Dr. Alexey Ignatchenko Research Group

• 2024.11.8 Oleksii Arestovich has visited campus. Video recording is available.
  
• 2024.10.16. Joseph DeRaddo and Vince Marino have received Fisher Ten under 10 award in 2022 and 2024, respectively. Congratulations Joe and Vince!
  
• 2024.10.10. The manuscript "Launching Graphene into 3D-Space: Symmetry, Topology, and Strategies for Bottom-Up Synthesis of Schwarzites" has been submitted to ChemRXiv. Thanks to Veronica and Megan for the clever nickname for trimers surrounding each other - Lilo and Stitch.
  
• 2024.07.14. Paige has presented results of metal oxides surface acidity DFT study at the 18th International Congress on Catalysis in Lyon, France.
• 2024.06.20. Welcome, Maria! Thank you for making progress toward the "Stitch" molecule!
• 2023.11.12. The 5th annual chemistry show had success with new wave of demonstrators. Thank you Joel, Nate, and Andrew!
  
•  2023.06.05. Great beginning of the summer 2023 research! Welcome new research students: Paige, Bobby, Erik, Veronica, Megan!
  
• 2023.05.01. Thank you Emma and Kaylee for the synthesis of TPMS building blocks! It's a great start for a long journey.
  
•  2022.12.12. Jacob Willower's paper has been published in the Journal of Computational Chemistry Schwarz P-surface via isolated sp² carbon heptagons: Design and properties 
• 2021.12.28. Happy New Year - 2022
  To all colleagues and collaborators!!
  I am hoping you had a good year and you will have a new one even better.
  I am happy to share the annual update from Fisher.
  The major research news  for 2021– we have published a paper on beta keto acids decarboxylation in the Journal of Physical Chemistry. The second year of the NSF grant has started. We had a productive summer with three students working on the enolization of carboxylic acids – data collection is almost complete. Enolization will be the subject of the next publication, hopefully in 2022. Three more students had joined the group in the fall semester. We have 6 students now.
  It's very nice to have access to the electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy at the University of Rochester – important methods for catalyst particles analysis. Research on chemical topology continues and the first publication is in the preparation for the Journal of Computational Chemistry. You see a structure example on the right.
  In addition to CHEM201 class and labs, I am very excited to teach computational chemistry course in the Spring 2022. Materials Studio software educational license will be paid by the NSF grant. Teaching creative writing course is also on my plan for the Fall 2022.
  We had the third annual Chemistry show this year attracting a crowd of kids to the magic of chemistry. - (Alexey Ignatchenko)
   2021.09.17. Welcome new research students Skylor, Olivia and Lilliana!
  
•   2021.09.05. C.J. and Jared have been trained to use Xray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) at the URNano Center over the summer 2021. 
  
•   2021.08.30. (C.J. Leonardo): During the 2021 summer I had the opportunity to participate in summer research at St. John Fisher College. I was able to continue my semester’s research studying the Kinetic Isotopic effect in the catalytic enolization of carboxylic acids on KOH doped anatase titania. This summer allowed me to really immerse myself in my project and allowed me to get a better understanding of what life in the lab was like. I grew a lot personally as the summer went on and became a much more independent learner because of my time spent in Dr. Ignatchenko’s lab. Not only did I grow a lot as an independent learner, but I was able to gain invaluable skills through hands-on experience of different tools/equipment (such as the Scanning Electron Microscope and the Transmission Electron Microscope). I look forward to continuing my project in the fall!
  
•     2020.08.13. NSF grant  "Mapping Catalytic Sites on Alkali Promoted Anatase Titanium Dioxide (TiO2),  has been received.
•     2020.06.23. Hot News! A recipient of the Fisher summer research scholarship, Jacob Willower has discovered a way for the Schläfli t{3,7} tessellation of heptagons on the hyperbolic surface resulting in the Schwartz P-surface construction. This is the first so far known solution which uses strictly t{3,7} tessellation for the P-surface, and only the second one for the whole family of Schwartzites after the first example of the D-surface was described in the Nature journal in 1992. Although there are many other solutions known, all of them use some dilution by hexagons, while the t{3,7}tessellation does not have dilution by definition. For the hyperbolic surface, the t{3,7}tessellation is what the t{3,5} tessellation in C60 fullerene is to the whole family of other fullerenes on the spherical surface, i.e. the simplest solution possible. Congratulations Jake for discovering the parent of the hyperbolic soccer ball P-family !!!
  
•     2019.11.09. The 2nd Annual Chemistry Demonstration at Fisher  took place on November 9, 2019. A full recording and a short preview are saved on Youtube.
•     2019.06.01. On this day, Shane Rickard, Jordan Walker, Eric Akselrod and Dr. Ignatchenko started a 10-week-long research project at the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. 
  
•     2018.10.27. The 1st Annual Chemistry Demonstration at Fisher  did take place on October 27, 2018. The recorded video can be found on Youtube.

•     2017.09.22. Paper with Jim McSally, Marc Bishop, and Joe Zweigle "Ab initio study of the mechanism of carboxylic acids cross-ketonization on monoclinic zirconia via condensation to beta-keto acids followed by decarboxylation” was marked an Editor’s Choice by the journal Molecular Catalysis.
  
•     2015.10.10. Max Wilder has started collaboration with the University of Milano, Italy on computational modeling of potassium location on anatase surfaces.
•     2015.10.01. Materials studio computational package was obtained thanks to Fisher research funds and the Chemistry chair Dr. Kris Lantzky support!
•     2015.06.19. Tom DiProspero was the only undergraduate student who made an oral presentation on the “Catalytic condensation of ketones with carboxylic acids” at the international conference, 24th NACS Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.
•     2015.04.15. US Patent 9,005,422 has been granted on the “Electrochemical process for the preparation of nitrogen fertilizers” in collaboration with Dr. J. Jiang and T.R. Aulich (UND).
  
•     2015.03.27. Tom DiProspero presented on the "Catalytic condensation of ketones with carboxylic acids" at the 249th ACS meeting in Denver, CO
•     2014.12.12. Tom DiProspero’s research in organic chemistry and conference traveling will be supported by a Fisher Alum. Congratulations, Tom and thanks to our alumni!
•     2013.10.16. Startup grant has been obtained for using ”Blacklight” national supercomputer at the Pittsburg Supercomputing Center
•     2013.08.16. Joe DeRaddo and Vince Marino presented their poster on enolization kinetics at GRC, in Salve Regina University, Newport, RI.