My current research interests include theoretical and computational studies of energy flow in molecules, particularly in biological systems, and its influence on chemical reaction kinetics and thermal transport. Other research interests include theoretical approaches to address thermal conduction in nanoscale systems, and computational studies of terahertz spectroscopy and dynamics of solvated biomolecules.
William ODonohue
I have published 90 books; and 300 journal articles and book chapters.
Maryam Sarmazdeh
Maryam Raeeszadeh-Sarmazdeh joined the University of Nevada, Reno in July 2019 as an assistant professor. Her research group is focused on biomolecular engineering and synthetic biology to develop novel biotechnology tools and products to solve major issues in human health, sustainability and environment. Dr. Sarmazdeh was a senior research fellow in the Department of Cancer Biology at Mayo Clinic, Florida, during which her work was focused on engineering novel protein-based therapeutics based on natural enzyme inhibitors. Prior to her appointment at Mayo Clinic, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Delaware where her research was focused on enzyme and metabolic pathway engineering. Dr. Sarmazdeh earned her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. There, her research was focused on generating site-specific protein immobilization on the surface and protein engineering using yeast surface display and directed evolution.
Natia Frank
Prof. Natia L. Frank received her Bachelor’s degree with Honors from Bard College in 1987 (Chemistry, Math, Music), an M.Sc. in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1989), and Ph.D at the University of California-San Diego (1996, Organic Chemistry). She was a CNRS Postdoctoral Fellow with the late Prof. Olivier Kahn at the University of Bordeaux, France (spin-based materials), and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (Biomaterials, Prof. Thomas Meade/Prof. Harry Gray) at Caltech. She began her independent career in 2000 as an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington-Seattle in the study of multifunctional magnetic materials for spintronics and biosensing. In 2005, she was recruited as a Canada Research Chair Tier II in Multifunctional Materials Chemistry at the University of Victoria where she developed optically switchable spin-based qubits for quantum science. In 2012, she was a Visiting Scholar at Humbolt University (Physics), Berlin, Germany, and University of Rennes (Chemistry), France. In 2020, she joined the University of Nevada-Reno as Associate Professor of Chemistry. Her primary expertise is at the interface of organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, spin-based materials and photochemistry/electron transfer theory which allows her to be well-situated to address current challenges in molecular quantum information science: the design of molecular qubits with long decoherence times, multiqubit arrays, and qubits/qudits that can respond to external stimuli for quantum computing and sensing. Prof. Frank currently serves on two funded DOE EFRC advisory boards in quantum science, the ACS-PRF Advisory Board, and has served on numerous NSF funding panels in quantum relevant areas.
Nicholas Borotto
My research program strives to improve mass spectrometric-based detection and analysis of biomolecules. In particular, we pair mass spectrometry with chemical derivatization, photon irradiation, ion mobility, and radical chemistry to elucidate the three-dimensional structure of proteins, better characterize the acidic and hydrophobic proteome, detect and localize post-translational modifications. Centered at the interface of chemistry and biology, my research program provides students with the opportunity to tackle both biochemically-focused projects and biophysical questions at the core of the techniques themselves. Currently, my group is recruiting students for three projects:
1) Equipping a carbon monoxide laser to a mass spectrometer, characterizing the behavior of irradiated biomolecules, and applying infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) to instruments and at pressure regimes traditionally precluded from this technique.
2) Probing protein three-dimensional structure with photocaged small molecule reagents both in vitro and in vivo and demonstrating the utility of the temporal and spatial control that is provided by these probes.
3) Applying the tandem mass spectrometry technique free-radical initiated peptide sequencing (FRIPS) to complex mixtures of anions.
Shamik Sengupta
Dr. Shamik Sengupta is the Executive Director of the Cybersecurity Center at University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His research emphasizes on various cybersecurity issues such as vulnerability assessment and malware analysis, security and privacy in cybersecurity information exchange, anomaly detection in cyber-physical systems, machine Learning, network security, honeypot as well as cognitive radio and DSA networks, game theory, network economics and self-configuring wireless mesh networks. He has authored over 150 international conferences and journal publications including IEEE GLOBECOM 2008 best paper award, International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS) 2017 best paper award and IEEE CCWC 2020 best paper award. He is the recipient of NSF CAREER award in 2012; UNR CSE Best Researcher award in 2015-2016 and 2017-2018; UNR College of Engineering Excellence Award 2018; University of Central Florida CECS Distinguished Alumni Honor award (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) 2018; and the UNR Ralph E. & Rose A. Hoeper Professorship Award 2019. For more information, please visit: https://www.cse.unr.edu/~shamik/.
Jeongwon Park
• Funded research grants from governments and industry
• H-index of 23 (peer review journal articles: 84), and cited more than 4700 times
• Senior Member of IEEE, Professional Engineer
• 6 US patents and 82 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals
• Contributed to high-impact research projects in nanotechnology at the University of Nevada Reno, University of Ottawa, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, San Diego, and Applied Materials, Inc.
Philipp Ruprecht
I am a faculty member in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering at University of Nevada, Reno, since 2016. Most of my research focuses on the magmatic processes within the crust and upper mantle that drive volcanic eruptions and the formation of continental crust. I combine field work with geochemical and petrologic tools, while also including physical constraints during magma evolution. In particular, I am interested in the assembly of arc magmas and the timescales associated with formation, storage, transport, and eruption of those magmas.
I am also interested in the links of magmatic processes to the formation of mineral deposits and the processes that are controlled by magmatic fluids.
Richard Plotkin
My research uses multiwavelength space- and ground-based observations to study black hole accretion and relativistic jets, over the full range of black hole masses and accretion rates (from quiescent to super-Eddington). My main research goal is to better understand the structure/geometry of accretion flows and outflows in different accretion regimes, in order to more effectively use radiation as a probe of Galactic and extragalactic black hole populations.
Christopher Morgan
My research focuses on the hunter-gatherer archaeology of the American West, China, Mongolia, and the southern Andes, with an emphasis on behavioral adaptations to high-altitude, desert, and other marginal environments. I am particularly interested in the ways mobility, storage, and settlement patterns articulate with paleoenvironmental change and the evolution of different types of hunter-gatherer sociocultural organization.
In the America West, I study the archaeology of Numic-speaking peoples across and beyond the Great Basin, the evolution of Archaic lifeways, and the different ways hunter-gatherers in the region exploited mountain environments. In China, I focus on more fundamental evolutionary questions: Lower to Upper Paleolithic transitions, the arrival or evolution of modern humans and human behavior, and the forager to farmer sequence between the Yellow and Wei rivers. In Mongolia, I collaborats with the National Museum of Mongolia on projects that track the origins of pastoral economies and the northeast Asian microblade adaptation. In the southern Andes, I work on collaborative projects with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina that investigate the ways the region’s hunter-gatherers adapted to high altitude settings.