Princeton American Chemical Society Section Presents

”Water in the Atmosphere: The Molecule that Changes Everything”

Princeton University, Frick Chemistry Laboratory
Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Mixer and refreshments, outside of Frick Auditorium       6:30 pm

Seminar and Discussion, Frick Auditorium       7:00 pm

Our speaker will be Joseph Francisco, PhD, Department of Earth and Environmental Science and Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania

 Abstract: Water is one of the most abundant resources in our atmosphere and, because of its ability to be both a hydrogen bond donor and acceptor, water can form very stable new chemical species, not considered in the chemistry of the atmosphere before. These new chemical entities can dramatically affect the chemistry in the atmosphere, including heterogeneous removal and alteration of the photochemical properties of the atmospheric species. It also provides fundamental new insight into chemistry on clouds that have never been imagined – turning clouds into mini-chemical reactors. An overview of both experimental and theoretical investigations of water effects on gas phase reactions will be made, with the goal of providing an understanding of new fundamental concepts underlying water effects on reactions in our atmosphere.

Bio Sketch: Joseph S. Francisco is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 and his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. From 1983-85, Francisco trained as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in England and then returned to MIT as a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow. He was also a Visiting Associate in Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. Over his career to date, Francisco has published more than 820 journal articles, written several book chapters, and is co-author of a fundamental textbook, Chemical Kinetics and Dynamics, which has been considered a “classic” in the field for about 30 years; and author of the forthcoming book, Atmospheric Chemistry by Cambridge University Press. He is a recipient of the Willard Gibbs Medal Award, the Linus Pauling Medal, and the Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (London). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Francisco is currently an Executive Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and he has recently been appointed as a member of the Editorial Board for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was President of the American Chemical Society in 2010. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Reservations are requested: The event is free and open to the public.

Meeting of the Princeton ACS Section

via Zoom

Thursday, October 30, 2025

6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Professor Ivan V. Korendovych, Baylor University

“Minimalist De Novo Enzyme Design” 

and

Stefan Kilyanek, Grand Valley State University

“Electrochemically mediated deoxygenation of biomass model compounds”

Stefan Kilyanek

Abstract: Deoxygenation of biomass derived material is critical to the sustainable synthesis of a variety of fuels, chemical feedstocks, and industrial precursors.  Numerous reduction chemistries exist however most require the use of sacrificial redox agents. Our lab has developed several methods of reductive deoxygenation using only electrochemical potential and proton sources as reagents. We will discuss the use of early metal oxo complexes supported by a variety of pincer ligands to afford electrochemical deoxygenation reactions of polyols and other surrogate molecules with functionality similar to lignin. Kinetics and reaction mechanisms will be discussed as well as complimentary DFT calculations.

Biography: Stefan Kilyanek is a professor at the University of Arkansas. He earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Grand Valley State University in 2003 and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2009.  He was a postdoc at MIT for Richard R. Schrock from 2010-2013 and Yogi Surendranath from 2013-2014.  He is an NSF-CAREER award winner and is currently an Associate Professor in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arkansas.  

Ivan V. Korendovych

Abstract: Design of a novel catalytic function in proteins and peptides, apart from its inherent practical value, is important for fundamental understanding of enzymatic activity. We will present applications of a computationally inexpensive, minimalistic approach to design of artificial enzymes. We combined minimalist approaches to protein design with NMR-guided approaches to directed evolution to create highly efficient lyase using only three mutations starting from non-enzymatic protein myoglobin. The observed levels of catalytic efficiency exceed those of proteins designed using current approaches and are similar with those of natural enzymes for the reactions that they are evolved to catalyze. Given the simplicity of this experimental approach, which requires no a priori structural or bioinformatic knowledge, we expect it to be widely applicable and to enable the full potential of directed enzyme evolution [1].

[1] Bhattacharya, S., Margheritis, E.G., Takahashi, K. et al. NMR-guided directed evolution. Nature 610, 389 (2022).

Biography: Prof. Korendovych received both B.S. (1999) and M.S. (2000) degrees with distinction from National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev, Ukraine. He received his PhD from Tufts University in 2006 for his studies of mechanistic aspects of dioxygen activation using complexes of iron with macrocyclic ligands in Prof. Rybak-Akimova’s lab. Prof. Korendovych then joined the group of Prof. William F. DeGrado at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral fellow working on de novo design of proteins. In 2011, he joined the faculty at Syracuse University and was promoted to Professor in 2021. In 2023 Prof. Korendovych moved to Baylor University where he is currently Professor and James R. Schofield Endowed Chair in Biochemistry.  Prof. Korendovych has received a number of awards, most notably, American Chemical Society Nobel Signature Award for Graduate Education, American Chemical Society Young Investigator Award, Humboldt Research Fellowship, ORAU Ralph E. Powe Award. The Korendovych Lab is working on design of proteins and peptides with a particular focus on self-assembling catalytic materials.

Reservations: There is no fee to attend the meeting but reservations are requested. To make a reservation go to:  https://heptagon-wolverine-ff5x.squarespace.com/config/pages/6042f478513b644d699b727a

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Meeting ID: 880 9453 6153; Passcode: 933051

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