CHEMISTRY ELEMENTS A Publication of the Department of Chemistry at Illinois Tech Fall 2020 Letter from the Chair opportunity to our young chemists. We members: Professor Joy Chong received have solicited our very own Chemistry a four-year National Institutes of Health Alumni Ambassadors who will help us grant for her project titled “Development with local area high school recruitment of Superior Chelation Chemistry for 89Zr- at their respective schools, as well as ImmunoPET Imaging,” and Assistant career counseling for our prospective Professor Andrey Rogachev received an students. While we continue to have a ACS-PRF (Petroleum Research Fund) larger incoming undergraduate population grant award for his work titled “Deep in recent years as compared to previous Understanding of Catalytic Activity through years, we are determined to focus on High-Level Calculations.” building our undergraduate programs even more. Due to the pandemic, we had to postpone the 39th Kilpatrick Lecture to a future Many thanks to Bob Frey (CHEM ’65) for date—stay tuned. creating the Robert E. Frey Jr. Endowed Term Chair in Chemistry, which was As an African proverb says, “Smooth awarded to Associate Professor David seas do not make skillful sailors.” It’s Minh. Congratulations to David for achieving the hard knocks in life that shape us into the first endowed chair position in the something stronger, wiser, and more Department of Chemistry’s recent history. resilient. We are getting through this tough time together. We hope all is well with you We want to also thank alumnus Ted and your families. We want to thank you Brown (CHEM ’50) for initiating the for your continued support and loyalty. Illinois Institute of Technology Chemistry Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship helps I wish you a happy and healthy 2021! Welcome to the eighth annual issue of attract new Ph.D. students, especially Chemistry Elements. I want to start off those who are dedicated to teaching. this letter by first thanking our faculty for We look forward to more gifts to expand Yuanbing Mao their outstanding job changing over to the breadth of this fellowship. We were Professor and Chair online teaching, of both lectures and labs, able to bring in eight new Ph.D. students Department of Chemistry when the closedown was announced in this fall, two of whom are participating March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. overseas until they can get to campus. December 2020 This was a very challenging new way to teach. They are to be recognized Congratulations are due to Katie Leight, for their dedication and success given who was promoted to senior lecturer these unprecedented circumstances. and became associate chair in January. Our department came through well. Katie brings a lot of energy and ideas to Additionally, our research-active faculty the department in her new role and is quickly stepped up to adopt the new well-liked by the students. She is currently research lab protocols, and we have leading our Chemistry Club to deliver managed to keep things running smoothly virtual presentations to local high schools and safely. Thanks also to our students and community colleges for promotional COVER: Conformations of a small who adapted to online instruction. purposes. Katie also helped initiate our molecule bound to a rigid protein Another round of applause is due to Summer Scholars program that hosts high (ribbon). Image created by Associate our alumni, students, faculty, and staff school and community college students Professor of Chemistry David Minh’s who participated in our first-ever virtual who participate in research projects with computational chemistry research group. end-of-the-academic-year party and our research labs. Thanks are due to Ben award ceremony at the end of April. Zion for his three and a half years of Our graduating students had a virtual dedicated service as associate chair. He commencement in May, as you may continues to teach, advise students, and know. These have been challenging times manage our department’s instrumentation. indeed. To help bring back campus fun while some of us are back on campus, we Congratulations to our Assistant Professor held a socially distanced outdoor pumpkin Jean-Luc Ayitou, who was named a carving event and a department contest Researcher to Know for 2020 by the Illinois for Mole Day for students in October. Science and Technology Coalition (ISTC) for his work in organic and photochemistry, Illinois Tech was recently recognized in addition to being elected vice chair of as No. 1 in the Chicago region for the Argonne National Laboratory Center occupational earnings power by The for Nanoscale Materials User Executive Brookings Institution and No. 39 Best Committee. One of his students, Ph.D. Value University