Accomplishments: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Mary Blankenship (Economics, Chemistry, Brookings Mountain West, The Liny Institute, Honors), was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award during the fall 2020 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium, sponsored by the office of undergraduate research (OUR). This award recognizes one outstanding UNLV undergraduate student…
Mary Blankenship (Economics, Chemistry, Brookings Mountain West, Honors) recently was featured in the Global News article "‘Playing with Fire’: How Politicians Can Perpetuate Baseless Conspiracy Theories" where she discusses steps individuals can take to stop the spread of misinformation on Twitter.
Hui Zhang and Hong Sun (both Chemistry and Biochemistry) received an RO1 grant, “Regulation of SOX Proteins by Methylation-dependent Proteolysis in Stem Cells and Development,” from the National Institutes of Health for four years for a total of $1,238,360. The objective of this RO1 grant is to investigate how the pluripotency…
The office of undergraduate research (OUR) recently held its Fall 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium and the College of Sciences brought home several honors, including:
The School of Life Sciences earned the Champions of Undergraduate Research Award for its commitment to excellence in research education. The…
Sarah York and MaryKay Orgill (Chemistry & Biochemistry) published an article, "ChEMIST Table: A Tool for Designing or Modifying Instruction for a Systems Thinking Approach in Chemistry Education," in the Journal of Chemical Education.
MaryKay Orgill (Chemistry and Biochemistry) recently was selected as a fellow of the American Chemical Society. She is one of 53 people named fellow for 2020.
Orgill was recognized for contributions to biochemistry education research, for making theoretical frameworks accessible to the chemistry education research…
Mary Blankenship (Chemistry and Economics) recently co-authored "From the George Floyd Moment to a Black Lives Matter Movement, in Tweets" with Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution. They analyzed protest-related tweets between May 27 and June 4 to display the development of the Black Lives Matter movement. Blankenship is pursuing…
Mary Blankenship (Chemistry and Economics) co-authored "How Misinformation Spreads on Twitter" with Carol Graham, Brookings Institution Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow. The pair discuss that while social media has many advantages, information pollution is prevalent and in some cases "generate[s] more engagement than factually reliable…
Cory Rusinek (Chemistry) has received an award from the U.S. Department of Energy in response to the 2020 Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research Program: Understanding the Structure and Speciation of Molten Salt at the Atomic and Molecular Scale. His proposal, titled "Single- and Polycrystalline Diamond Electrodes for Spectroelectrochemical…
Paula Cordero (Chemistry and Biochemistry) received a 2020 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program award from Nevada INBRE to complete a fall research project at UNLV. She will be doing her research in the lab of assistant professor Cory Rusinek.
Vanessa Booth (Political Science), Peter Grema (Economics), and Mary Blankenship (Chemistry and Economics) each received the Office of Undergraduate Research Summer Undergraduate Research Funding Scholarship for Summer 2020. With this funding, these students can continue their research on important public policy issues and…
Mary Blankenship (Chemistry and Economics) recently had an Op-Ed published in the Las Vegas Sun titled, "In an age of misinformation, fact-checking must be encouraged." In her piece, Blankenship discusses how "the pervasiveness of misinformation on social media makes it one of the great challenges of the 21st century." Blankenship is pursuing a…