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Abstract: Sleep is conserved across all birds and mammals, and perhaps all animals, and yet its primary functions and reason for existence are still unclear.  We still cannot answer the simple question of why we sleep at all.  A major bottleneck in understanding sleep is the time and cost involved with EEG/EMG analysis (the gold standard for sleep in birds and mammals).  Therefore, my lab has spent the past twenty years developing a simple, noninvasive alternative using sensitive piezoelectric films, which has allowed for large scale genomic studies, more efficient drug screens, and the testing of sleep in a wide variety of rodent models for human disease.  Although we do not know the central functions of sleep very well, we now know that it strongly impacts almost all diseases including infections, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, Alzhiemer’s, and essentially every disease examined thus far.  Sufficient sleep is also critical for optimal performance and our sense of well-being.  Even a modest reduction of sleep from 7hrs/night to 5hrs/night reduces the average person’s performance to that of someone who is legally “drunk”.  Sleep traits, like almost all traits, are complex, and the specific alleles of specific genes that influence these traits in people and in mice have been difficult to determine.  However, we and other labs have begun to find patterns and pathways that may shed light on the most critical processes.  Sleep appears to serve many different functions that impact health and disease, a few of which are beginning to be understood, and will be highlighted in this talk.

Abstract: Soft materials are found in a host of application areas, from biotechnology and 3D printing to adhesives and soft devices. However understanding and controlling the behavior of very soft materials is an ongoing challenge. The Soft Materials and Interfaces group focuses on understanding the physics and mechanics of soft polymeric materials, including but not limited to gels, elastomers, and viscoelastic fluids, with an emphasis on responses at or near interfaces. When materials are sufficiently soft or the characteristic size scale is sufficiently small, soft solids display liquid-like characteristics – properties traditionally reserved for liquids emerge as an important part of the material response. In this talk, we introduce situations where combinations of solid and liquid characteristics control the mechanics of deformable interfaces. In particular, we discuss the importance of surface tension, surface stress, and phase separation for the interaction between a small adhesive particle and a soft elastomer. Based on confocal microscopy and colloidal probe experiments, a modified contact mechanics model is proposed. In the second part, we demonstrate tunable adhesive behavior of transient hydrogel networks that are crosslinked with metal-coordination bonds. Time permitting, we will introduce our current knowledge on how a liquid drop interacts with the surface of a soft polymer gel.

Bio: Jonathan Pham is an Assistant Professor of Materials Engineering at the ����vlog�ٷ����. He received a PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he investigated nanoparticle assembly and mechanics. During this time, he was a Chateaubriand fellow at ESPCI-ParisTech investigating deformation of microscale helical filaments in microfluidics. Prior to joining Kentucky, he was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research working on a range of topics, including cell-surface interactions and liquid drop impact.

Research:

Abstract: The physical organisation, from the molecular to the macro-scale, of essentially all macromolecular materials can profoundly affect the properties and features of the resulting architectures. I will discuss how rules that explain the mechanical properties of the Katana and distinguishes good from lesser tasty chocolates, can be applied to organic semiconductors to manipulate their properties and, hence, and their consequent performance when used as active layers in organic photovoltaic cells. To illustrate this, a survey will be given on the principles of structure development from the liquid phase with focus on how to  use phase diagrams to manipulate their phase transformations and solid-state order for the controlled design and manipulation of the final ‘morphology’ towards technological and practical applications.

Prof. Natalie Stingelin

School of Materials Science & Engineering, and School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

Director, Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

natalie.stingelin@gatech.edu

Short Bio: Natalie Stingelin is a Full Professor of Materials Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics, and holds a Chaire Internationale Associée by the Excellence Initiative of the Université de Bordeaux. She had prior positions at Imperial College London; the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge; Queen Mary University of London, the Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven; and ETH Zürich. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of ����vlog�ٷ���� and has been elected to the class of 2019 MRS Fellows. Furthermore, she was awarded the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining's Rosenhain Medal and Prize in 2014, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) President's International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) Award for Visiting Scientists in 2015. While at Imperial College, she was recipient of a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants, as well as an ERC Proof of Concept grant. She was the Chair of the 2016 Gordon Conference on 'Electronic Processes in Organic Materials' and the Zing conference on ‘Organic Semiconductors’. In 2018, she organized the 14th edition of the International Conference of Organic Electronics (ICOE). She has published >190 papers in the area of organic electronics & photonics, bioelectronics, physical chemistry of organic functional materials, and smart inorganic/organic hybrid systems.

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Abstract: Recent efforts by our group and others have shown the promise of applying single molecule methods to link mechanistic detail about protein adsorption to macroscale observables. When we study one molecule at a time, we eliminate ensemble averaging, thereby accessing underlying heterogeneity. However, we must develop new methods to increase information content in the resulting low density and low signal-to-noise data and to improve space and time resolution. 

