The Gassengang
Madushani Dharmawardana, in her 4th year, has been named as the Industry Etter Student Lecturer at the American Crystallographic Association’s 2017 national conference in New Orleans. She presented her submitted work on thermochromic and dynamic crystals and was chair of the General Interest I section.
Super scientist and PhD student Candace Benjamin has received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research
Fellowship Program (GRFP). The GRFP provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship period ($34,000 annual stipend and $12,000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution). That support is for graduate study that leads to a research-based master’s or doctoral degree in S&E. That means Candace, who is currently a second year, will not graduate for another five years. (hehehehehehe)
The Gassensmith Chemical Virology Group received an NSF CAREER award for its work on modifying viral capsids using novel bioconjugation methods. It is largely based upon the hard work of graduate student Zhuo Chen, who’s seminal paper in Small and her 2016 review in WIRES Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology set the tone for the proposal. Substantial preliminary work was also conducted by Candace Benjamin. Their efforts were aided, in no small part, by the six other members of the Gassensmith lab including former postdoc Na Li, who has since moved on to a career in industry. Jeremiah primarily sits in his office answering the phone when it rings and keeping his Twitter up to date, so he takes and deserves less credit than the aforementioned rockstars who should feel free to take a day this month off to celebrate. (just kidding… kind of.)
We thank the Petroleum Research Fund of the ACS for supporting our work through the Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) program. The grant was based upon the preliminary data collected by Madushani Dharmarwardana, and is a testament to her hard work (and will fund the rest of her PhD!)
Welcome Michael Luzuriaga to the group! Probably a Californian of some kind, Michael will work on projects that focus on integrating viral particles into advanced drug delivery technologies.
Madushani Dharmawardana‘s blog post about her trip to the ACA in Denver is up on the CCDC’s blog. She gives an uplifting story about her trip and that she’s looking forward to chairing a session at next year’s conference. Way to go Madushani!
Undergraduates Aditya Gudapati and Elizabeth Pham have done an amazing job in creating an online video showing how our undergrad team makes Qβ. Contextually, the production quality is outstanding and we are now in the process of dubbing it into Chinese and Viet so encourage and enable global participation in using VLPs as nanoscale platforms and to get even more young people involved in this line of research. Check it out below or on the Gassensmith Lab YouTube channel.
Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Fraser Stoddart, both mentors and friends of Jeremiah, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Here are a couple papers he published with both guys together. Jean-Pierre’s incredible creativity and child-like love for science and Fraser’s indomitable work ethic were excellent examples of how to lead a revolution in science. Also, congrats to Ben Feringa—an amazing chemist. (Featured image is a recruiting poster Jeremiah made for the group when he was a postdoc.)