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GREETINGS FROM THE CHAIR
We were pleased this past year to hire the first computational
chemist in the department, Dr. Yong Zhang. Biophysical chemist,
Dr. Vijay Rangachari, will be joining us in August. Unfortunately,
longtime faculty member Dr. John Pojman, is moving to a faculty
position at LSU this summer after 18 productive years at Southern
Miss. We wish him the best in his new position. The department
will search again this fall to fill the vacant position but, as of this
writing, we have not decided on a research area.
As you can see from the listing in the newsletter, we had
14 Bachelor of Science, 1 Master of Science, and 3 doctoral
graduates this past year. As usual, a number of our undergraduate
and graduate students received awards and recognition. I would
single out for particular recognition one of our first year graduate
students, Mary Alice Mackey, who received a prestigious NSF
Graduate Fellowship as part of a national competition.
The department had another very good year with external
funding, again bringing in nearly four million dollars. Grants
have been particularly helpful in building up the departmental
instrumentation. An NSF equipment grant, spearheaded by Dr.
Alvin Holder, is bringing in a new Bruker EPR and grants are
pending for a new thermal analysis suite and a 400 MHz NMR.
We held an open house this spring to showcase our two new mass
spectrometers. We also have new or upgraded capabilities in
fluorescence, light scattering, plasmon resonance and rapid
reaction (stopped flow) instrumentation. The combination of
new instrumentation and new faculty means new research going
on in the department, resulting in 44 publications in 2007 alone.
Don’t forget about our 50th anniversary events in the
fall of 2009. As a prelude to this, our department will host the
college Hospitality Corner before the Boise State game on
October 11, 2008. It promises to be an exciting game. Please
stop by and see us.
Robert Bateman
OUR 2007/2008
GRADUATES
Bachelor of Science Degrees:
Jeffery Bradley, Bridget Confait, Joseph
Emfinger, Traveon Ferguson, Alyse
Harvison, Robert Johnson, Nicole
Mackey, Andrea Marshall, Charles
McIntyre, Dylan
Mezey, Hiren
Patel, Scott
Thames, Marry
Torres, Zachary
Vann
Doctoral
Degrees:
Tolecia Clark,
David Rankin,
Ran Wang
ALUMNI NEWS
Kathleen Burns (B.S. ’97; M.D.
and Ph.D.) joined the combined
M.D./Ph.D. program at Baylor College
of Medicine after graduating from
Southern Miss. As a graduate student,
she published more than 30 research
papers and book chapters. In 2004,
Kathleen moved to the Johns Hopkins
Hospital to pursue residency and
fellowship training in clinical
pathology and hematopathology. For her postdoctoral research
on the biology of transposons, she has received research awards
from Johns Hopkins University and numerous grants. Most
recently, she was one of 16 recipients of the prestigious Career
Award for Medical Scientists from the Burroughs Wellcome
Fund to establish an independent research laboratory at Hopkins,
where she has joined the faculty this July. Kathy is married to
neurologist Michael Levy, who was an M.D./Ph.D. classmate of
hers at Baylor.
Tricia Coleman (Ph.D. ’04) and
family recently moved to Colorado. She
and husband Sean adopted Arganne
Claire Coleman, who was born in
October of 2006, from Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia last fall. Tricia and Sean
stayed in Ethiopia for almost three
weeks to bond with their daughter and
returned to the US after a very long journey through Nairobi and
Amsterdam. Tricia wrote that Arganne is a big eater and loves to
play on the carpet with her big brother, Miles.
CHEM/BIOCHEM NEWSThe University of Southern Mississippi
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistrywww.usm.edu/chem
August 2008
Senior Andrea Marshall
laying to rest Biochemistry
III after taking the final
exam in May, 2008.
Kathy Burns and Dr.
Stella Elakovich at the
ACS Student Affiliates
picnic, spring ’97.
Arganne and Miles
Coleman
Final exam week math,
end of spring 2008
semester.
Assorted RIP
gravestones for
spring 2008 courses
whose final exams
are over.
