welcome to Who's in STEM I'm Ken Ono your host and the STEM adviser to the Provost and the Marvin Rosen Blum 

0:15 

Professor of Mathematics at UVA Our goal is to evoke flights of imagination and 

0:20 

wonder by showcasing the cornucopia of all that is STEM at UVA the marvelous 

0:26 

world of UVA science technology engineering and 

0:31 

mathematics The other day I made a list of the exciting and significant UVA STEM

0:36 

discoveries inventions and projects that we've covered on this podcast And if you 

0:42 

list them alphabetically like I did the A's alone are quite amazing Do you get that a's alone are amazing A bunch of 

0:50 

A's But more seriously we've talked about AI artificial intelligence We've 

0:55 

talked about the artificial pancreas that A We've talked about autonomous vehicles And for another A we've talked 

1:02 

about the very serious crippling disease Alzheimer's Going beyond the A's the 

1:08 

list goes on and includes lots of exciting things the new Manning Biotechnology Institute the brain 

1:15 

institute data science the environmental institute the link lab Last week we talked about national security and so 

1:22 

on STEM is really happening and happening big at the University of 

1:27 

Virginia It's clear that we're much more than Thomas Jefferson's university the 

1:33 

university of secret societies and the university with the rotunda Now in who's 

1:38 

in STEM we also feature and talk about the basic sciences And as a mathematician I have to assure you that 

1:45 

the basic sciences come before everything else that I've just described above We've had episodes on astronomy 

1:52 

biology mathematics physics and statistics The basic sciences they're 

1:57 

fundamental and essential to our foundational understanding of nature and just basically how the world works And

2:04 

along these lines today it's my great pleasure to talk about chemistry When I 

2:09 

was 10 my parents got me a kids chemistry set that came in a large box with a handle Although I don't ever 

2:16 

remember taking it anywhere You could see the little bottles of chemicals and glassear through the clear plastic It 

2:22 

was so cool Ever the science nerd i'd go to my basement put on the goggles and 

2:28 

perform experiments with my dog Eigor by my side What kind of experiments well 

2:33 

the grosser the better Here are some of my favorites The stink bomb based on the 

2:39 

production of hydrogen sulfide from odorless sulfur the volcanic lava flow 

2:44 

made by combining baking soda with vinegar And well I also love the 

2:49 

invisible ink This was a simple experiment just made with a lemon juice concoction You see messages emerged when 

2:57 

the lemon juice ink was exposed to heat teaching us about the power of oxidation 

3:03 

The oxidation and the heat turns the ink brown I also love the mesmerizing 

3:08 

underwater fireworks that formed in a clear glass beaker all due to gravity 

3:14 

What did that experiment teach us it was nothing more than well a few eyroppers and a bunch of different colored fluids 

3:21 

that came with different densities Now make no mistake the stuff of modern-day 

3:26 

chemistry is nothing like the stuff of my basement experiments And chemistry is 

3:32 

thriving at the University of Virginia And we want to talk about it today And it's a pleasure to be joined by Jill 

3:37 

Venton the Thomas Jefferson Professor of Chemistry and the current chair of UVA's 

3:42 

chemistry department Jill welcome to Who's in STEM Thanks Ken It's great to be here So Jill so much to talk about 

3:49 

Chemicals are everywhere around us Chemistry is obviously much more than my juvenile fascination with stink bombs 

3:56 

and invisible ink Now as a college student I took some chemistry classes 

4:01 

They weren't my best classes The courses that I remember taking went by the names 

4:06 

like OEM PCM Chem 101 That was the very first one And generally these classes were offered at 8:00 Here at UVA as 

4:15 

department chair what's chemistry thanks Ken So chemistry is really the study of 

4:21 

molecules that make up all of matter from air to space to the human body And 

4:26 

so chemists really study those tiny building blocks of life And so much of the matter of living things is made up 

4:33 

of molecules that have carbon as their center And so chemists call the study of 

4:39 

anything with carbon organic chemistry We tend to call it organic here instead of Ochem but that's one of the main 

4:46 

specialties of chemistry Now if you study basically any element on the periodic table besides carbon we call 

4:54 

that inorganic chemistry Inorganic and organic chemists together often are 

4:59 

called synthetic chemists That's because they often make new molecules So they're interested in the science of making 

5:06 

molecules But not all chemists make molecules Some of them just study molecules So there's other areas of 

5:12 

chemistry that are interested in studying molecules For instance physical chemists or pchemists study the physical 

5:20 

properties of molecules such as maybe how a molecule interacts with light And 

5:26 

then many of them use those studies to model and predict different chemical 

5:31 

properties or behaviors Analytical chemists that's what I am do a lot of analysis of samples to understand what 

5:38 

chemicals are present in them So examples of analytical chemistry include 

5:44 

things like forensics to look at drugs in a sample or measuring an 

5:49 

environmental sample to see what contaminants are in it And then there lastly there's biochemists They combine 

5:56 

biology and chemistry to understand really the molecules that make up 

6:01 

everyday living systems things like proteins and DNA Jill thanks for that very quick lesson Now at UVA you chair 

6:09 

the department of chemistry and you just told about many different disciplines within chemistry Tell us about the 

