Congratulations to our students who represented the Thai Lab in this year’s Chemistry ResearchFest where they presented their amazing results to incoming first years in the department. Special congratulatory to Theo and Jithu for winning the William E. McEwen Fellowship Award for outstanding posters!

Congrats to Jingyi for receiving the Inspiration Award for Neuroscience and Technology! This funding is awarded to support UMass graduate students and postdoctoral researchers proposing research at the interface of neuroscience and either engineering or computer sciences. Her proposal on Modular Nanoparticles for Efficient and Targeted Neural System Gene Delivery will bring about new design guidelines for crossing the BBB!

Congrats to our Alumni, Jingjing Gao, for being acknowledged as a 2022 Young Investigator and Future Faculty Scholar!! Jingjing is currently pursuing an academic route at Harvard Medical. Soon she will be building her own group and inspiring future scientists. We’re so glad to see you thriving and excited for your future!

Congratulations to our undergraduate student, Amelia Isabelle, for receiving the 2022 Positron Award!! Established by Felix Alfonso, this award is presented to a student who shows strong interest in Chemistry, gives back to the community, and promotes research. Recipients also illustrate leadership skills, strong character, and a genuine love for learning and teaching Chemistry.

Congratulations to two of our graduate students, Jennie Huynh and Pintu Kanjilal, on their awards in this year’s Research Fest! They were able to effectively convey their science to the community earning them both the William E. McEwen Fellowship Award for Outstanding Posters. Research Fest is an annual Chemistry department conference where students from different groups join together to share their amazing work. We also welcomed new incoming students, connected with vendors, and heard from amazing academic and industrial guest speakers. Hope to see everyone next year!

Some exciting work is being done in our lab in collaboration with the Hardy and Andrew Research Group! Here, we’re developing a “smart swab” at-home test kit. Due to the current pandemic, the most important aspect to slowing down the spread is through testing. Our design is similar to a pregnancy test, where one can take a swab of either their nose or throat and observe a color change due to the presence of a protein found from the virus.

Look for us on the Western Mass News! <Here>

Kingshuk won the PMSE Best Poster Award at 2017 ACS Washington DC National Meeting. Congratulations to him!

Kingshuk was awarded the poster prize on the protein delivery work in CBI/BMB/BMP Joint Retreat – 2017 held at UMass Medical School. Congratulations!

Bailey will be honored as 21st Century Leaders at Undergraduate Commencement. Congratulations to her!

Our first group retreat was successfully held in Cape Cod. Check out the photos from our album:

Check out the interview from LabTV for our group members – Celia, Molly, and Kishore:

You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Our nanogel work is highlighted by UMass in their Research Next.  Click here to read more …

Diego Amado Torres (Thayumanavan group) was awarded one of the top 5 best poster presentations (from over 170) in the Colloids and Surface Chemistry division in the ACS meeting held in New Orleans on April 7-11.

The work by Sankaran Thayumanavan and colleagues at UMass Amherst, with others at the University of California-Riverside, is highlighted in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) for the clever way it mimics Nature’s way of harnessing solar energy.

Researchers have designed a new small molecule probe that binds to a protein and emits a fluorescent signal only when a drug molecule displaces it (J. Am. Chem. Soc., DOI: 10.1021/ja301204z). The chemists hope that the probe will provide a simple, rapid method to screen drug candidates.