I
Winter 2012, Volume V
Seasons
Greetings!
his holiday season I ‘celebrated’ my 50th
birthday by running the 50th annual JFK
50 miler. While that distance was probably
a bit too long, it did give me the opportunity to think about the present and future of
Hopkins Chemistry. Fortunately, this was
inspirational as this past year has been a remarkably good one with many outstanding
occurrences, some of which are described in
this newsletter.
For example, our faculty continues to grow
and prosper. Steve Rokita has joined our
faculty this past summer. Congratulations
to J.D. Tovar who has been promoted to
Associate Professor with tenure! Our junior
colleagues, Art Bragg and Tyrel McQueen
are off to fantastic starts with state-of-theart laboratories and active research groups.
We are now in the midst of a junior faculty
search for a new synthetic chemist.
Chemistry has improved its resources with
new x-ray diffraction and mass spectroscopy facilities. We have also added new courses to our undergraduate curriculum and will
soon be moving into new teaching labs.
The future does indeed look bright! If you
are interested in a run or have news that you
would like to see included in the newsletter,
please let me know.
T
Happy Holidays!
Undergraduate Teaching Labs to Open Fall 2013
T
he new Undergraduate Teaching Lab
was conceived to complete the existing
Mudd Hall (Biology) by creating a new face
to gently embrace Bufano/sculpture Gardens to the north. As is shown, the northern
façade will be entirely glazed to enhance
views of the wooded hillside from the labs
and allow maximum northern daylight to
enter the labs. At the center of the complex
a new student commons with coffee bar will
be created on the rooftop of the existing lecture hall to serve as a focal point for interaction and group identity for the natural sciences community. Undergraduate teaching
laboratories for Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience and BioPhysics will
take place on the lower three
floors of the building. About 1/2
of the lab space is dedicated to
chemistry.
The 105,000 square foot new
building will be a pragmatic
and robust tool in the service
of chemical research and teaching in the natural sciences, with
modern equipment and systems.
Particular attention has been
paid to ensure that the building will be a
model for low energy usage with a benchmark target set of using half of the energy
of the average of the existing science buildings on campus. The guiding principals
will create a building suitable for modern
life sciences based research and able to accommodate evolutions in pedagogy and research over time; while consistent with the
advancement of learning.
The named donor for the building has not
yet been announced, but opportunities still
exist for named physical, inorganic, and organic laboratories that range from $250,000
to $1 million.
t was with great personal pleasure that
we learned that President Daniels recommended to the Trustees that J. D. Tovar be
promoted to Associate Professor with tenure,
effective July 1, 2012. J. D. has been and continues to be an outstanding colleague and we
were all delighted to hear this fantastic news.
J. D. Tovar is originally from Waterloo, Iowa. He completed his undergraduate training in chemistry at the University
of California, Los Angeles where he performed research with
Julius Glater and Menachem Elimelech in
Civil Engineering and
later with Yves Rubin
in Chemistry. He pursued doctoral studies
in organic chemistry
under the guidance
of Timothy M. Swager at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. His thesis research focused
primarily on the development of new synthetic methods to
construct large thiophene-based polycyclic
aromatics. Postdoctoral studies of self-assembling biomaterials with useful electrical properties were pursued in the Department of Materials Science at Northwestern
University with Samuel I. Stupp. While
in Evanston, he also worked with Mark
C. Hersam to probe the electronic properties of single molecules and organic nanostructures chemisorbed onto silicon surfaces under ultra-high vacuum conditions.
His research group at Johns Hopkins examines energy transport through synthetically
complex organic semiconductors, with interests in small molecule, polymeric and bioelectronic supramolecular systems. J. D. also
has a joint appointment in the Materials Science & Engineering Department at Hopkins.
A particularly exciting advance from the
Tovar group (supported by a grant from
the DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences) was highlighted as a recent cover
article: Advanced Materials 2011, 23, 5009.
