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Foundation helps leverage a $550,000 grant that puts chemistry department ahead of peer programs

 

Associate Professor of Chemistry Eriks Rozners involves his students in his work.

“Students essentially do all the research, from simple synthesis to building complex molecules,” says Rozners, who supervises their work, writes up results and develops new research proposals.

He and his team of students, ranging from undergrads to post-docs, explore the fundamental properties of nucleic acids, mostly ribonucleic acids (RNAs), with hopes that their research may ultimately lead to new therapeutic measures like antibiotics or anticancer drugs.

To examine the synthetic structures they build in the lab, Rozners used Binghamton University Foundation funds to secure a $550,000 National Science Foundation grant to buy a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrument, scheduled to come online by fall 2011. Currently, students manipulate RNA, then send it off to the University of Rochester for analysis.

“As a training mission, it is very important to have modern technology,” Rozners says. “It is vital for the research mission, too. Right now we are obtaining the key results through collaboration, which is great, but from the students’ perspective, they are involved in only one side of research — preparing molecules — and sending them away. When the students can do it all, it will be a much richer research experience.”

The new instrument puts the Chemistry Department ahead of other peer programs and will enable it to grow and realize its full potential.