08 September 2008
North Carolina School Excels at Cutting-Edge Analytical Chemistry
For students, joining a lab is “like joining a family,” says professor
This is the fourth article in a new series on top-ranked programs in higher education.
Washington — In the top-ranked program in analytical chemistry at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC), a first-year graduate student chooses an adviser and joins the adviser’s laboratory, which is “like joining a family,” says Royce Murray, a chemistry professor who first began teaching in the program in 1960.
Great students are critical to the success of the UNC program. “We attract very good students, train them in the mold of thinking about the fundamentals, really work, and they go off into industry and they go off into academics and they are themselves very successful,” said Murray, who describes himself as a “very hands-off person.”
“You have a good student who’s interested and motivated, and you get that student to a certain level of understanding of where you think the interesting questions are and you say, ‘There’s the laboratory. Go! — and learn how to think for yourself.’”
“Part of the secret of good graduate training,” he said, “is having patience to make the student think for him[self] or herself. That creates an ability to think creatively and imaginatively and to think in a logical way.”
“Students learn from each other much more than they learn from me — except the tone,” said Murray, who is internationally known for pioneering research that has had important applications in chemical sensors, fuel cells and solar energy. “I sort of say, ‘We should go in this direction; I think there are interesting things there.’ I think we know enough to make a contribution. But the student-student interaction is really terrifically important.”
Another of the UNC program’s strengths is its progeny. “They keep the searchlight on you and that keeps the good students coming, in a sense,” he said.
Great faculty is another key. Murray, who is also editor in chief of the journal Analytical Chemistry, said the UNC analytical chemistry program is recognized as being very strong in electrochemistry, nanoparticles, neurochemistry, bioanalytical chemistry, separation science, microfluidics, mass spectrometry and analytical spectroscopy. “Within those fields — and one of the reasons we are ranked highly — almost all of us have invented some major segment of the field.”
As examples, he cited the department’s Michael Ramsey, who has developed the field of microfluidics (the so-called “lab on a chip”), and Mark Wightman, who has developed the microelectrode and now is applying it in neurochemistry.
Wightman has shown neurochemists how to measure what’s called exocytosis, which is the release of neurotransmitters from nerve endings in a synapse, and to measure that in real time, Murray said, adding: “That is producing a revolution in that field.” So a student working in that lab is “right on the cutting edge.”
Jelena Petrovic, a graduate student from Croatia, says she chose UNC over other schools for two reasons: “In addition to having a plethora of research projects to choose from, UNC’s Analytical Chemistry Division offers its students endless possibilities of developing collaborations with researchers within or outside the division, the department and the university.”
After choosing her adviser, laboratory and Ph.D. project, she said, she was allowed to venture outside her field while troubleshooting her project. “If you were to ask a scientist what an analytical chemist does, most likely they would tell you that we develop instrumentation and methods for various applications. While I have done some method-development work, my project is heavily application-oriented and I have had a unique opportunity to learn quite a bit of neurobiology and methods which I would not have been necessarily exposed to as a chemist,” she said. “It is this research freedom that I value greatly.”
What makes the program special? To Aleksandr Zhushma, an American second-year graduate student, the main thing is the people. “The professors in the analytical program are very passionate in what they do,” said Zhushma in an e-mail interview with America.gov. “They are not here simply to promote their own ideas, but really want to help students go through the program and get a [doctorate degree] as efficiently as possible.”
“Outside the classroom, professors are very helpful and enjoy talking to the students,” he said.
“Knowing that I am working on something important gives me motivation to be interested in my research,” added Zhushma, who is working in a group researching issues important to medicine. “In many of the groups here in the analytical department the research is exciting and novel, but also challenging and broad in scope. As a result, I know that when I get my degree from UNC, I know that I have a very solid foundation in analytical chemistry, and it will qualify me for a very wide range of jobs.”
“UNC Analytical Chemistry Division is very welcoming of international scholars,” Petrovic said.
“It’s a good, friendly, comfortable, intense atmosphere,” Murray said. Typically 10 percent to 20 percent of those enrolled in the chemistry department and the analytical chemistry program have been international students.