A facile technique was reported to prepare
globally aligned arrays of self-assembled
peptide nanostructures within macroscopic
hydrogels starting from a solution of peptide molecules with embedded π-conjugated
oligomers. Pi-conjugated materials are revolutionizing many areas of contemporary
technology ranging from flexible displays,
batteries and solar cells. The process reported here involves the simultaneous trigger-
ing of the assembly of individual molecules
into microns-long nanofibrils with diameters under 10 nm and subsequent alignment of these nanofibrils along the length of
the macroscopic structure (mm-cm dimensions). The alignment of the π-stacked conduits within these macrostructures, called
“noodles”, was verified with polarized optical microscopy. The alignment of π-electron
oligomers within noodle macrostructures
leads to global directionality among the
internal π-stacked chromophores, and they demonstrated marked photophysical
differences
between the hydrogels derived from randomly oriented nanostructures and
those generated via this
noodle producing method.
The Tovar group and their
collaborators also demonstrated the anisotropic
electrical properties of the
organic
semiconductors
buried within the noodles
lead to an order-of-magnitude enhancement of hole mobilities along the length
of the macrostructures. The suitability of
π-conjugated organic semiconducting materials for biological integration has been less
established, and the present materials also
offer the prospects for biocompatibility and
function under physiological conditions.
The electronic properties of these materials
suggest that they will be exciting new structures for merging biological systems with
common electronic devices as relevant for
interfacing with photosynthetic organisms
or even for spinal cord and cardiac repair.
Related research efforts in the Tovar
group include the links between unusual aromaticity and charge transport, photochromic polymers, and selfassembling
bioelectronics
materials.
For additional details of this scholarly
research see: http://www.jhu.edu/~chem/
tovar/index.html
C
ongratulations to Chris Falzone who
was recently promoted to Teaching
Professor! Chris received his undergraduate degree at Washington University in St.
Louis and his Ph.D. at Clarkson University. He was a post-doctoral associate at
the University of Akron and at Penn State.
Chris joined Hopkins Chemistry in 2007
as an Associate Research Professor and has
already taught Organic Chemistry to thousands of Hopkins undergraduate students.
Working with members of the Premedical
Advisory Committee from Biology and
Biophysics, he has designed a new option
for students interested in the second semester of Organic Chemistry, entitled Biochemical Organic Chemistry, that will be offered
for the first time in the Spring of 2013. This
course will modernize and accelerate the
teaching of organic chemistry by breaking
with the traditional model of Orgo II and offer undergraduate students real choices that
are at the same time integrated with more
advanced courses such as biochemistry.
Chris has also been an outstanding departmental citizen and representative serving
on several Hopkins committees and departmental oral and thesis exams. We are indeed
very fortunate to have Chris as a colleague
and are delighted to celebrate with him in
receiving this well deserved promotion.
A
gilent Technologies, Inc. and Johns
Hopkins University Department of
Chemistry announced the opening of the
new Eastern United States Center of Excellence for Single-Crystal X-Ray Diffraction
on the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins
University. The center is equipped with Agilent’s high-performance dual-source SuperNova X-ray diffractometer with Atlas CCD
detector, and CrysAlisPro software for automated structure determination. Dr. Maxime Siegler will oversee the new facility.
S
teve Rokita joined our faculty in June
of 2012. Steve received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at UC-Berkeley and
completed his Ph.D. with Chris Walsh at
MIT. Steve completed postdoctoral work
at Rockefeller University with Tom Kaiser
and held faculty positions at SUNY-Stonybrook and the University of Maryland College Park before joining us here at Hopkins.
Professor Rokita’s research program is
united by a common interest in describing the structure and activity of biological macromolecules through their essential chemical reactivity. The methods
of organic synthesis, physical organic
chemistry, protein and nucleic acid chemistry, biochemistry and molecular biology are applied to questions on enzyme
catalysis and nucleic acid modification.
Current research efforts in the Rokita
labs include enzymatic dehalogenation,
DNA photochemistry and electron transfer. A long standing collaboration exists
between the Rokita and Karlin laboratories on metal dependent recognition and
oxidation of nucleic acid polymers. Steve
will contribute to the teaching of organic
and biochemistry courses and laboratories. He is also an active participant in the
Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) program. For more details see: http://www.
chemistry.jhu.edu/Rokita/biography.html
T
yrel McQueen received his B.S. in
Chemistry at Harvey Mudd College, followed by a M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton with
Bob Cava. After postdoctoral studies with
Dan Nocera at MIT, Tyrel joined our faculty
in the Fall of 2010 with a joint appointment
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He is also a principal investigator in the
DoE supported Institute for Quantum Matter at Hopkins and has an active research
group with laboratories in the Bloomberg Center of Physics and Astronomy.
