Recent Research Funding

Award: $249,118 starting July 15, 2022. Dr. Binglin Sui, PI. With the support of this award, Dr. Sui leads his research group to develop a series of stimuli-responsive, biocompatible, and biodegradable polymers and polymer-based nanomaterials that can be extensively utilized in the biological and medical worlds.

NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)

MRI: Acquisition of a 400 MHz NMR Spectrometer for Research and Research Training

Award: $438,862 starting August 1, 2021. Dr. Guodong Du, PI, and Dr. Alena Kubatova, co-PI. This spectrometer allows research in a variety of fields such as those that accelerate chemical reactions of significant economic importance, as well as permitting study of chemically and biologically relevant species. Research projects that will benefit from this instrument include characterization of biodegradable materials synthesized from renewable resources and the construction of two-dimensional polymeric materials prepared from renewable materials using photo-energy.

NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award

New Discoveries in the Advanced Interface of Computation, Engineering, and Science (ND-ACES)

Three UND Chemistry faculty members are Research Participants on the newly funded NSF EPSCoR RII Track-1 Award. The award (starting July 1, 2020) is a new five-year competitive research infrastructure improvement (RII) Track-1 cooperative agreement totaling $20 million to ND EPSCoR jurisdiction and all 10 participating institutions. The title of the award is

The UND chemistry faculty members participating are: Guodong Du and Julia Zhao. Dr. Zhao is the co-Lead in the pillar of Material Designs at Biointerfaces and Dr. Du participates in this material pillar.

National Science Foundation Simulation and Machine Learning Grant

CDS&E:D3SC:Topology, Rare-event Simulation, and Machine Learning as Routes to Predicting Molecular Crystal Structures and Understanding Their Phase Behaviour

This collaborative research grant is awarded for four years to develop computational methods and software to study molecular crystals at the level of $193,872 from April 1^st, 2020.

Marvin Windows and Doors, Inc., Wood Aging Study by Pyrolysis Project

Investigation of Wood Windows Aging Using Thermal Desorption‐Pyrolysis GC‐MS

Award: $40,361. The project, led by Drs. Evguenii Kozliak and Alena Kubatova through continued partnership, aims to investigate aging of window-treated corner sections exposed to harsh environmental conditions using the elaborate modification of TD-Pyr-GC-MS developed by Dr. Kubatova for chemical characterization of wood matrix and occurrence of wood preservatives.

ND Corn Utilization Council Grants

Self-Healing and Recyclable Polymeric Materials from Corn Sugars

Dr. Guodong Du has received support for the project in the amount of $25,248 from July 1, 2020-June 30, 2021.

Conversion of Corn-Stover Derived Lignin

Dr. Wayne Seames (Chemical Engineering) in collaboration with Dr. Kubatova (Chemistry) has received funding ($79,000) for this project that aims to fragment lignin, advance lignin fragment analytical methods, and to use those methods to help define what the lignin fragments are and their potential uses.

Environmental Core (EC) of ND INBRE Program Received Renewed Support

The EC facility lead by Dr. David Pierce is continuing its program with an award of $593,000 for 5 years.

Dr. Pierce developed a method for ultra-trace determination of selenium without signal calibration. This technology employed a flow-through electrochemical method that could accurately determine Se^IV concentrations in water samples to part-per-trillion levels. Ongoing projects are being led by Dr. Pierce in the EC, in addition to collaborations, the example is a project to determine if rare earth elements can be economically extracted from fracking water obtained from oil production in the Bakken area of ND.

ND INBRE