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We are thrilled to announce that three of our students have excelled in the campus-wide competition for the prestigious Graduate School Fellowships:

🏆 Md Nazmul Hasan – Winner of the Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship (DGSF)

🏆 Stephen Nkwocha – Honored with the Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship (DDF)

🏆 Frederick Adom – Recipient of the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship (AOP)

Congratulations to all. Your hard work, dedication, and excellence have truly shone through. The Department is proud of your achievements and we look forward to your continued success!

We are honored to recognize the legacy of��James A. “Jim” Krogh, a brilliant mind who deeply valued education and lifelong learning. Jim earned his B.S. in Chemistry in three years from Dominican College in Racine. He continued his academic journey at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he obtained his M.S. in Organic Chemistry with Professor George Sosnovsky. His thesis was titled, “In Search of New Methods for Synthetic Organic Chemistry: The Reactions of Selected Organic and Inorganic Sulfur and Selenium Reagents with Nitrogen-Containing Compounds.” A total of six publications accrued from his research with Professor Sosnovsky. Jim’s subsequent career was a testament to his dedication to chemistry and research. He began at PPG in Illinois, then moved to Exxon in Janesville, and eventually co-founded Tomah Products. In memory of James Krogh, the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry proudly presents the inaugural James Krogh Memorial Graduate Student Support Awards to��Faija Akter�����Ի���Mujidat Shittu. Faija and Mujidat both embody Jim’s spirit of curiosity, excellence, and commitment to the field of chemistry. The generosity of the Krogh family will enable Faija to focus on developing pyranopterin-mimetic ligands for application to studies of artificial metalloenzymes, and Mujidat to continue investigating the enzyme NUDT2 as a potential target for breast cancer treatment. The Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry is excited to see the results of Faija’s and Mujidat’s work in the laboratory, and we are deeply grateful to the Krogh family for their support.

#JamesKroghMemorial #GraduateStudentSupport #51���� #Chemistry #GraduateSchool

Prof. Anja Blecking, Prof. Alexander (Leggy) Arnold, and Dr. Anna Benko were awarded the UW Innovation Grant for their proposal, CHARGE STEM – Creating a new, equitable pathway for high school graduates and students who discontinue a STEM program to enter the local STEM workforce.

“Of the grant applicants, the review teams and I feel that your grant has significant potential to advance human knowledge and economic prosperity in the state of Wisconsin, key elements of the Universities of Wisconsin Strategic Plan.” ~ Jay Rothman, Universities of Wisconsin President

The proposal seed funding totaling up to $175,0000 over two years and will be submitting to be a finalist and be eligible for the “bid idea” to receive additional funding totaling up to $400,000.

Congratulations to Prof. Anja Blecking, Prof. Alexander (Leggy) Arnold, and Dr. Anna Benko!

The annual MACC conference “MIDD-MACC 2024 – Artificial Intelligence in Analytical Chemistry & Drug Discovery” will be held in the new Chemistry building lobby and lecture hall CHEM 110 Friday, December 6th – Saturday, December 7th. The conference agenda will include workshops from Millipore and Shimadzu as well as presentations from Abhiskek Pandey, Prasenjit Guptasarma, and more. Full agenda can be found here.

Please register for the event here.��

Two dozen faculty and staff of UW-Milwaukee were honored for their distinguished service to the university at the��2024 Employee Excellence Awards ceremony.��Chancellor Mark Mone and other speakers praised the winners during a ceremony Wednesday in the ballroom of the 51���� Student Union.

Leggy Arnold was awarded the Office of Research Senior Faculty Award.

Leggy Arnold received his PhD in organic chemistry under Nobel laureate Ben Feringa in 2002. He expanded his knowledge in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, San Francisco and together with Kip Guy established the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Arnold quickly advanced as an expert in the field of vitamin D research and developed potent new anti-tumor agents for ovarian cancer and leukemia. He also developed new drug candidates for asthma, atopic dermatitis and overactive blader syndrome targeting GABA(A) receptor exclusively outside the brain. Together with Douglas Stafford, he established Pantherics Inc. in 2017 and became the director of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery in 2021. More than a hundred graduate and undergraduate students have been part of the Arnold Group, learning about drug discovery research and continuing on to professional schools, academia and industry.

