Mar 28, 2024  
2016-2017 General Catalog 
    
2016-2017 General Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Chemistry (Graduate Program)


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For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.  

Program Overview

The Department of Chemistry includes 30 research faculty, approximately 140 graduate students, and 22 support staff members. Research opportunities are offered in analytical, biological, computational, environmental, inorganic, macromolecular, materials, organic, nano and physical chemistry. The PhD program promotes independent study and research. Extensive collaboration with local industrial research laboratories enriches the educational experience and enhances postgraduate job opportunities.

Administration

Carol M. Taylor, Chair
Doug Gilman, Director of Graduate Studies
TELEPHONE 225-578-3466
FAX 225-578-3458
E-MAIL chadv@lsu.edu
WEBSITE chemistry.lsu.edu

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site for the LSU Graduate School. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: Graduate Student Services, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.

Successful applicants must meet the requirements for admission to the Graduate School and must also demonstrate a strong background and interest in chemistry. A detailed description of admission procedures and general regulations can be obtained from the departmental website.

Financial Assistance

Fellowships, teaching assistantships, research assistantships, and enrichments are available to qualified PhD students on a competitive basis. Four-year Board of Regents Graduate Fellowships and Economic Development Assistantships (EDA) are available for superior students; these range from $25,000 to $31,000 per year. Teaching assistants instruct undergraduate laboratories and spend about 20 hours per week performing these and other teaching duties. Research assistantships are available to advanced students through grants obtained by individual faculty members. The average graduate assistantship salary is approx. $24,000 per year.

Facilities

  • LSU Libraries provides extensive chemistry resources in print and electronic format. Print resources are integrated with the sciences collection in the main library while most electronic resources are made available to faculty, staff, and students at their desktops and/or through extensive campus computer labs, wireless networks, and off-campus access. Among the electronic resources offered are SciFinder and Web of Science.
  • Departmental researchers have access to LSU’s unique synchrotron X-ray source at the Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD). Beamlines are dedicated to chemical analysis, diffraction, scattering, and imaging.
  • The NMR Facility houses five high-resolution (Agilent 700 MHz, Bruker AVIII HD 500 MHz, Bruker AVIII HD 400 MHz, Bruker AVIII HD 400 MHz, and Bruker AV 400 MHz) and one solid state NMR/diffusion (Bruker AV 400 MHz with wide bore magnet) spectrometers. The 700 and 500 MHz instruments are equipped with room temperature triple resonance (1H/13C/15N and 1H/31P/X) probes and the 500 MHz instrument is equipped with a triple resonance (1H/13C/15N) Prodigy cryo-probe. The 400 MHz instruments are equipped with multiple 5 mm and 10 mm broadband probes. The facility is maintained by two skilled staff PhD scientists.
  • Three ultrafast laser systems located in the department include a high-power femtosecond Ti-sapphire oscillator, amplifier, and OPA for second harmonic generation and transient absorption spectroscopy; a femtosecond Ti-sapphire amplifier and OPA for sum-frequency generation and ultrafast microscopy;  and a femtosecond Ti-sapphire amplifier and OPA for two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy.
  • The Structure Analysis Laboratory houses two modern computer-controlled single crystal x-ray diffractometers (Bruker-Nonius Kappa CCD and a Bruker Kappa Apex II DUO system) operated by a professional service crystallographer. Dedicated computers control all aspects of data collection, data analysis, graphics presentation, and publishing. Cryogenic facilities provide for routine low-temperature structure determination. A computercontrolled powder diffractometer is also available.
  • The Polymer Analysis Laboratory provides advanced equipment for characterization of macromolecules, supramolecular assemblies, colloids, complex fluids, and related materials. Included is a custom-built static and dynamic laser light scattering system; four additional light scattering and on-line viscometry systems, each coupled to a separate gel permeation chromatograph or asymmetric field flow fractionation system (aqueous or organic solvents); zeta potential analyzer and particle sizer by dynamic light scattering; laser diffraction particle size analyzer; differential and modulate differential scanning calorimetry; thermogravimetric and modulated thermogravimetric analysis; dielectric thermal analysis; dynamic mechanical analysis; small angle x-ray scattering; analytical ultracentrifugation and precision densitometry; fluorescence and polarization microscopes with thermal stage. Additional equipment is available through Louisiana’s Applied Polymer Technology Extension Consortium.
  • The Mass Spectrometry Facility offers a broad range of services with four mass spectrometers, including: a Varian Saturn 2200 GC/MS for GC separations utilizing electron ionization; an Agilent 6210 high resolution TOF electrospray system capable of exact mass measurements; a Bruker UltraflexExtreme MALDI-TOF-TOF optimized for polymer analysis, protein sequencing and tissue imaging: and a Bruker Amazon ETD electrospray MS-MS with associated nanospray and normal flow HPLC capability, available for analyses of small molecule to protein sequencing. The GC/MS and MALDI-TOF-TOF are open-access instruments available to on-campus users. Two mass spectrometrists staff the facility.
  • Molecular modeling and quantum computational capabilities are provided by software packages such as Gaussian, NWChem, SYBYL, and AMBER, which either run on the LSU supercomputer systems or personal computers. LSU has a site license to the Cambridge Structural Database with over 800,000 crystal structures.
  • A high-speed Ethernet LAN links all office, laboratory, and departmental computing facilities and is, in turn, connected to the main campus optic fiber. This series of networks provides access to all local mainframe and supercomputer facilities. Wireless network access is available throughout Choppin Hall and the Chemistry and Materials Building.
  • LSU has outstanding computational facilities maintained by the High Performance Computing Center (HPC). This includes Supermike II (a 146 TFlops Peak Performance 440 compute node cluster) as well as Supermic (a 1000 TFlops Peak Performance 360 compute node cluster). A number of commercial and open source software packages for modeling are available on these clusters including AMBER, LAMMPS, GROMACS, CP2K, NWChem, and GAUSSIAN09. The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) also offers access to a number of other supercomputer systems distributed across the state. Visit www.hpc.lsu.edu for details about high performance computing at LSU or www.loni.org to learn more about Louisiana’s Optical Network Initiative.
  • Other maintenance and support facilities include a full-time computer programmer who assists students and faculty with mainframe and personal computer problems; a multimedia/communications studio; a modern electronics shop; and a fully equipped and staffed machine shop.