I will highlight recent advances in super-resolution microscopy for quantifying the physics and chemistry that occur between target proteins and stationary phase supports during chromatographic separations. My discussion will concentrate on the newfound ability of super-resolved single protein spectroscopy to inform theoretical parameters via quantification of adsorption-desorption dynamics, protein unfolding, and nano-confined transport. Additionally, I will discuss using phase manipulation to encode temporal and 3D spatial information, and the opportunities and challenges associated with such imaging methods.

Abstract:  Conventionally physical chemistry is a field that mainly investigates physicochemical phenomena at atomic and molecular levels. Noticing the analogy between molecular (especially macromolecular) dynamics and cellular dynamics, in the past few years my lab has focused on introducing and generalizin

g the techniques and concepts of physical chemistry into cell biology studies. In this talk I will first discuss a long-standing Nobel-Prize winning puzzle on olfaction. Each olfactory sensory neuron stochastically expresses one and only one type of olfactory receptors, but the molecular mechanism remained unanswered for decades. I will show how simple physics taught in introductory physical chemistry textbook explains this seemingly complex problem, and briefly mention our ongoing efforts of investigating chromosome dynamics with a CRISPR-dCas9-based live cell imaging platform. 

In the second part of my talk, I will discuss our efforts on developing an emerging new field of single cell studies of the dynamics of cell phenotypic transition (CPT) processes, in parallel to single molecule studies in  chemistry. Mammalian cells assume different phenotypes that can have drastically different morphology and gene expression patterns, and can change between distinct phenotypes when subject to specific stimulation and microenvironment. Some examples include stem cell differentiation, induced reprogramming (e.g., iPSC) and others. In many aspects a CPT process is analogous to a chemical reaction. Using the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition as a model system, I will present an integrated experimental-computational platform, and introduce concepts from chemical rate theories such as transition state, transition path, and reactive/nonreactive trajectories to quantitatively study the dynamcis of CPT processes.

Research:

Abstract: The neoclerodane diterpene salvinorin A is the major active component of the hallucinogenic mint plant Salvia divinorum Epling & Játiva (Lamiaceae), a plant recently scheduled in many countries. Salvinorin A is a potent k opioid receptor agonist and atypical dissociative hallucinogen. However, it has also emerged as a valuable tool for gaining additional insight into the pharmacology of opioid receptors. This presentation will highlight our previous and ongoing efforts to understand the chemistry and biology of salvinorin A and related neoclerodanes at opioid receptors. In particular, we will describe our chemical strategy to deliberately simplify and introduce functionality about the target molecule to provide access to molecular features on salvinorin A otherwise unattainable by semisynthesis.

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Abstract: Dinoflagellates are an important group of eukaryotic microorganisms found in freshwater and marine environments. Certain dinoflagellates produce potent toxins that are the causative agents of diarrheic, amnesic, paralytic, and neurotoxic shellfish poisonings, and are responsible for the formation of harmful algal blooms (red tides). Still other dinoflagellates are capable of both photosynthesis and bioluminescence, processes that are regulated by a cellular circadian rhythm (biological clock) and give rise to bioluminescent bays and the ‘phosphorescence’ of the sea. The key, light-forming enzyme of dinoflagellate bioluminescence, dinoflagellate luciferase (LCF), contains three homologous catalytic domains within a single polypeptide and is tightly regulated by pH. The production of blue-green light by LCF is coupled to the oxidation of an open-chain tetrapyrrolic substrate, dinoflagellate luciferin (LH2), which is a catabolite of the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll. Current progress in our understanding of LH2 biosynthesis and the chemiluminescent and pH-dependent activation mechanisms of LCF will be presented.

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Abstract: The (4+3)-cycloaddition reaction is a quick and efficient entry to seven-membered rings, and those that are larger and smaller as well.  This presentation will focus on our contributions to this area from both a historical and present-day perspective.  This latter aspect will be dominated by our work on the cycloaddition reactions of oxidopyridinium ions.

Research:

Michael Harmata was born in Chicago in 1959.  He attended St. Michael the Archangel grammar school, Thomas Kelly High School, and the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he received his AB degree in chemistry with a math minor in 1980, working in the labs of Jacques Kagan and graduating with honors and highest distinction and all that great stuff that doesn’t matter anymore.  He earned his PhD under the tutelage of Scott E. Denmark at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois in early 1985, working on carbanion-accelerated Claisen rearrangements.  He then did an NIH postdoc with Paul A. Wender at Stanford University where he performed some of the first work on the synthesis of the neocarzinostatin chromophore.  He began his independent career at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1986, where he is now the Norman Rabjohn Distinguished Professor of ����vlog�ٷ����.  He has been contributed significantly to the areas of (4+3)-cycloaddition reactions, benzothiazine chemistry, pericyclic reactions of cyclopentadienones, chiral molecular tweezers, silver-catalyzed chemistry, and more.