Hong (“Heather”) Cui (M.S. ’93) is an analytical chemist
in the Marine and Protective Coatings Division of International
Paint LLC in Houston, TX. She is in charge of the analytical
services laboratory, which analyzes coating failures for customers
and trouble-shoots for R&D chemists and the production section
of the company. Before moving to Texas in 2001, Hong worked at
Southern Miss’s Gulf Coast Research Lab and for First Chemical
Corporation. She has two children, Austin and Emily.
Carletta Barnes-Ekunwe (B.S. ’98;
M.P.H., D.M.D.) obtained her Doctor of
Dental Medicine degree in 2003 from the
University of Mississippi Medical Center
in Jackson, MS. After completing an
internship in clinical dentistry at the
University of Texas Houston Dental
Branch, Carletta opened her own practice,
Barnes Family Dentistry, in Hattiesburg.
Carletta and her husband Nosakhare
Ekunwe have a three-year old daughter,
Ameze.
Jennifer Clark-Dickens (B.S. ’96;
M.D., University of Alabama) and her
husband Jason Dickens announce the birth
of their first child, Jackson Clark Dickens,
on February 22, 2008.
Shelly Gallender (B.S., ’03, M.S.,
Tulane University) graduated with a master’s
degree from the Department of Chemical
Engineering at Tulane University in 2007
after a forced semester off in 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina.
While writing her thesis, Shelly briefly worked as a “Mad
Scientist” in an after-school program franchise that performs “Bill
Nye/Mr. Wizard”-type science experiments for elementary school
children. Since then, she has been working as an engineer for
Project Associates, Inc. in Metairie, LA. Shelly enjoys her work,
which focuses on preventing corrosion and runs the gamut from
technical writing to developing mathematical models. She loves to
live in New Orleans and enjoys taking care of her two dogs and
one cat, reading, traveling, cooking, Pilates exercises and
exploring all the fine dining options in the Crescent City.
Nicole Gill (Ph.D. ’02) recently
accepted fiancé Charles Hanabergh’s
Valentine’s Day proposal and is getting
married this summer. Charles, a native of
New Jersey, has his own business and sells
investment research. Congratulations
Nikki and Chuck, and our best wishes for
a life of happiness together!
Tasha Haden (née Fillingane; B.S.
’99; Pharm.D.) studied pharmaceutical sciences at the University
of Mississippi and received her Pharm.D. degree in 2003. Upon
completing a pediatric pharmacotherapy residency at St. Jude
Children’s Hospital and working at the Batson Hospital for
Children at UMMC in Jackson for two years, she and her
husband, pharmacist Beau Haden, bought an independent
pharmacy in Sumrall, MS close to Hattiesburg. When not
working at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg as a full-time
clinical pharmacist, Tasha assists Beau in managing and
operating Sumrall Drug Store.
Mignon Keaton (BS ’01, Ph.D., Duke University)
defended her dissertation about the
regulation of CDK1 activity by the tyrosine
kinase Swe1p in budding yeast in November,
2007. Part of her research is published in
Current Biology; another publication is in
press at Mol. Biol. of the Cell. Mignon
recently moved on to a postdoctoral position
at the University of Virginia, where she is
studying DNA replication timing.
Lee Lewis (Ph.D. ’03), an assistant professor in the
Department of Chemistry at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, is
happy to report that she was awarded tenure this year.
Following in the footsteps of our alumnae Joan
Weatherford (Ph.D. ’94) and Patricia McCormick (Ph.D. ’97),
Giselle Marks (née Schnaubelt, Ph.D. ’06) accepted a faculty
position at Jones County Junior College this year.
Adam Roberts (B.S. ’07) was accepted to the University
of Mississippi School of Pharmacy and will be moving to
Oxford, MS this fall to pursue a pharmacy degree.
Jay Russell (B.S. ’01), Ph.D. candidate at
Pennsylvanian State University, returned to his
alma mater this spring to present a seminar on
his fascinating research on intracellular protein
targeting and chat with our undergraduates
about Penn State’s graduate program in
biochemistry. When his busy research schedule
allows him to take time off, Jay likes to return to
Hattiesburg and participate in the Southern Miss homecoming
activities.
