Chemistry & Biochemistry Seminars | Spring 2026
USU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry presents a weekly seminar series to give students and faculty the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research in the field. Seminars are held on Wednesdays at 4:00 p.m. (Mountain Time) in ESLC 046, unless otherwise stated.
Wednesday, January 14
Optical Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy with Steve Cundiff
Wednesday, January 21
Probing Chemistry at the Angstrom-Scale via Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Combined Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy with Nan Jiang
Wednesday, February 18
Mechanisms of Immune Protection Against Alzheimer's Disease with David Hansen
Wednesday, February 25
Discovery of Highly Potent Ebola Virus Entry Inhibitors via DNA-Encoded Library Screening with Peter Dosa
Wednesday, March 4
Safety Refresher Course
Wednesday, March 18
Dissecting a Role for Protein Arginine Methylation in Metabolic Reprogramming with Michael C. Yu
Wednesday, March 25 (special date)
From Bench to the Bar: Using Science in Intellectual Property with Scott Woodhouse
Special Time/Location: 12 pm MT, WIDT 330
Thursday, March 26 (special date)
Enzymes as Molecular Capacitors with Anastassia Alexandrova
Special Time/Location: 3 pm MT, WIDT 330
Wednesday, April 1
Understanding and Controlling Light Harvesting Structures at Molecule-Metal Oxide Interfaces with Kenneth Hanson
Special Time/Location: 11 am MT WIDT 330
Wednesday, April 8
Infrared-active Plasmonic Architectures for Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy with Jennifer Shumaker-Parry
Time: 4 - 5 pm (MT)
Location: ESLC 046
Unless otherwise noted for the event.
Optical Multidimensional Coherent Spectroscopy
Wednesday, January 14
Steve Cundiff
University of Michigan
Steven T. Cundiff is the Harrison M. Randall Collegiate Professor of Physics, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a founding co-Director of the Quantum Research Institute at the University of Michigan. Prior to 2015, he spent 16 years at JILA, a joint institute between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado. He received Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the Univ. Michigan in 1992. Prof. Cundiff is a Fellow of the APS, OSA, IEEE and AAAS. He has received the Meggers Award from the OSA (now Optica) and the Schawlow Prize from the APS.
Probing Chemistry at the Angstrom-Scale via Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Combined Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy
Wednesday, January 21
Nan Jiang
University of Illinois Chicago
Nan Jiang is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He received his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China), with joint doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, he joined the UIC faculty in 2015. Jiang’s research focuses on developing hybrid approaches that combine scanning probe microscopy with optical spectroscopy to understand and predict surface chemistry at the ångström scale. Since 2011, he has been a pioneer in applying ultrahigh-vacuum tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to characterize the chemical behavior of individual molecules and low-dimensional materials at single active sites. His honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the American Vacuum Society Prairie Chapter Early Career Researcher Award (2020), the American Chemical Society Richard P. Van Duyne Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry (2022), and Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (2023).
Mechanisms of Immune Protection Against Alzheimer's Disease
Wednesday, February 18
David Hansen
Brigham Young University
David Hansen completed his bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology at BYU (2000), his doctoral degree in Cancer Biology at Stanford Medical School (2006), and his postdoctoral training in neural stem cell biology at UC San Francisco (2011). From 2011–2020, he worked in the Neuroscience Department at Genentech, Inc., as a project team leader in research and drug development to understand and manipulate the activities of glial and immune cells in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Since 2020, Dr. Hansen has worked as an Associate Professor in BYU's Chemistry & Biochemistry department, establishing his academic research program to characterize the molecular and cellular functions of AD risk genes expressed by microglia, the brain's resident immune cells. Understanding how these microglia-expressed AD risk genes influence microglial cell biology to impact AD pathogenesis will identify new therapeutic approaches to treat or prevent AD.
Discovery of Highly Potent Ebola Virus Entry Inhibitors via DNA-Encoded Library Screening
Wednesday, February 25
Peter Dosa
University of Minnesota
Peter Dosa is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. He is also the Scientific Coordinator for the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center, one of nine Global Centers funded by the NIH to develop therapeutics against viruses of pandemic concern. Areas of particular interest for his research group include the development of KATP channel openers as a new class of therapeutics to treat glaucoma and pain; the synthesis of gut-restricted bile acid analogs designed to treat C. difficile infection; antivirals, and GPCR-focused drug discovery. His lead glaucoma therapeutic was licensed to Qlaris Bio and recently completed Phase I/II human clinical trials as QLS-101. Dr. Dosa received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Princeton University in 1995 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Prior to joining UMN in 2009, he spent 7 years as a medicinal chemist at Arena Pharmaceuticals.
