Department News

2022:

• Dr. Goss attends the White House National Quantum Initiative Centers Summit, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Dr. Goss participated in a roundtable discussion on Quantum Workforce and Outreach.
• CSU Pre-Freshman Engineering program Scholars share their invention "Ambrosia Auto" on PBS NewsHour.
• Drs. Goss and Peters presented at the NSF QuBBE Quantum Academy Symposium - attendees were CPS Science HS Teachers for a discussion on CSU research and teaching at the University of Chicago.
• Dr. Van Duzor coleads workshop with colleagues from Tufts University on "Teaming up with undergraduate Learning Assistants (LAs) to foster active and inclusive chemistry learning environments" at the Biannual Conference on Chemistry Education.
• Paul Agyebo-Gilberts joins the CSU team as laboratory manager and recruiter for the NSF QuBBE - Quantum sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering.
• CSU Chemistry major Adriana Benford wins the Fran Seabright Award from the Women’s Chemistry Symposium. 
• Dr. Mardis is co-author on a manuscript with collaborators at Argonne National Lab entitled: "Electronic Structure of Molecular Cobalt Catalysts for H2 Production Revealed by Multi-frequency EPR".
• Mya Powers-Nash, Andrea Van Duzor and Mel Sabella led a full-day virtual workshop on the Learning Assistant Model for the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania including three institutions: Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield universities.  
  
• The PREP Program was recognized by the (National Society of Black Engineers) as the Pre-College Program of the Year!
• Marnie Boyd, Assistant Director for the Engineering Studies Program, is the honoree for the 2022 National Society of Black Engineers Golden Torch Award for the Pre-College Initiative Director of the Year Category. She was honored at the NS
  BE National Conference in Anaheim, CA.
• Physics Professor Edmundo Garcia and CSU Physics Major Olessen Cesalien, with colleagues from Dominican University and La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, traveled to Mexico to map archaeological pyramid structures at the El Castillo pyramid in Mexico! 
• Chemistry Professor, Kristy Mardis was the co-author on the published manuscript with collaborators at Argonne National Lab titled: "Electronic Structure of Molecular Cobalt Catalysts for H2 Production Revealed by Multi-frequency EPR."

2021:

• The PREP program sponsored two teams during the 2020-21 Ten80 Education Competition season. Ten80 is a student race competition where students use 1:10 scale RC cars to learn STEM. The teams competed during the NSBE National Convention. During the match, both teams won special awards: MicroBeast won the 1
• st place awards; BEAST XLR8 won the 2nd place award during the NSBE Ten80 Education competition. The students competed against 25 teams.
• Dr. Valerie Goss published a paper on ceramic nanofiber materials in the journal Physical Review Accelerators and Beams with colleagues from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. 
• Dr. Archie Peters and recent physics graduate Orelle Bulgin published a paper on excitons in CsPbBr3 Halide Perovskite in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters with colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University. 
• Dr. Valerie Goss and Dr. Archie Peters, along with collaborators at University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Harvard University were awarded a National Science Foundation grant for the Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Sensing in Biophysics and Bioengineering.  Over 2 million dollars will be used at CSU to fund basic research and workforce development.
• CSU students, who participate as Learning Assistants, Christopher Chaney (psychology), Andrew Stephens (computer science), Nisrein Khawaled (math), Mya Powers-Nash (chemistry) and faculty Jacquelyn Benchik-Osborne (education), Jubilee Dickson (psychology), Joni Jackson (business), Elaina Khasawneh (math), Natalie Szabo (music), Michael Wannah (education), Andrea Van Duzor (chemistry), Mel Sabella (physics) presented at the 2021 International Learning Assistant Alliance Conference on interdisciplinary education work at CSU using the Learning Assistant Model.  

2020:

• 2020 CSU graduate Ashley Walker was part of the BlackInChem team awarded the Inclusivity and Diversity Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry.  Congratulations!  Additionally, her organization Black In Astro is hosting https://www.blackinastro.com/ Week.
• Dr. Edmundo Garcia and Dr. Austin Harton, with collaborators from Domincan University, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to map archaeological pyramid structures in Mexico using muon detection. Symmetry Magazine has published an article entitled "Seeing Through Walls and Breaking Down Barriers" outlining their new project."  
•  Drs. Van Duzor and Sabella with colleagues through the Learning Assistant Alliance published a paper in the Journal of Chemical Education on utilizing LAs in remote learning.

2019:

• Physics Professor Mel Sabella was selected as a 2019 Fellow of the American Physical Society.
• Chemistry major Candace Young was featured in an article on Project SYNCERE which seeks to encourage underrepresented Chicago youth into engineering.
• Recent Physics alumnae Felicia Davenport, who is currently a doctoral student Georgia Institute of Technology, was featured in the Chicago's Black Women in STEAM Series at Adler Planetarium.
• Ashley Walker, chemistry major with a focus on astro-chemistry, has also been profiled in the STEAM Series at Adler Planetarium.