Paul Sykes (B.S. ’99; M.D. and
Ph.D., University of Virginia) received
his Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2004 and
his M.D. in 2005. He is currently
completing a neurology residency at
the University of Alabama at
Birmingham. Paul and his wife, Gini,
have three children: Felix (6), Lily
(2.5), and Clara (1). The Sykes family
plans to stay in Birmingham after Paul
completes his residency next year.
Patricia Villalta (B.S. ’06) has been working as a research
technologist in the Department of Pharmacology at The
University of South Alabama. Patricia will be joining USA’s
graduate program in basic biomedical sciences this fall.
Jeffrey Temple (B.S. ’92, Ph.D. ’99) was
tenured and promoted to associate professor of
biochemistry and undergraduate coordinator at
Southeastern Louisiana University in the
Department of Chemistry and Physics in August
2007. His current research focuses on the
characterization of RNA-dependent RNA
Polymerases, specifically that of West Nile
Virus.
Sandy West-Gibson (M.S. ’98) has
been working for the Southern Insect
Management Research Unit at the USDA-
ARS station in Stoneville, MS for the past
six years. Sandy’s daughter, Caylin
Rashelle Gibson was born on August 5,
2007.
Carletta Barnes-
Ekunwe and
Nosakhare Ekunwe
Jackson Clark
Dickens (four
months old)
Jay Russell
Jeffrey Temple
Sandy West-Gibson
and daughter
Caylin Rashelle
Nikki Gill and fiancé
Charles Hanabergh
The Sykes family: Gini
and Paul with children
Felix, Lily and Clara.
Mignon Keaton on
the Blue Ridge
Parkway.
Kurt Wiegel (Ph.D. ’00) is an associate professor of
chemistry at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. Kurt and
his wife Jackie have three children: Emma (6), Eliza (5) and
Joshua (3).
OUR 50TH ANNIVERSARY
SCHOLARSHIP CAMPAIGN
The festivities for this important milestone in the history of
our department began with what can only be described as THE
Event of the Year 2008! If you attended the Spring 2008 ACS
Meeting in New Orleans and did not come to the first-ever
Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry Reunion, you
missed a great kickoff to the
events in honor of our
department’s 50th anniversary!
Conceived by Leo Collins (Ph.D.
’91), and organized by our
administrative assistant, Sharon
King, the reunion was a success
and offered current members of
the department a chance to catch
up with some of our alumni and friends. Retired colleagues Drs.
David Creed and Newt Fawcett mingled with old
acquaintances. Hong Cui (M.S. ’93)
brought her lovely daughter Emily to
the party. Robert D. Jordan (B.S. ’78),
Shelley Gallender (B.S. ’03) and two
generations of Bonner graduates,
Mike (B.S. ’71, Ph.D.) and Max (B.S.
’06), enjoyed the company of current
and former students, faculty and staff.
Kurt Wiegel, former polymer science Ph.D. student in Andy
Griffin’s lab (Ph.D. ’00) and now associate professor of
chemistry at the University of
Wisconsin Eau Claire, “crashed”
our party and was happy to be
made an honorary alumnus of our
department on the spot. A good
time was had by all! The
phenomenal food, which featured
simply divine New Orleans
praline crêpes, was contributed by
Leo’s employer, Bio-Rad
Laboratories. The company deserves a big “Thank You” for
its generosity! We are very grateful to Leo and Sharon for all
their hard work in organizing this
event and to our chair, Dr. Robert
Bateman, for picking up the rest
of the tab.
Our 50th Anniversary
Scholarship Fundraising
Campaign is in full swing! We
are happy to report that, thanks to
generous contributions from
alumni and friends, and matching gifts from some of their
employers, the 50th Anniversary Scholarship Fund has been
endowed. In addition, retired colleague and
former department chair, Dr. Stella
Elakovich, endowed a new scholarship for
our majors. We truly appreciate all your
generous gifts! However, to reach our goal
of raising $50,000 until 2009, we depend
on contributions – large and small – from
all of our alumni
and friends. We
hope that you will
return the attached
contribution card
with a generous donation and thank you
in advance for remembering your home
department at Southern Miss.
