This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
With support from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities: Multiuser program (CRIF:MU), the Departments of Chemistry at the University of Southern California (USC) and California State University - Fullerton (CSUF) will collaborate on the acquisition and remote control cyber enabling of a 400 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer to be housed at USC. It will be employed in a wide variety of research projects, supporting structural, reaction, and analytical studies such as 1) new synthetic routes to inorganic nanocrystals; 2) the development of new synthetic methods in organic and organometallic chemistry; 3) studies of biologically important organophosphorus compounds; 4) new synthetic methods and synthesis of bioactive molecules; and 5) the design of novel RNA binding peptides.
Multinuclear NMR spectroscopy is a key analysis and characterization tool in chemistry today. The spectra enable researchers to track the progress of chemical reactions, identify unknown substances and provide information on the atomic arrangement and structures in species ranging from small molecules to large proteins by detecting transitions between energy levels arising from the nuclear spin properties of atoms. This instrument will support the education of future scientists at levels from undergraduate, to graduate student, to postdoctoral research associate. It will be used in lab courses for both chemistry and biochemistry students at USC and CSUF. Cyber infrastructure will be developed for both the remote control of the autosampler enabled instrument, as well as remote access for data collection/analysis from the instrument with a web based system. A practical NMR methods course will be developed jointly at USC and CSUF to train students in the use of the NMR spectrometer.
