Departmental News: Summer and Fall 2007

Fall 2007

• Professor Chung Wong has received the grant "Anti-plague agents targeting YopH of Yersinia Pestis", from the National institutes of Health. It covers the period 09/29/2007 - 08/31/2009 for a total cost of $428,375.
• Professor Janet Braddock-Wilking has received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation for $343,000 to study "Novel Metalloles Containing Heavy Group 14 Elements".
• Gokel Wins 2007 Midwest Award
  (taken from Chemistry and Engineering News, October 8, 2007, Volume 85, Number 41, p. 56)

George W. Gokel, Distinguished Professor of Science and associate director of the Center for Nanoscience at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, has been awarded the 2007 Midwest Regional Award by the ACS St. Louis Section.

The annual award recognizes outstanding achievements in chemistry in the Midwest region and is given to a scientist who has made meritorious contributions to the advancement of pure or applied chemistry, chemical education, and the profession of chemistry.

Gokel has developed a new family of anion-selective channels that are amphiphilic peptides. The compounds have been demonstrated to mediate chloride transport in vital lung epithelial tissue. The work may lead to an aerosol drug delivery system for cystic fibrosis. Gokel is also studying cation-π interactions involving alkali metal cations. He has designed a receptor system that can be systematically varied structurally, sterically, and electronically to probe these cation-π interactions.

Gokel will receive the Midwest Regional Award and deliver an award lecture during the 42nd Midwest Regional Meeting in Kansas City, Mo., that will be held on Nov. 7-9.

• CARB Announces 2007 Divisional Awards
  (taken from Chemistry and Engineering News,June 25, 2007, volume 85, Number 26, pp 57-58)

The New Investigator Award will go to Alexei V. Demchenko, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. The award acknowledges outstanding contributions to research in carbohydrate chemistry by scientists in their first independent faculty position.

Demchenko's research is in the area of synthetic carbohydrate chemistry. He received a Ph.D. in 1993 from the Zelinski Institute of Organic Chemistry, at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. Prior to joining the University of Missouri, Demchenko was a research associate at the University of Georgia's Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, where he focused on the synthesis of complex oligosaccharides for immunological studies.
Departmental News Archives