Dissecting a Role for Protein Arginine Methylation in Metabolic Reprogramming
Wednesday, March 18
Michael C. Yu
University at Buffalo - Dept of Biological Sciences
Michael Yu received his B.S. and M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and his Ph.D. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). He completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School (2001-2006), where he applied yeast genetics and cell biology approaches to study protein arginine methylation. In 2006, he established his laboratory in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University at Buffalo. His research focuses on elucidating the functional roles of protein arginine methylation in eukaryotic gene expression, using budding yeast and mammalian cells as model systems. Employing systems-level approaches, his work has uncovered key functions for arginine methylation in yeast silent chromatin maintenance, mRNP biogenesis, transcriptional regulation, and pre-mRNA splicing.
From Bench to the Bar: Using Science in Intellectual Property
Wednesday, March 25 | 12:00pm MT, WIDT 330
Scott Woodhouse
Medler, Ferro, Woodhouse & Mills
Scott Woodhouse is a Founder and Principal at the intellectual property law firm Medler Ferro Woodhouse & Mills, located outside Washington DC. He obtained a B.S. from Utah State University in Chemistry, Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Duke University, and a J.D. from George Mason University. He currently represents a large array of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, both domestically and internationally. The focus of his presentation will be on the use of his scientific training outside the laboratory, specifically in the protection of intellectual property in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.
Enzymes as Molecular Capacitors
Thursday, March 26 | 3:00pm MT, WIDT 330
Anastassia Alexandrova
UCLA, USU Alumni
Anastassia Alexandrova is a Charles W. Clifford Jr. Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in UCLA. She obtained a B.S./M.S. Diploma with highest honors, from Saratov University, Russia, her Ph.D. in theoretical physical chemistry from Utah State University, and was then a Postdoctoral Associate and an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. Anastassia joined the faculty of UCLA and CNSI in 2010. The focus of her laboratory is theory and computation for design and multi-scale modeling of functional materials: dynamic catalytic interfaces, artificial metalloenzymes, molecular qubits and their assemblies, and quantum materials. Anastassia serves as a Senior Editor of the Journal of physical Chemistry (ACS), and a reviewing editor of the Science magazine (AAAS).
Understanding and Controlling Light Harvesting Structures at Molecule-Metal Oxide Interfaces
Wednesday, April 1 | 11:00am MT, WIDT 330
Kenneth Hanson
Florida State University
Kenneth Hanson received a B.S. in Chemistry from Saint Cloud State University (2005), his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (2010), followed by an appointment as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010–2013). His independent research career began in 2013 at Florida State University as a member of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and is affiliated with the Materials Science & Engineering program. His current research interests are in the design, synthesis, and characterization of photoactive molecules/materials with particular emphasis on manipulating energy and electron-transfer dynamics at organic–inorganic interfaces.
Infrared-active Plasmonic Architectures for Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy
Wednesday, April 8
Jennifer Shumaker-Parry
University of Utah
Dr. Jennifer S. Shumaker-Parry is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Utah. She also serves as the Director of the Biotechnology Track of the Professional Science Master Program. Her research group focuses on the investigation, development and application of plasmonic nanomaterials and platforms in spectroscopy, chemical and biological sensing, and catalysis. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of South Dakota and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She worked in the Analytical Development Laboratory for Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (formerly Sandoz) in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her doctoral dissertation focused on measuring protein interactions with vesicles and DNA using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy and microscopy methods, including building one of the early SPR microscopes. As a National Science Foundation Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate Distinguished Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Shumaker-Parry worked in Prof. Wolfgang Knoll’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany where she focused on the development of plasmonic materials for spectroscopy applications. She joined the Chemistry Department as an Assistant Professor in January 2005 and was promoted to Professor in 2016. She received an NSF CAREER Award in 2009, the ACS PROGRESS/Dreyfus Lectureship and the ADVANCE Young Scientist Lectureship (University of Arizona) in 2008. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022. She was awarded the R.W. Parry Teaching Award in 2016, the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award in 2025, and the Utah Award for Outstanding Educator at a Research Institution by the Central Utah and Salt Lake Sections of the ACS in 2025.