STUDENT NEWS
Fei Cai, a fourth-year doctoral student in the Cannon/
Heinhorst lab, was our department’s 2008 Graduate Student of
the Year. Fei has co-authored several publications; the one she is
most proud of is a 2008 article in the prestigious journal Science.
Bridget Confait was invited to return to Bayer Materials
Science in Pittsburgh, PA for a second summer internship.
Lakeshia Gibson presented a poster at the 2007 Annual
Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in
Austin, TX in November.
Mary Alice Mackey (BS, ’07), who
graduated from our undergraduate program
last year and is now a first-year graduate
student in the Stevenson lab, made history
recently. She is the first Southern Miss
graduate student to receive a prestigious
National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship. Way to go, Mary
Alice!
Andrea Marshall is another one of our
students who is making history. Andrea will be
joining the Neuroscience Graduate Program at
the University of Alabama at Birmingham
(UAB) this fall. She is the first student at UAB
to receive not one, but two graduate
fellowships: the prestigious UAB Howard
Hughes Medical Institute Med-Grad
Fellowship, and a UAB Equity and Diversity
Academic Fellowship. Andrea’s other accomplishments this
previous year: She won first place in the Undergraduate Poster
Category at the Louis Stokes Mississippi Association for
Minority Participation Conference in Jackson, MS, and her
abstract for the 2007 Annual Biomedical Research Conference
for Minority Students in Austin, TX was selected from over
1,000 submissions for one of 76 oral presentations. Last but not
least, Andrea was the 2008 College of Science and Technology
Senior of the Year.
Michelle McCluskey won the Best Poster Award in the
Division of Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures at
the 213th Electrochemical Society Meeting in Phoenix, AZ this
May. Michelle is a second-year graduate student in the Phillips lab.
Leo Collins and
Newt Fawcett
sampling culinary
delights.
Mary Alice Mackey
Andrea Marshall
Hong Cui and
daughter Emily
Hans Schanz, Robert D. Jordan
and Jessica Shackleford
enjoying good food and good
company.
David Creed and
Shelley Gallender
Two generations of Bonner
alumni: Michael and son Max
with Robert Bateman.
Honorary alumnus Kurt Wiegel
with Sabine Heinhorst and
Gordon Cannon.
Raj Menon received a Corporate Activities Program
Student Travel Grant to the 108th General Meeting of the
American Society for Microbiology in Boston, MA in June. Raj,
a graduate student in the Cannon/Heinhorst research group,
presented a poster on comparative microbial microcompartment
proteomics.
Lamaryet Moody was awarded a National Organization
for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and
Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) Advancing Science 2008
Award to attend the 35th Annual NOBCChE Conference in
Philadelphia, PA in March. Lamaryet, a second-year graduate
student in the Holder lab, presented a poster of her work on
fluorine-containing ruthenium/platinum complexes designed for
interaction with DNA.
Sarah Neidler, a graduate student at the
University of Bonn in Germany, spent the
2007/2008 academic year in Hattiesburg as an
exchange student. To gain research experience,
Sarah participated in carboxysome research in
the Cannon/Heinhorst group and presented the
results of that work at the 108th General
Meeting of the American Society for
Microbiology in Boston this June.
David Rankin is very
happy to have been chosen to participate in
the Research and Technical Careers in
Industry Conference, which was held this
summer in Cincinnati, OH. The conference,
which is sponsored by Procter & Gamble,
provides information, advice and networking
opportunities related to technical careers in
academia, industry and government.
Current Goldwater Scholar, Jessica Shackleford, was one
of 200 finalists in the national Truman Scholarship
competition. The Truman scholarship program, which
emphasizes the importance of community service and the
candidates’ desire to make broad cultural, political and social
changes on a global level, requires a community service project.
Jessica’s project, FANTASIA, helped Hattiesburg High School
students prepare for the difficult transition from high school to
college. With a group of her peers, Jessica visited the high school
campus to answer any questions about college admission,
scholarships, financial aid, essays, the ACT and specific majors.
