Stewart: Presenting Research In Pittsburgh!

This past weekend, I was given the privilege of presenting some research at the American Chemical Society Student Member Symposium at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA.

I was able to go with about five other students who were also involved with the research here at FUS. A few professors came from the Chemistry department, including Dr. Jeff Rohde, Dr. David Collins, and Dr. Mark Watry. It was a day full of talking about science, sharing our work with others, and learning about other people’s research. Dr. Rohde, chair of the Chemistry & Physics Department here at the University, was invited to give a talk on the exciting momentum the research efforts are experiencing here at Franciscan.

The research I presented was on the work I have done on Neglected Diseases with the Franciscan Institute for World Health (FIWH). I presented on how we were able to incorporate this Neglected Disease research into our normal Organic Chemistry II lab course. We had a target for neglected diseases and wanted everyone to have the awesome educational experience of doing medicinal chemistry. With that in mind, and knowing that 40 sets of hands are better than one or two, we devoted a lab session to the research. It was enormously successful, and we are now incorporating this model every year with our other medicinal chemistry projects. In fact, I was given the opportunity to teach the Organic Chemistry II lab and incorporated this model  into my own research project.

At the end of the day at the symposium, our research won an award!

My name is Matt Stewart and I’m a chemistry student. I’m excited to be a student blogger representing the sciences at Franciscan University of Steubenville for this next academic year. Franciscan has provided some pretty incredible opportunities for me the past couple years. I am excited to see what God does with our work, and I look forward to sharing more and keeping you updated.