The McQueen laboratory is focused on the
discovery of new phenomena through the
design and synthesis of new materials; more
specifically, they aim to achieve the next
generation of materials revolutions by combining the development of new synthetic
techniques with advances in measurement
and analysis methods to discover, design,
and control materials with exotic electronic
states of matter. Specific interests include:
(i) Discovering novel materials with favorable physical (electrical, magnetic, optical)
properties; (ii) Elucidating the structureproperty relationships in these new compounds, especially with regard to strong
electron correlations and their influence on
the electrical, magnetic, and optical properties through coupling of charge, orbital,
and spin degrees of freedom; and (iii) Pushing our understanding of how to design
better materials with specific functions.
An exciting recent advance from the McQueen laboratory was published in Nature
Materials, vol. 11, pg. 493 (2012), and highlighted in Science Magazine. They reported
the discovery of a new class of materials
that provide unprecedented access to, and
Tyrel was recently honored with a 2012 David and Lucille Packard fellowship for Science and Engineering. To my knowledge,
this is the first time that a faculty member
in our department has ever received this
prestigious fellowship. The funding will
enable Tyrel and his research group to explore creative high risk experiments. It
will be exciting to see what fascinating
new science emerges from this fellowship.
Details of current research areas can be
found at: http://occamy.chemistry.jhu.edu/
Recent Gifts to the Department
The Department of Chemistry thanks you
for your generous support!
John E. Basinski
Randolph Barton, Jr.
Dennis P. Carroll
Marc J. Chapdelaine
Anthony L. Dent
Joseph B. DiGiorgio
Glenn E. Fulmer
Thomas E. Gompf
Todd L. Graybill
Charles P. Kulier
Kunichi Matsushita
Foil A. Miller
O
riginally from Michigan, Art Bragg
majored in chemistry and physics as an
undergraduate at Albion College. He studied the ultrafast dynamics of size-selected,
molecular and cluster anions as a graduate
student with Dan Neumark (UC Berkeley),
and went on to investigate molecular-level
details of solvation dynamics in bulk solutions as a post-doc with Ben Schwartz
(UCLA). Art joined Chemistry at John Hopkins in the fall of 2010 and represents our
first faculty with expertise in ultrafast spectroscopic methods (time-resolved on time
scales down to 10-14 seconds). He now has
an active team of graduate researchers with
laser and wet laboratories in Remsen Hall.
control over, emergent electronic behavior Dr. Bragg and his research group are intervia the tunability of molecular magnetism -- ested in the spectroscopy and ultrafast dymore specifically, magnetism of metal oxide
clusters. Geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets are materials in which unpaired
electrons are placed on lattices in which it
is impossible to simultaneously satisfy all
magnetic interactions between electrons,
such as the triangular lattice. The result is a
large degeneracy of electronic states that has
been predicted to result in the emergence of namics of poly-conjugated molecules that
a number of new states of matter, such as the are used increasingly in material applica‘spin-liquid’ state, in which there is quantum tions. One of his group’s research directions
entanglement over macroscopic distances. uses a combination of spectroscopic techThe McQueen laboratory discovered that niques to interrogate the structural properby localizing the unpaired, magnetic elec- ties and dynamics of excited and charged
trons on small Mo3O13 clusters rather than states localized on π-conjugated polymers.
individual ions (e.g. Cu2+), first-order Jahn– These polymers are common building
Teller instabilities and orbital ordering are blocks for organic-based solar cells, and a
prevented, ensuring the large degeneracy of goal of the Bragg Lab’s work is to characterstates persists to very low temperatures, at ize how relationships between structure of
least 0.05 K. This allows for a non-trivial these states and their dynamics underlie mamagnetic state to form, most probably one terial function. An example of this work was
based on the formation of singlet pairs, a published recently in J. Phys. Chem. Lett.
