REU Site: Molecules Meet Materials

University Of South Dakota Main Campus, Vermillion SD

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The Molecules Meet Materials (M3) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site award to the University of South Dakota, located in Vermillion, SD, will support the training of 10 students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2022-2024. In this program, participants pursue collaborative research projects, with a focus on chemistry at interfaces. The site will train students to use spectroscopy, electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and computational methods to study materials and molecules at interfaces. All students will also take part in a professional development and ethics training program, with a focus on science communication and preparation for graduate school or industrial careers. Through independent research projects and workshop and seminar series, this site aims to broaden participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), with a focus on recruiting and supporting students from Tribal Colleges and Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs). In collaboration with their peers and faculty mentors, the undergraduate students will undertake individual projects, including themes related to the use of core-shell plasmonic nanoparticles for applications in anti-counterfeiting, metal-organic supercontainers for biomass conversion, computational methods to improve f-block element separations, organic semiconductor materials from perfluoroalkylated aromatic molecules, nanoparticles with tailored surfaces for specific cellular surface targets such as plant cells, cancer cells, or bacterial cells in biofilms. Research projects such as these will be coupled with training on a variety of characterization methods relevant to interfacial chemistry and with workshops focused on skill and career development. This site will emphasize the recruitment of underserved students from Tribal Colleges and PUIs; combined, these efforts aim to broaden participation in STEM and to diversify the future chemical sciences workforce. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.