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.

Group member Gary Bondarevsky has accepted a position, beginning July 6, as a Server Systems Engineer at Epic Systems Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin.
We wish him the best!
Former group member Allison Dzubak received an award for doctoral thesis excellence.
Congratulations, Allison!
Laura gave an invited talk, “Gas Separation and Catalysis in Metal-organic Frameworks,” at Boston University, as part of their Monday Colloquium Series.
While there, she met with graduate student and faculty members of the BUWIC (Boston University Women in Chemistry) to discuss the challenges that women face when pursuing a scientific career.
Group member Gary Bondarevsky has accepted a position, beginning July 6, as a Server Systems Engineer at Epic Systems Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin.
Congratulations to all! Pictured L to R, below, at the May 2 graduation ceremony: Laura Gagliardi, Allison Dzubak, Prof. Chris Cramer, and Bess Vlaisavljevich.

Some of the most recent research of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center, including that of Laura (Director) and Chris Cramer (co-PI), is highlighted on the Department of Chemistry’s News page.
Group members (postdoctoral associates Konstantinos Vogiatzis and Varinia Bernales, and former member Nora Planas) are part of a collaboration that investigated the mechanism of this bimetallic catalyst using experimental and theoretical techniques.
The work was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Group member Rebecca Carlson has received the American Chemical Society Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award.
The award includes a travel grant to attend the ACS National Meeting in Boston, Aug. 16-20. Congratulations, Becky!
Fifth-year graduate student and Gagliardi Group member Joshua Borycz has received one of nine Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships provided to the Department of Chemistry by the University.
The Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship program gives the University’s most accomplished doctorate candidates an opportunity to devote full-time efforts to outstanding research projects by providing time to finalize and write a dissertation during the fellowship year. Congratulations, Josh!
Graduate student Allison Dzubak and postdoctoral associates Samuel O. Odoh and Nora Planas performed quantum chemical calculations on some diamine-appended metal-organic frameworks which can behave as phase-change adsorbents.
This study has been featured in Nature. Great work, Allison, Sam, and Nora!
Allison Dzubak successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, “Computational Modeling of Gas Adsorption, Separation and Reactivity within Coordinatively Unsaturated Metal-Organic Framework Materials.”
Congratulations, Dr. Dzubak!
The leadership team of the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (Director Laura Gagliardi, Deputy Director Joe Hupp, Managing Director Jody Kaplan, and Scientific Coordinator Laura Fernandez) participated in the ICDC EFRC Management Review in Washington, DC.
The team made a comprehensive presentation to several program officers from the U.S. Department of Energy and a DOE-selected panel consisting of five expert peer reviewers from different institutions. Some members of the Gagliardi Group participate in the ICDC’s research.
The Gagliardi group has published three papers in Nature Chemistry this year.
This is the largest number of papers that a single group has published in this journal this year. Congratulations to the group!
Postdoc Samuel Odoh and graduate student Gary D. Bondarevsky’s exciting work on uranyl uptake by proteins has just been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Congratulations Sam and Gary!