Graduate Faculty

(check current listings by department by clicking this link)

Leslie G. Butler (M) • Solid state NMR and 3-D tomography studies for materials science
Frank K. Cartledge (EM) • Environmental chemistry and hazardous waste
Bin Chen (M) • Nucleation and biomimetic material design, structure-property relationships in materials
Robert L. Cook (M) • Environmental chemistry of soils and waters, including biological entities
William E. Crowe (7M) • Organic and organo-metallic chemistry using transition metal catalysts
William H. Daly (EM) • Polymeric materials based on polysaccharides
Randy Duran (M) • Macromolecular chemistry; surface chemistry of amphiphilic materials
Jayne C. Garno (M) • Analytical chemistry, scanning probe microscopy, nanofabrication, surface science
S. Douglass Gilman (M) • Bioanalytical chemistry, microfluidics
Louis Haber (6A) • Physical chemistry, ultrafast and nonlinear spectroscopy of nanomaterials
Brian J. Hales (EM) • Biophysical
Randall W. Hall (EM)
Rendy Kartika (6A) • Organic chemistry, synthetic methodology, complex molecules synthesis
Neil R. Kestner (EM)
Revati Kumar (6A) • Physical Chemistry; computational chemistry; modeling of novel materials - energy storage and catalysis
Daniel Kuroda (6A) • Physical chemistry, two-dimensional infrared laser spectroscopy
Kenneth A. Lopata (6A) • Physical chemistry, time-domain quantum chemistry simulations
Megan A. Macnaughtan (M) • Biophysical chemistry of proteins, NMR spectroscopy, bioanalytical chemistry
Luigi G. Marzilli (M) • Bioinorganic chemistry, inorganic medicinal chemistry
Andrew W. Maverick (M) • Nanoporous transition metal complexes, energy-related inorganic chemistry
Robin L. McCarley (M) • Bioanalytical chemistry, drug delivery, cancer detection
Sean P. McGlynn (EM)
Kermit K. Murray (M) • Imaging mass spectrometry, laser ablation sampling for proteomics and genomics
Evgueni E. Nesterov (M) • Functional organic materials and molecular devices, physical-organic chemistry, photochemistry
John A. Pojman (M) • Macromolecular chemistry, kinetics, physical chemistry of polymerization
Erwin D. Poliakoff (EM) • Photoelectron spectroscopy and x-ray spectroscopy of nanoscale materials
William A. Pryor (EM)
Justin R. Ragains (6A) • Visible photochemistry and electron transfer for small molecule synthesis and thin film growth
James W. Robinson (EM)
Paul S. Russo (EM)

Gerald J. Schneider (M) Soft matter and neutron scattering
Kevin M. Smith (M) • Synthesis, properties and applications of porphyrin systems
Steven A. Soper (EM)
David A. Spivak (M) • Molecularly imprinted polymers, engineered polymer soil surrogates
George G. Stanley (M) • Bimetallic cooperativity in homogeneous catalysis, hydroformylation, molecular modeling
Carol M. Taylor (M) • Organic synthesis and bioorganic chemistry with a focus on post-translationally modified peptides
M. Graça H. Vicente (M) • Fluorescent porphyrin-based macrocycles for medicine
Isiah M. Warner (M) • Optical spectroscopies, biochemical and bioanalytical applications of material science
Steve Watkins (EM)
Donghui Zhang (M) • Polymer synthesis and characterization, polymerization catalysis, structure-property relationship

Programs

    Doctor of PhilosophyMaster of Science

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