Amy Keirstead and students present at American Chemical Society national meeting

Five students from the Department of Chemistry and Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as Amy Keirstead Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry, presented at the 250th American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting held in Boston, August 16-20, 2015. 

Molly Wright (Biochemistry, ’17) was a co-author on a poster presentation with Keirstead, titled “Adopting the Just-in-Time Teaching Method in an Introductory Organic Chemistry Course: Instructor and Student Perspectives,” that was sponsored by the UNE Center for the Enrichment of Teaching and Learning.

Andrew Diorio (Chemistry, ’16) and Lora Walsh (Chemistry, ’18) were co-authors on a poster presentation with Keirstead and Tyler Rioux (Medical Biology, ’14), titled “The Photo-Fries Reaction as a Photochemical Probe to Quantify the Cage Effects of Ionic Liquid,” that was sponsored by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. The project is part of Keirstead’s ongoing research program to use photochemical probe reactions to investigate the physicochemical properties of ionic liquids for various nanotechnology and green chemistry applications. 

Bronwen Boe (Biochemistry and Medical Biology ’15) and Ryan Juneau (Biochemistry, ’16) were awarded an ACS undergraduate travel grant to present on behalf of UNE’s ACS Student Chapter with a poster titled “Chemistry on the Coast: Student Activities at the University of New England.” 

In addition to presenting their work at their respective poster sessions, the students attended numerous scientific talks by leading chemists in the field and participated in the undergraduate program, representing the UNE ACS student chapter at selected events.