectives on Women in Energy Science.”
Collaborative work between the Gagliardi group, Cummins group of MIT, and Professor Nocera of Harvard University led to the isolation and characterization of a novel linear Co-O-Co core encapsulated inside a cryptand ligand. The work was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in an article entitled “Pushing MOM to the Right: A Cryptand-Encapsulated Co-O-Co Unit.”
Joshua Borycz, graduate student, received a separate $600 travel award as part of his Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF).
He will use these funds to travel to the University of California, Berkeley, where he will attend the annual all-hands meeting of the Center for Gas Separations (CGS), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) in which Minnesota participates. He will present work on CO2 capture in MOFs (metal-organic frameworks), which is directly relevant to the mission of the CGS. Congratulations (again), Josh!
As part of the meeting, the DOE held a competition in which each EFRC Director was invited to nominate a graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher to present a talk about their EFRC research.
Samuel Odoh was one of 16 finalists – and one of three winners! – for his talk, “Metal-Organic Framework Nodes as Nearly Ideal Supports for Molecular Catalysts: NU-1000 and UiO-66-supported Iridium Complexes for Ethylene Hydrogenation and Dimerization.” Congratulations, Sam!
A piece titled “Supercomputer fuels research to limit carbon emissions,” features the work of Laura and the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute’s Mesabi supercomputer.
Laura, Jody Kaplan, postdocs Varinia Bernales and Samuel Odoh, and graduate student Joshua Borycz attended the U.S. Department of Energy’s biannual Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) Principal Investigators’ meeting in Washington, D.C., on October 25-27, 2015.
Laura is the Director of Minnesota’s EFRC, the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC).
The Gagliardi and Cramer groups met in a friendly bowling competition at Memory Lanes in Minneapolis (thanks to group member Andy Sonnenberger for organizing this).
The Gagliardi group won, as always! (Notice Laura accepting the trophy from Chris.)
Laura, along with group members Rebecca (Becky) Carlson, Varinia Bernales, and Kostantinos (Kostas) Vogiatzis, attended the 250th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition in Boston, where they delivered multiple talks on their current research.
Laura attended the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Nanoporous Materials and their Applications, where she gave a talk on Metal-Organic Framework Nodes as Nearly Ideal Supports for Molecular Catalysts.
Group member Samuel Odoh, in collaboration with Prof. Chris Cramer of Minnesota and members of the Minnesota-based Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC), performed computational characterization of “Metal-organic framework nodes as nearly ideal supports for molecular catalysts: NU-1000- and UiO-66-supported iridium complexes.”
A video describing the reaction occurring at the material was produced by group member Josh Borycz and Minnesota Supercomputing Institute’s Ben Lynch.
Group member Chad Hoyer was one of four winners of the University of Minnesota’s 2015 Graduate Student Research Symposium Beaker & Bunsen awards.
Group member Becky Carlson was one of four runners-up. Congratulations, Chad and Becky! We are very proud of you.
