With this New RUI award, the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry Program is supporting the work of Dr. Ursula Simonis of San Francisco State University. The project combines two-dimensional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy, computational chemistry, and X-ray crystallography to provide a quantitative description of, and the factors that affect the electron spin density delocalization in hemeproteins. The results will permit assignments of hyperfine-shifted resonances of paramagnetic iron porphyrins and allow a prediction of the most likely mechanisms of reactions at the heme periphery.
The results from this project will be of interest to applications in the related magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) field and to health-related research. Master's students and a large number of undergraduate students from under-represented groups will be involved in these studies. The project will provide hands-on access to sophisticated scientific instrumentation, and will give these students a valuable educational experience to prepare them to meet the challenges they will face in a very competitive workforce arena or in the pursuit of further education to the Ph.D. level.
