Three Kalamazoo College seniors presented their Senior Individualized Project (SIP) research at the Midwest Symposium on Undergraduate Research. The event took place at Michigan State University on Saturday, October 5. The students, their presentation titles, and where they did their SIP:

Sara Adelman’s poster (see photo) won the Outstanding Poster Award for Biochemistry. It was titled “Effects of Copper Bipyridine Catalysed Alkaline Hydrogen Peroxide Pretreatment on Lignocellulostic Biomass in the Ethanol Production Process.” Adelman did her research with Professor Eric Hegg ’91 at Michigan State University.

Geneci Marroquin presented a poster titled “Reactions of Cobalt(II) and Nickel(II) Complexes Containing Binucleating Macrocyclic and Pyridine Ligands with Carboxylic Acids: Formation of Binuclear Co(II), Co(II)Co(III), and Ni(II) and Tetranuclear Co(II) and Ni(II) Complexes.” Her research was done in the laboratory of Professor Thomas J. Smith at Kalamazoo College.

Kendrith Rowland conducted his research in the laboratory of Professor Catherine Murphy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Rowland’s poster was titled “High Sensitivity Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) Nanoplatform Based on Gold Nanoparticle Aggregates.”

Kalamazoo College Professor of Chemistry Jeffrey Bartz gave an invited talk at the symposium. That talk, “Detecting Cartwheels and Propellers by Velocity-Mapped Ion Imaging,” highlighted the SIP work of Ryan Kieda ’09, Masroor Hossain ’12, and Nic West ’12, as well as the research of Amber Peden ’11, Aidan Klobuchar ’12, Kelly Usakoski ’14, Braeden Rodriguez ’16, and Myles Truss ’17.