The Baker group has a lot to celebrate this spring! Below are photos of some of the 2017 group members having some fun and presenting on their research at the Celebration of Student Achievement before they all head out for the summer.

•  Congratulations to Baker group graduates, Troy Brier (B.S. Chemistry), and Aleena Andrews (B.S. Chemistry)! Troy will will begin a Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Aleena will begin a Ph.D. in Chemistry University of Maryland, College Park! Good luck!
• Congratulations to Baker group rising seniors Rebecca Goncalves and Mattheus De Souza for both getting accepted to NSF REU programs this summer! Rebecca will be heading to Minnesota to work at the Center for Sustainable Polymers, an NSF Center for Chemical Innovation at the University of Minnesota with Prof. Theresa Reineke on polymer chemistry. Mattheus will be heading to Boston University to work with Prof. David Coker, a theoretical and computational chemist and quantum calculations.
• Congratulations to rising juniors Kristen Vogt, Bryan Bogin, and Maria Fairfield (and welcome to the group everyone!!!). They will all participate in the TCNJ MUSE program this summer in the Baker group, working on projects related to type IV pilins and ionic liquid/membrane interactions!
  

JLB published a paper in the Journal of Molecular Liquids “Influence of an ionic liquid on the conformational sampling of Xaa-Pro dipeptides” with TCNJ undergraduate Susan Knox, and NAU collaborators Alex Heyert and Gerrick Lindberg!

The Baker group received funding from the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for the project “Collaborative Research: SI2-SSI: Swift/E: Integrating Parallel Scripted Workflow into the Scientific Software Ecosystem” with colleagues at The University of Chicago Computation Institute, as well as a number of other institutions, to develop computational chemistry workflows in the parallel scripting language Parsl. This project will run from October 2016 through October 2019, and will result in the training of at least six undergraduates in molecular simulation at TCNJ.

JLB published a paper in the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling titled “Molecular simulations of lactose-bound and unbound forms of the FaeG adhesin reveal critical amino acids involved in sugar binding” with TCNJ undergraduate Heba Jafri!

JLB and student researchers Rebecca Goncalves and Mattheus De Souza traveled to Colorado State University in June for the Fixman Theory Summer School.  JLB was a presenter at the summer school, and RG and MDS attended the 2-week training.

In July the group attended the Mercury Consortium conference at Bucknell University to present their summer research alongside nearly 100 undergraduates!

Photos of the summer work and fun below!

JLB group member, and 2016 MUSE participant, Rebecca Goncalves, was awarded an American Chemical Society Scholars Award! This is one of the biggest honors they give to undergraduates at the ACS! Congratulations, Rebecca, on this spectacular achievement!

JLB published a paper in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B titled “Cations Stiffen Actin Filaments by Adhering a Key Structural Element to Adjacent Subunits” with colleagues at The University of Chicago and Yale University.

JLB and students traveled to the ACS Meeting in San Diego to present on research in the Baker group. JLB presented on ionic liquid/protein interactions, and undergraduates Troy Brier and Aleena Andrews presented their work on type IV pilin subunits and the T4P disassembly motor PilT. Collaborations between the Baker group at TCNJ and the Lindberg group at NAU were also presented on at this conference, involving work on exploring the interactions between room temperature ionic liquids and biological membranes, as well as the influence of ionic liquids on the intrinsically disordered protein FlgM.

JLB presented work on “Probing the dynamics of the hexameric pilus retraction motor PilT with molecular dynamics simulation,” performed by undergraduate Aleena Andrews, at the Biophysical Society Meeting in February, 2016.