Undergraduate researchers Luke Malaisrie and Tim Li have both been awarded the Baker Program in Undergraduate Research Grant ($4000) as well as the Summer Undergraduate Research Grant ($4000) for outstanding grant proposals.
Luke Malaisrie’s grant proposal was based on his independent project ‘Crystalline Polyrotaxanes,’ an endeavor to which he has/will work in collaboration with graduate student James Seale. The year-long project hopes to verify the upper-limit of cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) rings capable of being pumped by an artificial molecular pump onto a wide range of polymer chains. Crystallization of the resulting polyrotaxanes will be attempted in order to determine whether the highly-charged dense rings increase the polymer chain’s affinity for crystallization.
Tim Li’s grant proposal was based on his research in the synthesis, structure and functions of metal-organic frameworks starting from October 2022. Collaborating with Dr. Shuliang Yang, Tim will use the “Crystalline Sponge” method in single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) to determine the precise structures of viologen–bipyridinium derivatives indispensable in the construction of mechanically-interlocked molecules (MIMs). Tim will synthesize suitable host crystalline sponges, selectively introduce members from the viologen family into the sponges, and unveil the structures of the chosen viologens.
Pictured below — Undergraduate researchers Luke Malaisrie and Tim Li:
