Author Archives: Sandra Carlson

Seminar – Oleksandr Voznyy – Thursday October 13, 11:30 am

The Chemistry Seminar Program brings visitors from across Canada and beyond to present seminars in their area of expertise.  The seminars are open to everyone, including undergrad students.

Thursday October 13
11:30 am
David Turpin Building A110

Oleksandr Voznyy
University of Toronto, Scarborough
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/waldronk/Files/Home.html

“Applications of machine learning for studying phase stability in energy materials”

There is a growing demand for design and discovery of new materials that can replace their costly counterparts without the loss of performance. Focusing on clean energy applications, our experimental efforts show that in catalysis, batteries and photovoltaics, even minor changes to the material composition (using alloying or doping) may bring substantial benefits to materials’ performance.  However, it is becoming increasingly evident that traditional trial and error methods are simply too inefficient, given the vastness of the chemical combinatorial space, where human intuition is often inadequate to capture the trends in materials properties.  We find that having one tool that could predict formation energies and bandgaps for arbitrary materials, provided the accuracy is adequate, could help address a host of problems in a vast range of clean energy applications.  In this talk I will present our efforts in developing such a tool and the advances we’ve made in improving the accuracy of such predictions (in particular, formation energies). I will also demonstrate how this simple tool can be used for predicting battery cathode voltages, solid electrolytes ionic conductivity, solar cells phase stability, and catalysts’ stability in acid.

 

3M National Student Fellowship

The 3M National Student Fellowship honours up to ten full-time undergraduate students at Canadian institutions who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and innovation through seeing current needs in higher education or society and implementing change in their lives and at their university. These students embrace a vision of quality education that enhances their academic experience and beyond.

Fellowship recipients receive $1000 (to be spent at their discretion) and are invited to join other award winners at the annual conference of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE). They will also participate in a 3M National Student Fellowship Program summit. Awardees will receive a contribution towards their cost of travel to and accommodation during the conference.

Application deadline is November 30.

For more information visit https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/LearnAnywhere/3m/.

 

Seminar – Karen Waldron – Sept 26, 11:30 am

The Chemistry Seminar Program brings visitors from across Canada and beyond to present seminars in their area of expertise.  The seminars are open to everyone, including undergrad students.

Monday, September 26
11:30 a.m.
David Turpin Building A110 and Zoom (see link below)

Karen Waldron
University of Montreal
http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/waldronk/Files/Home.html

“Crosslinked proteolytic enzymes for microscale proteomics applications”

Proteolytic enzymes are routinely used to cleave the potentially thousands of proteins in a biological sample into smaller, more manageable peptide fragments. This facilitates their separation and identification by nano-HPLC, capillary electrophoresis (CE) and/or mass spectrometry (MS). This process, called peptide mapping, is one of the steps used in the workflow for identifying, quantifying, characterizing or probing the function of proteins in the vast field of proteomics, specifically “bottom-up” proteomics. Insoluble proteolytic enzymes (i.e., trypsin, chymotrypsin, pepsin, Lys-C, Asp-N, etc.) offer several benefits such as limited autolysis, reusability and rapid digestion because high enzyme-to-substrate ratios can be used. The added advantage of adaptability to microreactor formats and microfluidic platforms comes from using glutaraldehyde (GA) to crosslink enzymes and render them insoluble instead of immobilizing them on solid-phase supports. In 2004 we reported a multi-step GA-crosslinking procedure for trypsin and compared its specific activity and peptide maps to trypsin immobilized onto GA-functionalized glass beads. The procedure was later adapted for chymotrypsin to digest nanomolar concentrations of fluorescently labelled protein substrate with peptide mapping by CE laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection. A GA-chymotrypsin microreactor was fabricated in a capillary column by programing reagent delivery in a CE instrument. Despite the ease in making GA-crosslinked trypsin and chymotrypsin “particles”, their re-use for multiple digestions has been problematic. Our successes and setbacks will be discussed, as well as our efforts to improve the robustness of the crosslinked enzymes using a Design-of-Experiments (DOE) approach to investigate the experimental parameters in our multi-step crosslinking method.

This seminar will be live streamed on Zoom.
https://uvic.zoom.us/j/83657240884?pwd=3pDZp5892dS4gsAKoaplX1t2j9kgbh.1
Meeting ID: 836 5724 0884
Password: 379943

View the full list of seminars at https://events.uvic.ca/chemistry/.

International Opportunities Fair – Sept 23

The International Centre for Students, will be hosting the International Opportunities fair (IOF), an expo-style event which promotes international exchange, study abroad, and international co-op opportunities for students.  Current and past international exchange students will also join us to share some highlights of their international experiences, and details about their home or host universities with current UVic students.

UVic International Opportunities Fair
Location: Jamie Cassels Centre Lobby (first floor)
Date/Time: Friday, September 23, 11:00am-2:00pm

Volunteers needed for Peer Support Centre

The Peer Support Centre (PSC) is a safer space created to be an inclusive and comfortable space for students from all walks of life. It operates as a first point of contact for students looking for mental health support, referrals, and other resources. We operate through a face-to-face Peer Support model that is offered out of SUB B035 in the basement of the student union building, and through virtual pre-booked appointments.

PSC student volunteers (from all faculties and programs) are highly trained in suicide prevention, active listening, cultural competencies, in order to offer non-judgmental, empathetic and confidential support to their peers.

The volunteer program is especially popular with psychology, sociology, and social work students as it is highly relevant to those wishing to pursue trauma-centered careers; however, they have also had students from a variety of faculties (ie. Engineering and Fine Arts) bring great value to the team. The PSC encourages folks of diverse backgrounds to apply.

The PSC offers full training, volunteer support, reference letters, and professional development opportunities to our volunteers, which makes the organization an excellent choice for those pursuing next steps after graduation that require volunteer hours (ie. med school), but also creates a safe and welcoming space for those who find fulfillment through volunteering. 

Details are as follows:

Who: Students of any faculty who are open-minded, empathetic, and would like to help their fellow students. 

What: Peer Support — providing non-judgemental, confidential, and compassionate support to peers from all walks of life (training provided)

Where: In person on the UVic campus, SUB B035 and virtually through doxy.me

When: September 2022-April 2023 (negotiable and flexible). 2-4 hours a week (Centre hours are Monday-Thursday from 11:00am-4:00pm)

Why: Fulfillment from helping your peers navigate difficult situations, full and robust mental health training, consistent volunteer hours, professional development opportunities, and reference letters.

If this volunteer opportunity is of interest to you, please see the application form at https://uvss.ca/peer-support-centre/ and email your application form, resume, and cover letter to pscoperations@uvss.ca by end of day on July 13th.