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Tag Chemistry

Three UW–Madison professors garner American Chemical Society honors

September 1, 2015

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has honored three UW–Madison professors with prestigious awards for excellence in research.

Cages offer new direction in sustainable catalyst design

July 23, 2015

University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have developed a new approach to structuring the catalysts used in essential reactions in the chemical and energy fields. The advance offers a pathway for industries to wean themselves off of platinum, one of the scarcest metals in the earth's crust.

Researchers develop new approach that combines biomass conversion, solar energy conversion

March 10, 2015

In a study published March 9 in Nature Chemistry, University of Wisconsin–Madison chemistry Professor Kyoung-Shin Choi presents a new approach to combine solar energy conversion and biomass conversion, two important research areas for renewable energy.

No joke: Chemistry thesis transmuted into comic book

January 28, 2015

As thesis writing approached, University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate student Veronica Berns faced a conundrum. She knew how hard it was to describe her work to friends and family — indeed, anybody outside the tight clan of structural chemists. And that was particularly true since she concentrated on a category of should-be-impossible structures called “quasicrystals.” However, Berns liked drawing and using “normal, English-language words,” and so about a year before graduation, she opted to accompany her traditional Ph.D. thesis with a comic book version.

Chemical dial controls attraction between water-repelling molecules

January 14, 2015

Abbott, Gellman and a group of University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers have provided new insights on hydrophobic interactions within complex systems. In a study published today in the journal Nature, the researchers show how the nearby presence of polar (water-attracted, or hydrophilic) substances can change the way the nonpolar hydrophobic groups want to stick to each other.