The team also hosted an ACT workshop and appeared before the
school board to help garner the support they needed to encourage
students to attend the workshop. The program has since
expanded to include a parallel program at Sacred Heart School.
Jessica is spending her summer at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign as one of eight Snyder Scholars. She is
working on organic synthesis methodology in the laboratory of
noted organic chemist, Dr. Scott Denmark.
Scott Walper (B.S. ’03) was one of 18 students who were
chosen from an international pool of applicants to participate in
an all-expense-paid lecture and lab course on phage display
technology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Last
November, Scott spent two weeks of intense learning at this
mecca of molecular biology that has hosted, among others, Nobel
laureates Barbara McClintock, James Watson and Richard
Roberts. Scott noted that the isolated setting of CSHL and the
small class size ensured that there was ample time and
opportunity to share
ideas and insights.
Yilin Zhang, a
third-year graduate
student in the Huang
lab, volunteered to
judge K-12 student
research projects at the
2008 Regional Science
Fair, which took place in
the Thad Cochran
Center at Southern
Miss. We applaud Yilin’s willingness to participate in this
important outreach activity.
DEPARTMENTAL NEWS AND INITIATIVES
To help our
undergraduate students
hone their professional
skills, the department
instituted the twice-annual
Undergraduate Research
Symposium several years
ago. The symposium,
which is organized by the
undergraduate program
coordinator (currently: Dr.
Doug Masterson), provides
a forum for our majors to
give the oral research
presentation that is a graduation requirement. Shown above is the
group of happy presenters from the 2008 spring semester after
their presentations.
Our department was chosen as one of 12 pilot sites for the
Undergraduate Microbial Genome Annotation Initiative of
the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute
(JGI). Dr. Sabine Heinhorst introduced practical microbial gene
annotation problems into the Biochemistry III course she taught
in the 2008 spring semester after she and colleagues from other
pilot institutions attended a JGI workshop last fall that was led by
Dr. Cheryl Kerfeld. During a follow-up meeting at JGI this
summer, the participants reported on their experiences with an
interactive annotation teaching tool and learned to negotiate a
new, user-friendly annotation teaching tool currently under
development at JGI. During the coming academic year,
microbial gene annotation activities will be integrated into
additional undergraduate biochemistry and biology lecture and
laboratory courses to ensure that our students have practical
knowledge of comparative and functional genomics when they
graduate from Southern Miss.
In case you were wondering about the “designer logos” on
our 2006 and 2007 newsletters, here is the explanation: Two
years ago, we decided to feature an interesting image from an
ongoing research project every year. The 2006 image, which was
contributed by the Stevenson lab, depicted a metal nitride
fullerene. The 2007 newsletter showed a cryo-electron tomogram
of a carboxysome filled with numerous molecules of the carbon
Scott Walper (red arrow) mingling with
fellow participants and co-discoverer of the
structure of DNA, Nobel Laureate, James
D. Watson (yellow arrow), at the CSHL
course on phage display technology.
Speakers at the Undergraduate
research Symposium, May 2008. From
left to right: Robert Johnson, Bridget
Confait, Daniel Murin, Andrea
Marshall, Zach Vann, Lakeshia
Gibson and Akina Mizowaki.
German exchange
student Sarah
Neidler
David Rankin
dioxide fixing enzyme, ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/
oxygenase (image taken by Cristina Iancu, Caltech). That image
was contributed by the Cannon/Heinhorst lab. This year’s image,
courtesy of the Zhang lab, shows the three-dimensional structure
of the metalloprotein rusticyanin.
FACULTY AND STAFF NEWS
Drs. Gordon Cannon and Sabine Heinhorst received a
National Science Foundation grant to determine the mechanism
by which carboxysomes enhance the CO2 sequestration ability of
bacteria. Their proposal to sequence the genomes of two sulfur
bacteria was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint
Genome Institute and generated a flood of sequence data and
manual gene annotation activity in the Cannon/Heinhorst lab this
summer.
