Accomplishments: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Łukasz J. Sznajder (Biochemistry) participated in a large study led by the group at the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada. Their research focused on the hyper-unstable Chr9p21 locus associated with multiple diseases, including C9orf72-linked amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). They showed that GGGGCC tandem…
  The First-Gen Essay Competition is part of the annual campus-wide First-Generation Celebration held each year in November. The contest allows first-generation undergraduate and graduate students to share personal stories about their first-generation journeys at UNLV. Nearly 40 students participated in this year's…
Radiochemistry Ph.D. candidate, Nicholas Cicchetti (Chemistry and Biochemistry) was recently published in the ACS Publication, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. The article titled, "A Rapid Microfluidic Neptunium Extraction Using a Supported Liquid Membrane Module," is the result of work supported by the Research…
Frederic Poineau (Chemistry and Biochemistry) was published in Communication Chemistry, an open access journal from the Nature Portfolio. The article titled "Pivotal role of 99Tc NMR spectroscopy in solid-state and molecular chemistry" is the result of an international collaboration examining the continued use of 99Tc NMR…
A recent study from Chandra Bhattacharya's (Chemistry and Biochemistry) laboratory developed ionizable lipids with a tetrahydropyrimidine (THP) backbone for RNA delivery, utilizing a one-pot multicomponent reaction. This work was published in ACS Nano, titled "Tetrahydropyrimidine Ionizable Lipids for Efficient mRNA Delivery." Abstract Lipid…
Alexander Barzilov, Woosoon Yim (both Mechanical Engineering), Artem Gelis (Radiochemistry), and Ke-Xun Sun (Electrical and Computer Engineering) were awarded a five-year, $5,000,000 renewal grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration through the Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program (MSIPP) to continue research projects of…
A peer reviewed manuscript by authors professor Frederic Poineau (Radiochemistry) and Ph.D. candidate Harry Jang has been accepted for publication by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The article titled, "Revealing Uranium Tetrafluoride Microrods," represents the first time uranium tetrafluoride microrods were prepared by chemical…
Łukasz J. Sznajder (Biochemistry) participated in a study led by the group at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland. Their research focused on the regulatory mechanisms of microRNA biogenesis in developing skeletal muscles. They identified that muscleblind-like splicing regulator (MBNL) proteins influence the processing and expression of microRNAs…
Art Gelis (Radiochemistry) and collaborators from University of Illinois, Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory recently published an article titled, "X-ray Induced Cycling of Rare-Earth Elements between Bulk and Interfacial Liquid," in the journal ACS Applied Material & Interfaces. The research performed at UNLV was supported by the Nuclear…
Łukasz J. Sznajder (Biochemistry) was awarded an NIH R16 grant ($0.75M) through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for a project titled, "Identifying tandem repeat expansion-mediated mechanisms of autism-risk genes." Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a set of neurodevelopmental conditions that affect communication and social…
Ph.D. candidate Harry Jang (Radiochemistry) recently published an article in ACS Omega titled, "Tailoring Triuranium Octoxide into Multidimensional Uranyl Fluoride Micromaterials." The article investigates uranium microstructured materials with the aim of elaborating on unexplored uranium fluoride micromaterials. The successful…
The article "Advancing the Nuclear Safety and Security Culture Post-Fukushima: Strengthening the Broader Humanitarian Impacts Agenda" was recently published in the British American Information Security Council's (BASIC) Emerging Voices Network (EVN). Radiochemistry Ph.D. candidate, Liuba Pauline Williams (Chemistry and Biochemistry) is a first…