Usman Salahuddin is a researcher, an engineer and a dedicated learner. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from NUST. He furthered did his studies through a Fulbright Ph.D. in Material Science at the University of Connecticut, focusing on nanomaterial and renewable energy applications. Throughout his career, he've contributed to various companies, aiming to integrate innovative technologies for a greener world. His passion lies in addressing the global energy challenges and creating practical solutions for a sustainable future, while constantly seeking new opportunities for growth and impact.

Lauren Marbella is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. Her research group focuses on understanding the relationship between electrochemical performance and interfacial chemistry in devices for energy storage and conversion. Her research relies heavily on the use of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy to evaluate changes in material properties in real time to elucidate the chemical mechanisms underpinning degradation in Li and beyond Li-ion battery systems. Marbella’s research has received numerous awards including the ACS Materials Au Rising Stars in Materials Research Award (2022), Cottrell Scholar Award (2022), the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2021), and the Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award for Advanced Energy Storage (Sloan Foundation, 2019).
She received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, under the direction of Prof. Jill Millstone. In 2017, she was named a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the group of Prof. Clare Grey. There, she was also named the Charles and Katharine Darwin Research Fellow, which recognizes the top junior fellow at Darwin College at the University of Cambridge. She joined the chemical engineering faculty at Columbia University in 2018.

Dr. Rahman Shah Zaib Saleem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at SBASSE, LUMS. As an organic chemist, he employs organic chemistry tools to design innovative drugs and materials. Dr. Rahman teaches spectroscopy, medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, and drug discovery courses to undergraduate and graduate students. He is also a recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence 2021-22.

Professor Jawwad Darr is the son of Pakistani immigrants from the Punjab who came to the UK in the 1960’s to work in Bradford West Yorkshire. Despite an unremarkable early education, he is now one of the UK’s leading industrially facing academics in advanced functional materials/nanomaterials process engineering, with the title of Professor of Materials Chemistry at University College London, UCL (world’s top 20 university). He has published over 200 academic publications and three patents and has been awarded funding valued at over 20 million pounds and has graduated over 45 PhD students (as of 2021). From 2016 to 2021, he was vice dean of enterprise in the Maths and Physical Sciences faculty at UCL in, which he was supporting UCL’s faculty engagement with industry.

He is visiting professor at Comsats University Islamabad (Lahore Campus) since 2008. In 2017, he co-founded the UPSIGN charity (UK-Pakistan Science and Innovation Global Network; www.upsign.org.uk) that works to support, educate and connect British Pakistani and Pakistani academics. In his UPSIGN work, he is involved in public outreach workshops and lectures, training Pakistani academics and students, and developing training and workshops to support underprivileged undergraduate black and minority Asian students in research.

He is a regular speaker at industrial forums and academic events in a wide range of topics. As well as his own latest research, he teaches on topics related to green chemistry, applications of advanced functional materials (including batteries) and at outreach lectures for (virtual/real) schools/universities in the UK and Pakistan.

Want to apply for Master's and PhD programs abroad but are confused on where to begin? This seminar will lay out the steps for applying to graduate programs, especially in the U.S. Find out how to identify your dream schools, target schools and safety schools. What to prioritize at each stage of the application process. How to go about finding funding. You will get answers to these and many more questions on how to navigate through your graduate school applications.

Omar Farha is the Charles E and Emma H. Morrison Professor in Chemistry at Northwestern University. His research seeks to solve exciting problems in chemistry and materials science ranging from energy and environment related applications to challenges in national defense by employing atomically precise functional materials.  By exploiting the modular nature of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and porous organic polymers (POPs), we work to fundamentally understand the role of three-dimensional architecture in modifying a material’s function for applications in gas storage and separation, catalysis, water remediation and detoxification of chemical warfare agent simulants.

Chemists always strive to find new ways of manipulating atoms to create molecules and materials with the intention of improving the lives of the earth and its inhabitants. In 2001, Barry Sharpless discovered a new method of snapping stable molecules to yield new compounds and coined the term “click chemistry”. Morten Meldal separately, discovered the best snapping molecules containing azide and alkyne functionalities. Caroline Bertozzi then envisioned that the same reaction can be conducted in living cells without any interference to their normal activities and thus gave birth to bioorthogonal chemistry to investigate various stages of physiological and pathological developments in living cells.  

The present talk will explain the chemistry behind Click reaction and Bioorthogonal utility of this reaction and why this discovery deserved the most prestigious recognition in science. 

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New opportunities for chemical processing industries in so-called “upstream” and “downstream” hydrocarbon process sectors are emerging, thanks to now abundant natural gas resources.  Upstream processes refer to production of raw materials, while downstream processes refer to those closer to the end user or consumer.  Although current technology is effective in both sectors, it still relies primarily upon energy-intensive processes for key separations with large CO2 footprints. This presentation will explain why advanced polymer-derived membranes, in asymmetric hollow fiber forms, can provide significant positive changes across the separation spectrum to reduce energy intensity and carbon dioxide emissions. I will consider practical approaches to achieve such changes based on a strategy that merges fundamental science and engineering principles to introduce such membranes into large-scale processes.

Registration link here. 

Biography

Mohammad Azhar Mehfooz (Ph.D. candidate Indiana University, Bloomington) completed his B.S. in Chemistry in 2017 under the supervision of Professor Basit Yameen. His senior year project was titled “Synthesis and functionalization of Gold nanoparticles for the early detection Lung cancer biomarkers” The advisors for this project were Professor Basit Yameen and Professor Habib-ur-Rehman. He was also trained by Professor Rahman Shah Zaib Saleem and Professor Ghayoor Abbas Chotana in Summer research projects. 

He joined Indiana University Chemistry department in Fall of 2017 where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate. He has completed a major in Materials Chemistry with an Analytical Chemistry minor. He works in the research labs of Professor Jeffrey Zaleski who specializes in Enediyne Chemistry and Bergman Cyclization reactions. For his thesis, he has received training in Microbiology from our collaborators Dr. Feng Guo (Intelligent Systems Engineering, IU) and Dr. Joel Ybe (School of Public Health, IU).

At Indiana University Chemistry, he have had the opportunity to teach several undergraduate classes as an Associate Instructor, including C-103 Lab, C- 103 Discussion, C-127 Lab, C-127 Discussion, C118 Lab and P364 Discussion. During the course of graduate studies he has specialized in several analytical techniques including UV-Vis spectroscopy, Zeta Potential, FTIR, Mass Spec, Raman Spectroscopy, TEM, SEM, STM, Flowcytometry and Fluorescence microscopy.

Deep learning has begun a renaissance in chemistry and materials. We can devise and fit models to predict molecular properties in a few hours and deploy them in a web browser. We can create novel generative models that were previously PhD theses in an afternoon. In my group, we’re exploring deep learning in soft materials and molecules. We are focused on two major problems: interpretability and data scarcity. Now that we can make deep learning models to predict any molecular property ad naseum, what can we learn? I will discuss our recent efforts on interpreting deep learning models through symbolic regression and counterfactuals. Data scarcity is a common problem in chemistry: how can we learn new properties without significant expense of experiments? One method is in judicious choice of experiments, which can be done with active learning. Another approach is self-supervised learning and constraining symmetries, which both try to exploit structure in data. I will cover recent progress in these areas. Finally, one consequence of the state of deep learning is that you can just make cool things in chemistry with minimal effort. I’ll review a few fun projects, including making molecules by banging on the keyboard, doing math with emojis, and doing molecular dynamics constrained on space groups.

Join Zoom Meeting Here. 

Meeting ID: 936 2999 1597 

Passcode: 830219