August 03, 2012

NSF TUES Grant to Dr. Louis Kuo

Dr. Kuo has been awarded a grant in support of his project, “X-Ray Crystallography for Transforming Undergraduate Instruction at PUIs in the Pacific Northwest.”

Dr. Louis Kuo, Professor of Chemistry, has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s “TUES” (Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM) Program for his project, “X-Ray Crystallography for Transforming Undergraduate Instruction at PUIs in the Pacific Northwest.” This highly competitive program “supports efforts to create, adapt, and disseminate new learning materials and teaching strategies to reflect advances both in STEM disciplines and in what is known about teaching and learning.” NSF funding for Dr. Kuo’s project will support the purchase of a fully automated bench-top system for crystal structure determination, which will be used to provide general and organic chemistry students at Lewis & Clark College, Willamette University, George Fox University, and the University of Portland with hands-on education using single crystal X-ray crystallography (SC-XRD).  Dr. Kuo and his colleagues will develop curricular materials using SC-XRD to analyze samples and determine accurate and precise measurements of the full three dimensional structure of a molecule, including bond distances and angles. SC-XRD is an emerging topic in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum and this project will help fill a gap in available curricular materials. More information is available at:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1140940
August 201
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