Program Description
Research Programs
The Department’s research emphases fall into the thematic focus areas of bio-organic chemistry with a particular emphasis on biophotonics, environmental chemistry and green chemistry, and chemical education. Within these multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary focus areas, students can select research projects that involve the traditional subdisciplines of chemistry; analytical, biochemistry, inorganic, organic and physical. Currently active research projects in the Department focus on various aspects of analytical chemistry, drug discover and delivery, organic synthesis, materials chemistry and self assembly, chromatography, the chemistry and biochemistry of cell membranes, environmental and green chemistry, chemistry of climate change, photophysical chemistry, natural products chemistry, sensor development, biophysical chemistry, computational chemistry, and solid-state NMR.
Research Instrumentation
The Department is equipped with modern instrumentation core facilities to support its research program. These facilities are readily available to graduate students for “hands-on” experience after successfully completing a short training course.
- NMR core facility includes 400, 300 and 200 MHz solution FT-NMR spectrometers and 400, 300, 200, 100 MHz wide-bore solid-state NMR spectrometers
- Core campus mass spectrometry facility consists of a 7T ESI FTMS, a high-resolution magnetic sector mass spectrometer with EI and CI sources and GC, HPLC, pyrolysis and fast-atom bombardment capabilities, a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer; a Eksigent/Thermo LTQ ESI LC-MS/SM dedicated to “bottom-up” proteomics studies and an Applied Biosystems SCIEX QTRAP ESI LC-MS/MS dedicated to small molecule and metablomics characterizations.
- Core campus proteomics facility has all the necessary equipment to prepare samples for mass-spectrometry-based proteomics characterizations.
- Optical Spectroscopy lab containing 2 FT-IR spectrometer with far-IR capabilities; time-resolved spectrofluorometer; atomic absorption and diode-array UV-Vis spectrophotometers.
- Powder x-ray diffractometer
In addition to these departmental resources, individual research groups also maintained instrumentation including supercritical fluid chromatography and extraction, for FRET microscopy, laser light scattering, and computational chemistry. Campus super computer facilities and on-line computer access to Web of Science, Chemical Abstracts Services and other on-line information sources are readily available.
Candidacy Examinations
The Department uses a cumulative examination process as its written candidacy (comprehensive) examination for the doctorate. A student must pass a total of 5 cumulative examinations in at least 3 subdisciplines over a period of two calendar years (24 possible tests). The oral candidacy (comprehensive) exam usually takes place within 6 months of completion of the cumulative exams. Student is required to develop an original research proposal, written and defend it orally. In order to successfully defend such a proposal the student must be able to integrate their course work into a research environment, and its defense reflects that expectation.
Facility
The Department is housed in the newly constructed Avera Health Science Center and newly renovated Shepard Hall. Combined, these provide this connected facilities 100,000 sq. ft. of research and instructional space.
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