Dr. Sabine Heinhorst’s
term as the T.W. Bennett, Jr.
Professor in the Sciences
ended with a splash last
October. Being the first
woman to hold this
prestigious professorship,
Dr. Heinhorst chose the
topic “Women in Science”
for the Bennett Symposium
she organized, and invited
eleven women scientists to
give presentations. The
speakers were former
Southern Miss graduate
students Drs. Patricia McCormick (Ph.D. ’97), Abigail Newsome
(Ph.D. ’01), Rachell Booth (Ph.D. ’01), Cecilia Chi-Ham (Ph.D.
’02) and Jennifer Ufnar (Ph.D. ’06), Southern Miss faculty Drs.
Karen Orcutt (Marine Science) and Crystal Johnson (Coastal
Sciences), and research collaborators Drs. Cheryl Kerfeld (Univ. of
California Berkeley and DOE Joint Genome Institute), Cristina
Iancu (Caltech), Kathleen Scott (Univ. of South Florida) and Ferda
Soyer (Izmir Inst. of Technology, Turkey). The event was a fitting
end to the two-year distinguished professorship.
Dr. Alvin Holder served as a judge of student
presentations at the 2007 Annual Biomedical Research
Conference for Minority Students in Austin, TX.
Dr. Faqing Huang received two large research grants
recently. The lab has enjoyed continuous funding since 2000
from the Astrobiology program of NASA to pursue research in
the area of RNA catalysis, the origin of coenzymes, and the
origin and evolution of life. This current grant will enable the
Huang group to demonstrate the plausibility of life based entirely
on RNA and other non-protein molecules. The group uses
powerful in vitro molecular techniques to create and identify
functional RNA molecules that are not found anywhere in the
contemporary living world, but may have existed and functioned
in biochemical/biological capacity before the emergence of protein.
The second grant, from the National Cancer Institute
(NCI) of NIH, supports exploration and development of new
mechanisms for specific delivery of therapeutic agents to cancer
cells. Folate receptor (FR) is a highly expressed cancer cell
marker that is used to transport folic acid into cancer cells to
support their elevated metabolic activities. The Huang lab is
developing technologies to use FR for high efficacy drug
delivery specifically to cancer cells. If successful, this research
may lead to the development of next generation cancer drugs.
Dr. Wujian Miao received an Aubrey Keith and Ella Ginn
Lucas Endowment for Faculty Excellence Award, which will
support a research project on C-reactive protein detection with
disposable paper strip-based ECL biosensors.
Dr. J. Paige Phillips was awarded an American Chemical
Society Petroleum Research Fund Type G grant to characterize
the contributions of acidic and basic petroleum constituents to
fouling of industrially important surfaces.
Dr. Hans J. Schanz was awarded an Aubrey Keith and Ella
Ginn Lucas Endowment for Faculty Excellence Award to
investigate separation and recycling of novel pH-responsive
olefin metathesis catalysts.
Dr. Dave Wertz, who retired in 2006 but has remained an
active researcher, recently received a grant from the Southern
Biomass Initiative of the Mississippi Technology Alliance. Dr.
Wertz will explore the capability of the mixture of crop residues
and tire-derived high carbon particles he developed, termed
Energy-Enhanced Biomass or EEB, to serve as a “zero carbon
footprint” fuel. Dr. Wertz has published his assessment of EBB’s
potential to serve as a low-cost domestic fuel in the journal
Biomass.
NEW FACULTY AND STAFF
Dr. Yong Zhang, our newest faculty
colleague in the department, wrote: I was born
in a very beautiful historic place in China
[Yangzhou] and am constantly seeking an
accurate understanding of the elegance of
nature. My learning efforts enabled me to earn
my Ph.D. degree 2.5 years in advance. After
becoming the youngest associate professor at
Nanjing University, I went to the
Department of Chemistry at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign to continue my
scientific pursuit. Now the
University of Southern Mississippi
provides me an excellent arena to
begin my tenure-track faculty
career. Since 1991, I have
developed and applied numerous
computational methods for
research on molecular structure, bonding, properties, and
design. My recent work has achieved many high-accuracy results
of 1) spectroscopic (NMR, EPR, Mössbauer) properties, 2)
Dr. Yong Zhang
Drs. Yong Zhang and Yan
Ling with son Ray Ling
Zhang.