so-called condensed valence-bond ground 2012, 3, 1321, where Bragg and his students
state. These results link magnetism on metal reported the use of time-resolved resonantclusters to geometric magnetic frustration in Raman spectroscopy to investigate the picoextended solids, allowing the unparalleled second conformational relaxation of regiochemical control and tunability familiar to regular poly(3-hexylthiophene) in solution
chemists to be applied in the search for col- after photoexcitation. This work reported
lective, emergent electronic states of matter. spectra of vibrations within excited polymer
segments and also used variations in spectral dynamics to identify features that are
likely to be associated with structural motifs that confine polymer excitations within
specific regions of the extended polymer
framework. Current work continues to decipher spectral correlations with excited-state
structure of polymers and oligomers in solution and is also examining the characteristics of transient states generated in aggregated polymers following light absorption. All
of this work aims to elucidate fundamental
mechanisms by which absorbed solar energy is transferred within organic materials.
Other research in the Bragg Lab uses ultrafast time-resolved absorption to investigate
inter- and intramolecular energy-transfer
pathways that underlie photo-cyclic ringclosure reactions of conjugated molecules.
A fundamental goal of this work is to examine the details of ultrafast non-adiabatic
relaxation processes that direct ring closure from photo-excited molecular states
and to determine how these processes are
influenced by variations in chemical environment. A second objective is to flesh
out dynamical considerations that should
be heeded in order to utilize these processes effectively in synthetic schemes for
making useful conjugated materials (e.g.
graphene-like ribbons), since reactions involving relatively complex reactants will be
influenced by somewhat different structural
constraints for any given ring-closure step.
Art has also played a key role in revising
the Physical Chemistry Lab course and
has developed an entirely new graduate
course in time-dependent spectroscopy.
For additional details of the scholarly advances in the Bragg research group, see:
http://www.jhu.edu/chem/bragg/
James E. Oliver
M. Jane Phillips
Gerald J. Putterman
Ronald E. Pyle
Eleanor A. Samworth
Roosevelt Shaw
Carlyle B. Storm
Yuji Takahata
Joseph F. Testa
Kelly A. Van Houten
Robert T. Wang
Corporate Gifts to the Department
The Department of Chemistry thanks
the following corporate donors and their
associated alumni!
Fidelity Charitable Fund (Morris T. Reagan)
Merck Co. Foundation (Terence G. Hamill)
Pfizer Foundation (Charles P. Kulier)
Strategic Scientific, Inc. (John H. Wieser)
Class of 2012 Graduates
Sesime Akoto
Timothy Bowman
Stephanie Earle
Christine Hiemstra1,2,3
Jeffrey Jou4
Moon Young Lee3,5,6,7,8
Vasilios Mavrophilipos2
Matthew S. Morris4
David Park2
Blake Platt2
Beshoy Sidhom
Soraya Simon
Adam Stevens
Elisabet Tassis
ACS undergrad affiliate
General Honors
3
Dean’s List
4
Kilpatrick Scholar
1
5
2
6
NSF Fellowship
ACS award
7
Golden Key
8
Provost’s Award
2012 PhD Degrees Awarded
Jing Chen (Bowen Lab),
University of Maryland College Park
Kevin Cho (Goldberg Lab),
Postdoc at Yonsei University, Korea
Meredith Cline (Toscano Lab),
Lecturer at Miami University
Jeanne Davidsen (Townsend Lab),
interviewing
Jeremy Erb (Lectka Lab),
Postdoc at Ohio State
Byron Farnum (Meyer Lab),
Postdoc at UNC Chapel Hill
Alicia Fraind (Tovar Lab),
Postdoc at University of Virginia
Douglas Genna (Posner Lab),
Postdoc at University of Michigan
Yunbo Jiang (Goldberg Lab), Postdoc at
Oregon Health & Science University
Patrik Johansson (Meyer Lab),
Postdoc at Chalmers University, Sweden
Pannee Leeladee (Goldberg Lab),
Faculty at Chulalongkorn Univ., Thailand
Katharine Prokop (Goldberg Lab),
Postdoc at Monell Chemical Senses Center
Art Sutton (Toscano Lab), SC Johnson
Haopeng Wang (Bowen Lab),
Postdoc at Georgetown University
Chemistry Department SWEEPS
Intramural Sports
Congratulations to all our players!