in U.S. News & World candidate Young Ju Yun, was not only Report. For these reasons and many voted in as the 2020–21 Kilpatrick more, we are working hard to promote Fellow, but received the Starr/Fieldhouse our undergraduate programs, along with Research Award to pursue collaborative our graduate ones, to bring an excellent work at Argonne National Laboratory. educational tradition and relevant Congratulations also to two other faculty 2 Chemistry’s David Minh Launches Machine Learning Research Through New Chair Position by Linsey Maughan Associate Professor of Chemistry David Minh is excited to now explore machine Minh has been named the inaugural learning, a process that is increasingly Robert E. Frey Jr. Endowed Chair in being applied in chemistry research and Chemistry, a five-year position that will utilizes data to inform predictions. enable Minh to expand his computational chemistry research in a new direction by “I am aware of work in which machine applying machine learning to chemistry. learning has been used to predict the products of a chemical reaction; reaction The creation of the chair position is the conditions—such as solvents, catalysts, and result of a donation from Frey (CHEM temperature—that optimize the yield of a ’65), an alumnus whose contributions reaction; quantum mechanical ground-state in support of the university also include energies; and binding affinities of protein- funding the remodeling of the chemistry ligand complexes,” Minh says. “I would department’s office suite. Among its like to predict how small organic molecules benefits, the new chair position offers are polarized when binding to proteins. Minh $40,000 per year in research funding, This could affect how tightly they bind and which he says will primarily pay the salary whether a molecule could be a drug.” of a research scientist to help support his new project. As a precursor to his new research, Minh and his colleagues also published a paper Minh joined the faculty in the Department in 2020 in Physical Chemistry Chemical of Chemistry in fall 2013. His research at Physics titled “On the Polarization of Illinois Institute of Technology has focused Ligands by Proteins.” on computational chemistry. “In this paper we used mixed quantum “The main focus of my group is in mechanics/molecular mechanics developing new computational methods calculations to see how much small to predict how tightly small molecules molecules are polarized by their protein bind to proteins,” Minh says. “We also environment,” Minh says. “Part of what model how proteins move and interact I have proposed to do as Frey chair is to with small molecules, working closely with perform similar calculations using fast experimental groups to better understand machine-learning approaches rather than how biological systems work. Our work has computationally expensive quantum implications for drug and protein design.” chemistry calculations.” Differences in electron density around a small organic ligand embedded in a protein (3fv1 in the protein data bank) opposed to the gas phase. Blue and red contours illustrate the gain and loss of 0.0005 Bohr^{-3} of electron density. 3 Device Characterization of Dye Summer Learning Sensitized Solar Cell.” Program for Chicago In the award letter, Vice Provost Public School Teachers for Research Fred Hickernell writes that this project “takes Chicago Public Schools advantage of Ayitou’s recent elementary and middle school work on synthesis of a dye that science teachers were linked exhibits an excited electron with Illinois Tech scientists and state that is a triplet exciton.” engineers in August as part of a collaboration with the Academy “Such an exciton has a much for Urban School Leadership longer lifetime and thereby (AUSL) and National Louis may be suitable to enhance the University (NLU). conversion efficiency of dye sensitized solar cells,” Hickernell Associate Professor Adam writes. “This is an important Hock ran a module with biology advancement if successful, with graduate student Mohsin Ishaq potential commercialization.” titled “Density—Not Just for Ayitou Named ISTC Congratulations to Boats and Rocks!” This event Researcher to Know Students involved in this Katie Leight stemmed from a collaboration project will be trained between Illinois Tech, AUSL, The Illinois Science and in organic synthesis and Katie Leight was promoted to and NLU, which received a Technology Coalition (ISTC) photovoltaic device fabrication. senior lecturer and associate U.S. Department of Education named Assistant Professor This is an interdisciplinary effort chair in January 2020. She Teacher Quality Partnership Jean-Luc Ayitou as a Researcher involving the Department of also manages the organic Grant and brought in Illinois Tech to Know for 2020 for his Chemistry