Welcome to
The Slowing Group
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at Iowa State University
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and the Ames Laboratory
Principal Investigator: Igor Slowing
5/6/16 Welcome to our 2016 Summer interns: Lindy switched from being a Chem 399 student to become a SULI intern and will continue working with Dilini on controlling catalytic conversions by tuning local environments. Pearl Jean is joining from Kennesaw State University, and will be working as a SULI student with Sebastián on 3D printing of catalytically active nanostructures. We will also see Nicolas De La Cruz working with Sebastián on developing novel functional inks for 3D printing. Nicolas joins us via the HHMI Program from Marshalltown, IA. A big warm welcome for the three, we are looking forward for a great scientific summer!
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5/6/16 Congratulations to Umesh who is now officially an MS. He is leaving this family of his, we all will miss him a lot, and wish nothing but success and happiness in his next step!
5/5/16 Welcome to Amber Heintz, senior in chemistry, who will be working with Younghun to investigate the effects of confinement on chemical reactions. Hope she will have an exciting summer in our labs.
4/14/16 Congratulations to Lindy for receiving the Nellie Taylor Award!
4/2/16 Our new website is up! Welcome!
3/25/16 Umesh just passed his Final Defense for the Masters! Congratulations for the accomplishment!
3/15/16 Farewell to Ma, who is returning to his Faculty position in China, we wish you a successful career!
3/3/16 Welcome to Christina Kindle, a junior in chemistry, who will be working with Bosky on developing functionalization methods for ordered mesoporous carbons. We are very excited to have her with us.
2/23/16 Congratulations to Ashely and Younghun for receiving a Mentor Grant from the First-Year Honors Program of ISU, this will help them advance further their research on nanoscale acidity. Great job!
1/19/16 Welcome to Trang Bui a senior in chemistry who will be working with Umesh on selective catalytic fatty acid reductions. We are also happy to be hosting two Honors undergraduate students: Ashley Harris from Chemical Engineering and Beatrice Hosier from Mathematics, who will be introduced to fun stuff in materials chemistry by Younghun and Bosky. A warm welcome to the three!
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12/22/16 New paper in Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. with our SS-NMR colleagues we explored the distribution of organic groups on silica as a function of the method and conditions of synthesis.
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11/30/16 Umesh is moving to Sasol to start a position as Inorganic Chemist. All the best in the new job!
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11/21/16 New paper accepted in J. Phys. Chem. C exploring the mechanism of reaction of primary and secondary alcohols on the surface of Pd/CeO2 when used as transfer hydrogenation agents. This work provides new understanding on fundamental differences between the behavior of these two types of alcohol as sacrificial agents for reductive processes, and is a step forward towards developing greener alternatives to non-renewable reducing agents. Congratulations to Nick and Sebastián!
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11/15/16 Andrew Kendell is our 2016 incoming grad student. Welcome to the group! We expect great things from and for Andrew on his reaction pathway towards a PhD.
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11/01/16 Welcome to Hsin Cindy Wang, who is a sophomore double majoring in Food Science and Chemistry. Cindy was doing some "job shadowing" of our work last semester, and now she is ready to try some experiments in the lab.
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10/15/16 Welcome on board to Ihssan Ait Boucherbil. Ihssan is a sophomore in Chemistry and is joining the team to work on materials for catalysis and 3D printing.
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9/23/16 Paper on Au/CeO2 catalyzed aerobic oxidation of cyclic amines to lactones goes online in Catalysis Letters. This work is in collaboration with Bob Angelici and Keith Woo's group.
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9/01/16 Sad and exciting news about Nick! Dr. Nick (nothing to do with the Simpsons' character) is leaving us. We will sure miss him, it has been awesome (and an honor) to have him in the lab and share so many things. He is taking off to start a postdoc position at PNNL with Dr. Janos Szanyi. We are sure he will do a great job in the amazing catalysis science program that Dr. Szanyi runs at PNNL!
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8/18/16 Congratulations to Nick for passing his Final Defense! Dr. Nelson: we are quite proud of you, and we are looking forward to learn about the great contributions you will be doing at the next stop of your journey! All the best!
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8/05/16 Summer is over and our undergraduate interns are going back to school. Thanks a lot for all the great work you guys did. Amber, Nicolas, and Pearl spent the whole summer here, Justin has been around for one year and Lindy a bit over a year. All of you guys will be missed, best wishes for your careers!
7/28/16 Sebastián passed his Prelim and is now officially a PhD candidate. Congratulations! Got a license to continue doing great stuff in the lab and show what is capable of. Keep up the great work!
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7/18/16 Congratulations to Dilini, Sebastián and Lindy for the acceptance of our latest paper in ChemPhysChem. Our work demonstrated that we can quantitatively control the local polarity of nanometer sized pores by choosing organofunctional groups and controlling their surface density. We also proved that local nanopore polarity is different and independent of the bulk solvent, which allows creating non-polar local environments in materials suspended in water. Finally, we proved how we can use this newly developed control of local polarity to tune the rates of catalytic reactions, and enable the use of water as a solvent for reactions that need organic environments to achieve optimal performance. This work is a promising alternative in green chemical processes and will enable the scientific community to rationally predict and control the rates of interfacial reactions in condensed phase.
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