Thirty-eight students eligible to graduate from the University of Oklahoma in December maintained perfect 4.0 grade-point averages throughout their undergraduate careers at OU. Of the total, more than half are from Oklahoma.
A team of University of Oklahoma materials scientists has done what many in the field thought impossible: magnetize quantum dots by “doping” them with manganese. The implications span everything from how we power our homes to how we build computers, scan for diseases, grow crops and illuminate our world.
A research team composed of research assistant and OU alumna Jennifer Ou and undergraduate students Meiling Wade and Maham Saeed earned First Place in the Poster Award, securing the workshop’s top prize of $1,000.
Congratulations, Surya Singh, for winning the People's Choice Award in the 3 Minute Thesis Competition. Surya is a 4th-year graduate student working in Dr. Indrajeet Sharma's lab. The title of his presentation was: "Sweet Light: Using Sugar and Blue Light to Create Next-Generation Antibiotics".
Helen Zgurskaya and Valentin Rybenkov are leading a five-year, $5.3 million project funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to find new ways to deliver lifesaving drugs directly into resistant pathogens.
University of Oklahoma alumna Abby M. Cardoza, now a researcher at the Colorado School of Mines, has co-authored an award-winning paper in the American Chemical Society’s journal Chemistry of Materials.
We’re excited to introduce Aaron Lim, the newly elected president of the Chemistry Club at OU—already making plans to connect students and faculty through research, mentorship, and community.
The June 2025 C&EN feature highlights efforts led by University of Oklahoma associate professor Indrajeet Sharma, whose lab has developed a bench-stable sulfenylnitrene reagent that safely and selectively inserts a single nitrogen atom into five-membered N‑heterocycles under metal‑free, ambient conditions—dramatically advancing the precision of late-stage skeletal editing.
The University of Oklahoma is home to one of the region’s most advanced and well-staffed core research facilities: the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Lab. This facility plays a critical role in cutting-edge research, student training and scientific discovery across several disciplines.
Two OU undergraduate students working at the OU Proteomics Core Facility have been awarded two prestigious Summer Research Scholarships from Georgetown University and MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships recognized faculty recipients of the awards for excellence in campus-wide research and creative activities, as well as eight recipients of active early career awards, 25 project teams that earned $1 million or more in extramural funding and nine recipients of patents at a ceremony on May 16.
A research team from the University of Oklahoma has pioneered a groundbreaking method that could accelerate drug discovery and reduce pharmaceutical development costs. Their work, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, introduces a safe, sustainable way to insert a single carbon atom into drug molecules at room temperature.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have made a breakthrough discovery that could potentially revolutionize treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections, cancer and other challenging gram-negative pathogens without relying on precious metals
On the evening of Thursday, April 3, Zarrow Hall was filled with enthusiasm as more than 60 students, joined by several faculty members, gathered for the Chemistry Spring Social—a lively kickoff event for the newly forming Chemistry Club. Attendees enjoyed pizza, games, and fun chemistry-themed prizes, creating an engaging and collaborative atmosphere.
Newly published research from the University of Oklahoma proves that adding a covering to quantum light sources called a colloidal quantum dot can cause them to shine without faltering, opening the door to new, affordable quantum possibilities.
ACS Infectious Diseases has published an editorial featuring interviews with highly cited female scientists who share their experiences. Dr. Helen Zgurskaya from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was a featured interviewee.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma, led by associate professor Indrajeet Sharma, have developed a breakthrough method of adding a single nitrogen atom to molecules, unlocking new possibilities in drug research and development. Now published in the journal Science, this research is already gaining international attention from drug manufacturers.
Rakhi Rajan, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma, has received a renewal grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to improve the accuracy of CRISPR-Cas technologies.
Yihan Shao, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, has received a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institutes of Health to develop computer modeling tools for studying the enzymes critical for CRISPR gene editing and biomedical imaging tools for cancer tumors.
The department congratulates Anna Lewis, Amer Abuabed, and Vignesh Anand on receiving the Summer 2024 Provost’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Fellowship.
OU faculty Rakhi Rajan, Len Thomas and Steven Foster hosted 11 AP Chemistry students and teacher Novah Klein from Chickasha High School. Dr. Rajan organized the all-day event to promote a future in STEM and encourage students to join our department in their future academic endeavors.
The department's annual award banquet was held in the Molly Shi Boren Ballroom on Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Undergraduate and graduate students, who were nominated by faculty members, were presented with awards based on their Graduate Teaching Assistant skills, and outstanding scholarly and research activity. The Society of Chemical and Biochemical Researchers, the department's student organization, also presented awards that were peer-voted.
The department would like to congratulate Laura Clifford, Ph. D., on her recent promotion to Associate Professor
Dr. Helen Zgurskaya has been elected as a new fellow to the class of 2024 American Academy of Microbiology. She is one of 65 accomplished scientists worldwide to be elected this year.
Dr. Ahsan has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of proteomics, mass spectrometry-based method development, identification of potential biomarkers, toxicity, stress tolerance, and allergens.
