A variety of research projects took place during the summer of 2022.
Story: "Invaluable" experiences for Naz students immersed in research
More Summer 2022
During summer 2022, Annabelle and Emily continued their work to better understand the interactions of lactones (a common drug precursor) with water; Brian, Hallie, Jacob explore isomers of methoxystyrene (used as a fragrance and flavoring); and Joey continued his work on oxazole complexes (found in biologic antimicrobials).

The Newby Research Group, summer 2022. (l to r) Jacob Alvira, Brian Chong, Emily Weaver, Joey Nettles, Anabelle Carney, and Hallie Todd.
The group also learned to use the matrix isolation system so that they record spectra of their complexes at 15 K. This low temperature is needed to stabilize the complexes long enough to study them using FTIR spectroscopy. Spectra and analyses of Annabelle and Emily’s lactone complexes were presented at the 2022 International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to significant interest.

The matrix isolation chamber operating at 14.7 K!
Spring 2022
The Newby Research Group always has something exciting going on!
In the spring of 2022, Annabelle, Emily and Xavier traveled to the national ACS meeting in San Diego to present their work on weakly bound complexes as studied using computational chemistry.

(L to R) Annabelle, Xavier, and Emily at their posters at ACS San Diego
While in San Diego, we also visited UC San Diego where the San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) is located. SDSC is where many of our calculations are run, as they are too complex for a basic lab computer.
