This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The goal of this project is to renovate four wet synthetic laboratories (ca. 7300 sq. ft.) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. These laboratories provide research space to five faculty members in inorganic chemistry. The renovation entails replacement of all current lab benches, fume hoods, and student carrels. Each laboratory will be upgraded to the maximum number of fume hoods allowable by the capacity of the existing HVAC system. Due to the age of the facility (constructed in 1971), asbestos and mercury abatement will be required.
The five faculty members affected by the upgrade are highly renowned researchers, with two of them being members of the National Academy of Sciences. They have significant levels of extramural funding and currently work on NSF-funded projects including mechanistic studies of proton coupled electron transfer, metal-catalyzed diene and olefin polymerizations, finding and exploiting new four-electron donor ligands, chiral porous materials for enantioselective catalysis and separations, and the interrelationship between electronic structure, molecular structure and redox potential.
The project will enhance infrastructure for research. The Department boasts a large number of chemistry majors (635) and a significant percentage of students from underrepresented minorities. The group has about 45 graduate students and postdocs, and 10 undergraduate students. The training of all of the students engaged in these programs will benefit from the upgraded facilities.
BROADER IMPACT ACTIVITY Goal: Broaden Participation by Underrepresented Groups The project has provided 7,200 sq.ft. of newly renovated research laboratory space that has already been used to improve our recruitment of faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from underrepresented groups. Particularly at the faculty level, renovated laboratory space can be critical to success in the competitive environment of recruiting junior faculty from underrepresented groups (which also includes women in the physical sciences like chemistry). The Department of Chemistry has taken advantage o f this newly renovated space to recruit Professor Jillian Dempsey, an outstanding female chemist to our department. Dr. Dempsey is working to address challenges associated with developing efficient solar energy conversion processes. She is particularly interested in the charge-transfer processes that will ultimately govern efficiency in solar fuel production devices: proton-coupled electron transfer reactions, electron transfer across the interface between a catalyst and semiconductor, and the reduction of protons to hydrogen. As such she has already established a collaboration with the Department of Energy Funded Energy Frontier Research Center that is housed in the UNC Chemistry Department. The renovated space has also facilitated the hiring of Professor Alex Miller whose research revolves around transformations relevant to global energy concerns, including the storage of solar energy in chemical fuels, proton-coupled electron transfer reactions, and novel hydrocarbon transformations. Dr. Miller is also collaborating with the EFRC. He utilizes a balanced approach drawing from multiple disciplines, such as organometallic chemistry, catalysis, and electrochemistry, featuring the design and synthesis of novel transition metal catalysts, accompanied by fundamental reactivity and mechanistic studies to inform catalyst improvements. Goal: Enhance Infrastructure for Research and Education As noted above, the newly renovated research laboratory space has been designated for conducting studies focused on novel energy science. These investigations will be closely related to the recently funded Energy Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) awarded to UNC Chapel Hill. This Center has already facilitated collaborations across disciplines at the University of North Carolina, as well as with the following academic institutions in the US: North Carolina State University, Duke University, the University of Florida. In addition, the EFRC has partnered with the Research Triangle Institute, a well-established industry venture in the adjacent Research Triangle Park region of NC. Collaborations between disciplines at UNC Chapel Hill include bringing bioorganic chemistry (Professor Marcey Waters), synthetic organic chemistry (Professors Erik Alexanian and David Nicewicz), and experimental chemistry (Professor Andrew Moran) into the EFRC and related scientific endeavors. Thus, one clear example of the broader impact of the activity that is being conducted in this renovated research space is the expanding collaborations between disciplines, and between industrial and academic institutions in the US. We will continue to expand such collaborations using the space generated by this project. This improved research space will provide outstanding research facilities for undergraduate student, graduate student and postdoctoral student training in research. All the space will be devoted to student research training. Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of the project focuses on the further development of sustainable energy technologies. The ability to hire new young scientists to contribute to energy research and to collaborate with the EFRC will have a substantial impact on the energy research that is already being conducted at UNC-CH. The critical issue of energy resources is one of national security as well as the economic health of the nation and the world.