Two dozen faculty and staff of UW-Milwaukee were honored for their distinguished service to the university at the��2024 Employee Excellence Awards ceremony.��Chancellor Mark Mone and other speakers praised the winners during a ceremony Wednesday in the ballroom of the 51���� Student Union.

Kristen Murphy was awarded the Faculty Distinguished University Service Award.

Kristen Murphy has been very active in service, particularly in those areas that serve the instructional mission. She has been on the Academic Program and Curriculum Committee since 2015, serving for nine years and chairing or co-chairing for seven years. Murphy also has served on the Academic Planning and Budget Committee, Academic Policy Committee, Faculty Appeals and Grievances Committee and Faculty Senate. Within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, she has served in many roles with particular pride in developing and supporting the successful chemistry supplemental instruction program. Most recently, Murphy has been involved with the new Chemistry Building, participating in design, planning and operations in her role on the chemistry user group. Finally, she has been active in serving her community – Murphy was recognized in 2023 with induction into the 2023 class of American Chemical Society Fellows (joining about 1,300 out of 170,000 members).

Two dozen faculty and staff of UW-Milwaukee were honored for their distinguished service to the university at the 2024 Employee Excellence Awards ceremony. Chancellor Mark Mone and other speakers praised the winners during a ceremony Wednesday in the ballroom of the 51���� Student Union.

Christine Carlson was awarded the Academic Staff Outstanding Teaching Award.

Christine Carlson has been a member of the 51���� Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry since 2013, focusing on the instruction of general chemistry.

In addition to teaching three large lectures each semester, Carlson collaborates with other instructors in the department and student advisors to improve student retention and the student experience when taking chemistry courses at 51����. She goes out of her way to learn how students learn best.

Given that the students in the general chemistry sequence spend as much time with graduate teaching assistants as they do with their instructor, Carlson is invested in the instruction of her teaching assistants in new and effective ways to teach, with the ultimate goal to not only ensure that the topics are taught correctly but to also ensure consistency for the students.

Carlson also actively works with the university in recruiting activities. In the last year, she served as a member of the New Directions Freshman Scholarship committee, the Biological Sciences and Chemistry/Biochemistry Preview Day and volunteered for the Natural Sciences Showcase (Fall Welcome event).

Two dozen faculty and staff of UW-Milwaukee were honored for their distinguished service to the university at the 2024 Employee Excellence Awards ceremony. Chancellor Mark Mone and other speakers praised the winners during a ceremony Wednesday in the ballroom of the 51���� Student Union.

Doug Stafford was awarded the Ernest Spaights Plaza Award for his accomplishments and contributions.

Douglas Stafford joined 51���� in 2011 and served as founding director of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery (MIDD) until his retirement in 2021. Over this decade he worked tirelessly to advance MIDD into the enduring centerpiece of interdisciplinary research, education and scientific excellence that it is today. He quickly saw that MIDD needed essential research instrumentation and organized a unique public-private partnership that secured over $4 million to establish a world-class analytical chemistry facility, now named the State-of-the-Art Analytical Instrumentation Laboratory and Research Core (SAILARC) within the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where he served as its executive director.

SAILARC quickly became a cornerstone of MIDD research, and the expert staff Stafford recruited provide unparalleled opportunities for 51���� faculty and students across campus to learn, conduct high-level mass spectrometry studies and form collaborations with academic institutions and private industry. Since its formation, over 500 students have been trained using SAILARC instruments, with research included in over 100 PhD and master’s theses. Industry collaborations provided operations support for the core and opened doors for many student internships and future employment.

Stafford also worked to secure several million dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health and private sources for MIDD researchers, including a Translational Grant program that funded 11 projects where 51���� faculty worked collaboratively with local industry partners. His vision for drug discovery infrastructure at 51���� included conceiving and advocating for the Kilo Laboratory, a teaching and research facility unique to the region and housed in the new Chemistry Building that will enable new research and collaborations for decades to come based on chemical synthesis using process-scale equipment.

Reaching beyond 51����, Stafford co-founded Bridge-to-Cures Inc., a nonprofit organization that offers financial support, business mentoring and advocacy for new entrepreneurial health care ventures in Wisconsin, notably those arising from academic research.

Chemistry & Biochemistry PhD student Stephen Tochi Nkwocha was highlighted in the Nigerian publication ��for his efforts to establish chemistry-focused innovation hubs in Nigeria.