This project funded by the Chemistry Division supports a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site at that is designed to provide hands-on research opportunities to talented underrepresented minority (URM) students from two-year colleges throughout the United States where research opportunities are limited. The project is to bring in two-year college students to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire during the summer for ten weeks to work on research projects with faculty in the departments of Chemistry, Biology and Materials Science. The project aims to enrich and empower URM students' learning through hands-on research, develops students' interest and competence in the STEM fields, and enables them to bridge from two-year colleges to four-year colleges, thereby enhancing their professional opportunities. This project will increase the number of URM undergraduate students conducting research at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. This increased diversity in the research environment in turn will strengthen the programs in Chemistry, Materials Science and Biology. Students will gain practical, hands-on research experience using modern instrumentation, and become immersed in a student-centered research environment at a four year institution.
The scientific research projects that students are to work on include synthesis of new cyclic mucin peptides and of new "smart" biphenyl and terphenyl derivatives, development of reversible self-assembled "smart" copolymers, the study of microstructures of superconducting wires and the study of nitrile-Group IV Lewis acids complexes. Other topics to be investigated include electron and hydride transfer mechanisms of quinone reductases, long range molecular communication and dynamics within the Pro-tRNA synthetases, the synthesis and study of the properties of new metal-mathanobactin nanoparticles and, finally, the distribution of atmospheric ozone and CO over and along Lake Michigan,
