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The
2016 Plastino Alumni Undergraduate Research Fellow Awards were
formally announced at a dinner held at the Courtyard by Marriott on
Monday, May 9th. As usual, the guest of honor was the alumnus who
has made all of this possible: Mr. David A. Plastino (BS/CHEM/78).
Dave, who carried out his undergraduate research under the
supervision of Associate Professor Emeritus John E. Bulkowski,
proceeded to earn an MBA at the University of Michigan. This was
followed by a stellar career in investment banking, first at
Goldman-Sachs, then at UBS, where he rose to become the Senior Vice
President of Investments in Philadelphia.
Nicole
Wenzell (BS/BIOC/17), a member of the 2015 Plastino Fellows Class,
presented an excellent lecture on “Understanding a Fundamental
Force in Protein Folding: Tuning the n -
π*
Interaction via Designed Peptides” based on her work in the
laboratory of Prof. Neal Zondlo.
Normally,
the size of each yearly class of Fellows is six in number. This
year, thanks to significant financial support provided by some of the
Fellows’ mentors, we were able to expand the class to eight
Fellows, each of whom will be engaged in the indicated research
projects during the following
summer:
- Arvind
Annamalai (BS/CHEM/17) "Structural Contexts of
Phosphorylation and OGIcNAcylation" - Prof. Neal Zondlo
- Griffen
Desroches (BS/CHEM/18) "Synthesis and
Characterization of New Rare Earth Intermetallics" - Prof. Svilen Bobev
- Matthew
Hurlock (BS/BIOC/17) "Investigation of ATPase
Activity in Nod2 and Nod2 Walker Mutants" - Prof. Catherine Grimes
- Zachary
Jones (BS/CHEM/18) "Chemoenzymatic
Synthesis of Bioorthogonal UDP N-acetylmuramic Acid Derivatives to
Label the Peptidoglycans of S. aureus and B. subtilis" - Prof. Catherine Grimes
- Alex
Manders (BS/CHEM/17) "Enantiospecific Allylic
Vinylations to form Quaternary Stereocenters" - Prof. Mary Watson
- Lucas
Onisk (BS/CHEM/17) "Characterization
of the Active site of Vanadium Chloroperoxidase and its
Peroxo-Intermediate by Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Enhanced MAS
NMR Spectroscopy" - Prof. Tatyana Polenova
- Jacob
Piane (BS/CHEM/17) "Late-Stage
Functionalization via Suzuki Cross Couplings of Un-activated
Amines" - Prof. Mary Watson
- Hannah
Wastyk (BS/BIOC/17) "Biochemical
Characterization of innate immune Receptor, Nod2 and its
Chaperone, Hsp70" - Prof. Catherine Grimes
More on UDaily:
http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2016/may/plastino-research-fellows-051916/