Green Chemistry @ MUN

Our team is working every day to make progress towards new sustainable chemical technologies and a better understanding of our planet, and our relationship with it.

Here are some of our profiles:

Any students past or present that would like profiling for our #TEAMGREENCHEM project – please e-mail Dr. Kerton!

Thank you to the Faculty of Science for organizing the SEA conference.

This was the first chance for members of our team to present their research in person. Congrats to all involved.

Sharing these posters today is in memory of Steve Westcott (Mount Allison Professor, Friend of the Group, Outstanding Chemist, Cat Whisperer, Rock Star and so much more). You will be missed Steve! Rest in Peace.

It’s an extra busy time of year in our group. We have new students arriving (more on them after our move), teaching beginning and a huge move!.

We got to take a look inside the moving to help us plan where we are going to store our glassware, equipment and chemicals. Here are some photos.

More will follow once we unpack and settle in. Please get in touch if you want to visit later this semester or in the coming years. I think this will be a fantastic location for a sabbatical or research visit.

Time for a new photo before Kori begins her studies in Dentistry, Tim moves to Halifax to postdoc at Dalhousie and Ju moves to Montreal to postdoc at McGill. Lots of changes on the horizon including the move to the new Core Science Facility. We are on the steps of the Chemistry/Physics building today. They’ll be another photo soon as we are missing Matthew, Claire and Cloe this morning…..and a third in September when new MSc students arrive 🙂

Welcome to Cloe and Claire, who are in our group as WISE-SSEP NL researchers this summer #WomenInSTEM. They have already prepared these amazing infographics on the 12 principles of green chemistry. Thank you! They are so eye-catching. We are looking forward to everything else you will achieve this summer.

Congratulations to Dr. Kori Andrea for successfully defending her PhD thesis on Friday! Good luck at Dalhousie Dentistry in the Fall.

Congratulations to Juliana Vidal on her departmental seminar today! Even on a super sunny day like today you had excellent attendance and engaged your audience well. Next stop – thesis submission and defense 😀

Congratulations to Juliana Vidal! Ju is in her final year working with Dr. Kerton and Dr. MacQuarrie. She found out today that she has received a Dr Liqin Chem Graduate Excellence award ($5000 CAD)

Earlier this semester, Ju received 1st place in the #RSCEnv category at the #RSCPoster Twitter conference. Her poster is shared below, and here is a link to her RSC Poster Pitch, https://twitter.com/juliana_lvidal/status/1366731969355218945?s=20

We will add more news as the semester progresses 🙂

Dr. Kerton with the NRC has a scholarship as part of the Ocean Graduate Excellence Network. The NRC are the National Research Council of Canada and they are Canada’s largest federal research and development organization. This is an exceptional opportunity for a talented student to join our team of material chemists who work on adding value to waste materials produced in the fishing and aquaculture industries. Students will spend some of their time at NRC labs to further their research and personal development.

Applications consisting of a cover letter, CV/resume and transcript(s) should be sent to Dr. Kerton by the end of March 2021. Dr. Kerton and her NRC collaborators will shortlist a group of students to interview and the successful candidate will be notified by late April 2021. The start date is September 2021. An advertisement in Science can be viewed here.

Students will have their tuition and other fees covered, and will receive a stipend of ~$33,000 CAD per annum for 4.5 years. They will also receive a professional development allowance to attend conferences, workshops etc. This scholarship is open to Canadians and international students.

We are looking to recruit a strongly motivated student who has an undergraduate honours degree in chemistry and ideally has completed an M.Sc. in a relevant discipline (e.g. Materials Chemistry). The latter is optional as excellent students (1^st class standing with research experience) can be admitted directly into the PhD program in Chemistry at Memorial University after completing undergraduate studies. Students are expected to demonstrate a strong interest in sustainable science and ocean science. Note: this program is competitive and we cannot promise to respond to all applicant inquiries.

We forgot to get a screen grab in our first 2021 group meeting last week. We remembered this week 🙂 Only 2 missing from the shot (Fatma and Sachel)….hopefully we’ll catch them another time. Next week’s focus is on e-posters ahead of the RSC Twitter poster conference. Wishing everyone around the world a science-filled 2021.

We had our last virtual group meeting of the year and would like to wish all our friends, collaborators, colleagues and family a safe and happy holiday season.

We have been very lucky in Newfoundland and Labrador so far, with few cases of covid-19 compared to many places around the world. This does not mean that 2020 was without its challenges for us. Our labs were closed for research from mid-March until July, some group members got caught out when travel restrictions were introduced, and new group members have had their start dates postponed until January 2021. Also, once our labs were open, we had to work to strict covid workplace guidelines with limited occupancy of our labs. We have had great successes too – honours students graduating, virtual conference presentations, grants funded, papers published and more. We are happy and optimistic for a fun- and science-filled 2021, and a relaxing break during the holidays.