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High-quality, contemporary research programs are active in synthetic
and physical organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, bioorganic and biological
chemistry, biophysics, and physical and computational chemistry. Undergraduate
students can choose to work in any of these areas as early as their freshman
year.
Research in synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry is focused on the discovery of new synthetic reactions and
the use of mechanistic and physical organic chemistry to understand the
fundamental basis of these reactions. The inorganic chemistry of transition
organometallic complexes is being studied in order to develop new synthetic
methods for organometallic compounds and to use these compounds in catalytic
processes. Studies in mechanistic and physical organic chemistry include the
investigation of organic electrode processes, which requires expertise in
electroanalytical chemistry as well as in classical organic methodology for the
elucidation of stereochemistry and other mechanistic details.
The fundamental chemistry of biological processes has an active
interdisciplinary following. Bioorganic approaches are being used to address the
question of sequence and structure specificity in the binding of proteins to
RNA. Bacterial enzymes that catalyze reactions of βeta-lactam
antibiotics studies center on paramagnetic transition metal complexes and their
use as contrast agents in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Investigators in the
molecular
biophysics program
employ nuclear magnetic resonance and
fluorescence spectroscopies as well as theoretical and computational approaches
to examine the structure, dynamics and interactions of nucleic acids and
proteins.
Physical chemistry at Wesleyan is concerned with problems in molecular
structure, dynamics and energetics. Quantum and statistical mechanics
calculations; laser techniques; microwave, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet
spectroscopy; nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance; and
molecular beam and mass spectrometric methods are incorporated into the research
programs. Among the main areas of interest are studies of condensed phases,
energy transfer, collision induced spectra, the nature of long-range
interactions, radiationless relaxation, the properties of molecular complexes,
the nature of electron lone-pairs, and the development of new quantum chemical
methods.
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Ten weeks of full-time in the summer allows students to bring to fruition
the work they have done part-time during the academic year. All undergraduate
students are eligible for a stipend for a 10-week period during the summer
proceeding the junior and senior years. The stipend includes subsidized housing
benefits and is suffienct to support students in the Middletown area. A
few students also receive these stipends for the freshman sophomore summer. Many
of our chemistry students receive their summer support through the Hughes
Program in the Life Sciences. Additional students are supported form the
individual faculty research plans. Approximately, 60 students each summer will
complete research in their area of interest: Biology, Chemistry, Earth and
Environmental Science or Molecular Biology and Biochemistry that finishes with a
a poster session.
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Click here
to connect with the Wesleyan Hughes Summer Program.
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Click here to view Department of Chemistry, Faculty Research. |
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