Scholars in Focus, 4/15 Virtual Talk

The DiMenna-Nyselius Library invites you for a virtual Scholars in Focus on Wednesday, April 15, from 3:30pm-4:30pm, featuring Boyuan Zhang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Reinaldo Gonzalez, Kevin Hanson and Tony Quechol-Arias from the Center for Social Impact.

Assistant Professor Boyuan Zhang will present "Electric Field-Driven Chemistry." Using external electric fields to catalyze chemical reactions is an emerging biomimetic strategy for controlling chemical reactions. Recent studies have demonstrated that electric fields can catalyze chemical reactions using the scanning tunneling microscope-based break junction (STM-BJ) technique. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the STM-BJ measurement technique and discuss advances in enabling and understanding electric-field-driven chemical reactions. Our experiments demonstrate the application of strong external electric fields while simultaneously detecting reaction products via single-molecule conductance measurements. Additionally, I will present our use of ex-situ high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to characterize reaction rates, determining the kinetics as a function of time and applied field. Lastly, I will explore the role of solvents in these measurements and interpret our findings using density functional theory-based calculations.

Associate Director of the Center for Social Impact, Reinaldo Gonzalez, and CSI Community Engaged Researcher's Kevin Hanson, and Tony Quechol-Arias Community Engaged Research, Center for Social Impact will present "Data Accessibility and Analytics Support for "Room at the Table: Increasing Civic Participation in Local Land Use Decision-Making Report". The Center for Social Impact partnered with The Housing Collective to analyze and visualize data from their report, “Room at the Table: Increasing Civic Participation in Local Land Use Decision-Making.” The primary goal of this collaboration was to co-create knowledge and provide technical support to the Collective, ensuring their research and data were accessible to a wide range of audiences. As a result, we co-developed interactive visualizations that translated the study’s findings in a meaningful way to engage the community in conversations about civic participation and land-use decision-making.