The T.W. Bennett Symposium
Speakers. From left to right front
row: Ferda Soyer, Rachell Booth,
Sabine Heinhorst, Cecilia Chi-Ham,
Karen Orcutt; second row: Cheryl
Kerfeld, Abigail Newsome, Patricia
McCormick, Crystal Johnson; third
row: Kathleen Scott and Cristina
Iancu.
metalloprotein (heme and non-heme, diamagnetic and
paramagnetic, resting state and intermediate state, protein-drug
complex) structures, and 3) mechanisms for metallo-
pharmaceuticals and metalloenzyme models. My current
research is to obtain structural and functional details of
metallobiomolecules involved in cellular regulation and
signaling and neurodegenerative diseases, using novel high-
accuracy approaches.
Dr. Zhang’s research focuses on novel structural features of
the phylogenetically old blue copper proteins, which are
prototypical electron-transfer proteins. By using his newly
developed computational approach, he noticed a common site
around the metal centers of these proteins and proposed a new
copper(II)-imidazolate motif for the protein rusticyanin that
provides excellent matches with structural and biochemical data.
The new approach integrates high-accuracy quantum mechanics
computational methods and widely accessible experimental
spectroscopic (e.g. NMR, ESR) data to obtain high accuracy
protein structures. More details about Dr. Zhang’s research can
be found at www.usm.edu/quantum. Dr. Zhang and his wife,
fellow scientist Yan Ling, announced the birth of baby boy, Ray
Ling Zhang, on September 28, 2007.
2007/2008 PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARS
Kathleen Chmelicek, Suzanna Ellzey, Joseph Emfinger,
Michael Farmer, Zachary Gressett, Daniel Murin, William
Nunnery, Britny West, Chelsa Williams.
2007/2008 SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
Sarah Ali ...........................Fred and Nadyne Drews Scholarship
Chad Corley ..................................National Science Foundation
S-STEM Scholarship
Leland Davis ..........................Beckman Foundation Scholarship
Ashley Foley..........................................Balmer Hill Scholarship
Lakeshia Gibson .............................Charles and Carolyn Brent/
Chemistry Alumni Scholarship
Alyse Harvison ........................Northrop-Grumman Scholarship
Shanice Hobson..................................Deterly-Pratt Scholarship
Brittany Jones .........................................Cecil Sharp Endowed/
Chemistry Alumni Scholarship
Stuart Lovinggood ................Beckman Foundation Scholarship
Andrea Marshall .....................Northrop Grumman Scholarship
Lauren McGowan.........................National Science Foundation
S-STEM Scholarship
Dylan Mezey ........................................................Wells-Addison/
Chemistry Alumni Scholarship
Alyssa Robson ...............................................Rajive K. Khanna/
Chemistry Alumni Scholarship
National Science Foundation
S-STEM Scholarship
Kaylee Schmitt ......................Beckman Foundation Scholarship
Jessica Shackleford .....................Robert D. Jordan Scholarship
Barry Goldwater Scholarship
Scott Thames .........................Beckman Foundation Scholarship
Zachary Vann ........................Beckman Foundation Scholarship
Katherine Windham .....................................Noyce Scholarship
The University of Southern Mississippi
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
www.usm.edu/chem
SCHOLARSHIP CONTRIBUTION CARD
Enclosed is my check (in the amount of $_____________________) payable to The USM Foundation.
m Please add to the Chemistry/Biochemistry 50th Anniversary Scholarship Fund (#1719).
m Please add to the Chemistry/Biochemistry Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund (#371).
m Please add to the Chemistry/Biochemistry Alumni Operating Scholarship Fund (#648).
m Please split between accounts #371 and #648.
Donor’s Name(s): __________________________________________________________________________
m Please check here if you wish your contribution to remain anonymous.
!
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