Group News

Humaira Yeasmin successfully defended her thesis to obtain her Ph.D. This is the fifth PhD from the Farnum group. We couldn’t be more proud of her research accomplishments in the area of p-type CuGaO₂.

Our recent work in collaboration with the Goldsmith group has been published in Inorganic Chemistry: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.4c01977

This work was led by Goldsmith group student Segun Obisesan who now works for Evonik. We show that non-heme catalysts for ORR can yield high rates at low overpotentials with the aid of tethered quinol groups. This is the second publication from this project with many more to come.

We had a great time at our summer party! We celebrated the soon-to-be PhD’s Humaira and Rezonaul in addition to saying farewell to our summer REU student, Belinda. This was our largest group to date on account of everyone’s growing families!

A new REU student has joined our group for summer 2024. Belinda Allotey is a rising sophomore at Hampton University and will be with us for 10 weeks this summer working to understand the role of Zn²⁺ ions in the catalysis of two-electron Ni(IV/II) reduction reactions.

Former undergraduate in the group, Juan Contreras, has received a number of accolades in his final year at Auburn. In addition to receiving the Outstanding Junior Award for Biomedical Sciences majors last year, he received the Dean’s Medal, the President’s Medal, and the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in his senior year. He was also accepted into medical school at UAB for fall admission. We look forward to working in Contreras Hall in the future!