6:14 

makeup of the department and how the faculty you have represent these various fields All right So the mission of our

6:21 

chemistry department at University of Virginia is to perform cutting edge chemical research while training the 

6:27 

next generation of chemical scientists And so we're a large department We have about 30 tenure track faculty And so 

6:34 

these are faculty that both teach and then run research groups And then we also have about six teaching track 

6:40 

faculty that primarily concentrate on teaching chemistry And so every year we 

6:45 

have about a hundred students graduate with a bachelor's degree in chemistry 

6:51 

and another 8 to 10 with a master's degree and then about 15 to 20 that get a PhD or a doctoral degree in chemistry

7:00 

Also a fun fact each year we have about 10,000 student enrollments in chemistry 

7:06 

courses So those are separate Some students take more than one course but that just shows you how large a 

7:12 

department we are Did you say you have 10,000 chemistry students 10,000 butts 

7:18 

and seats in your chemistry classes yes that's true We have over 10,000 student 

7:24 

enrollments or butts and seat in chemistry classes We are a large operation because chemistry really 

7:31 

touches so many other disciplines So for instance many science and engineering 

7:37 

majors will require a chemistry course in theirs And of course we all know that 

7:43 

many of the premed students as well enjoy taking a lot of our uh chemistry classes Uh and so we're able to do a lot

7:51 

of uh good teaching but also research Our department brings in approximately 12 to 14 million a year in external 

8:00 

funding uh for chemistry research and both undergraduate and graduate students 

8:05 

participate in that research mission So Joe that's that's amazing I remember when I was taking chemistry in college I 

8:13 

thought of every professor as the leader of kind of a significant enterprise Are you saying that we have 30 chemistry 

8:20 

tenure track and tenure faculty members does that mean we have roughly 30 different research labs here at UVA yes 

8:26 

that's what that means And each lab works on a slightly different topic but 

8:32 

it's really fascinating to think that we have so many different labs and so many experiences that our students can have 

8:39 

to really learn about chemical research Well that's really quite an operation Now among these 30 professors and I'm 

8:46 

sure they're all doing fascinating things and our time is limited but I do think it's important if you could share

8:52 

with us some examples can you show and tell us about some of the exciting 

8:57 

research that's going on in your department uva chemistry has many unique specialties that I'd like to highlight

9:04 

So one of these specialties is astrochemistry which is studying the chemistry of space and how stars form So 

9:11 

tell us about that I would have thought that space largely is a vacuum So that we have faculty studying astrochemistry 

9:18 

is fascinating Must be a fairly new field I didn't learn about it certainly in high school Tell us about it Yeah So

9:25 

astrochemistry takes advantage of some of the latest and greatest telescopes that have been designed to really 

9:33 

measure spectroscopic or how molecules interact with light signals in the far 

9:39 

away space And so people like Professor Rob Grod and Professor Eric Herpst and 

9:45 

then Professor Ilsa Cleaves who has a dual appointment between astronomy and chemistry they look at these molecules 

9:53 

look at the spectra that they get from telescopes and then try to recreate sometimes some of those reactions in a 

9:59 

chemistry lab to understand how molecules are formed in space So another 

10:04 

specialty uh that's really been growing at uh University of Virginia is inorganic chemistry and 

10:11 

catalysis So clean energy applications such as solar energy require a catalyst 

10:18 

And so that catalyst's job is to be a helper to turn something like sunlight 

10:23 

into a molecule that we can use for energy And so our department has a lot 

10:29 

of expertise now in developing new catalysts and nano particles to be able to transform energy applications In fact 

10:37 

last year we even had the secretary of energy Jennifer Granholm come and visit 

10:43 

our department because of the well- reggarded programs we have and the fact 

10:48 

that we have been awarded several Department of Energy Center grants to 

10:54 

study catalysis Well that's really interesting So I think all of us understand the need for clean sources of 

11:02 

energy That's that's this is that's a given The process to me sounds a little bit like the process that one goes 

11:09 

through when trying to find new drugs right in your search for new catalysts 

11:15 

you need to find the chemicals or the molecules or the compounds that work are 

11:20 

inexpensive cost effective do not do damage when implemented so on and so 

11:26 

forth So I'm excited to see that we've got multiple labs presumably working on all of these different questions Yeah So 

11:33 

the problems that you listed Ken are absolutely correct A lot of our focus 

11:38 

now is on making catalysts from more earthabundant metals Not rare metals 

11:46 

that are hard to find and very expensive but instead iron or things like that 

11:51 

that are very abundant and trying to make better catalysts from that And that's going to be more eco-friendly and 

11:57 

also more cost productive So a final area we have a lot of expertise in the chemistry department is biomed 

12:04 

applications of chemistry So we have several groups of those organic chemists 

12:10 

who make drugs for things like cancer applications So we also have groups that 

12:15 

develop different molecules that emit light We call that fluorescent And they 

12:20 

use these fluorescent molecules then to track different proteins or different 

12:27 

membranes in the body uh and in tissue to really understand the basics of 

12:34 

biochemistry And we even have some professors here who have done uh 

12:40 

analytical experiments to develop devices such as professor Landers who developed some COVID testing or 

12:46 

professor Pompano She was able to develop a device that can keep some thin 

12:52 

pieces of tissue alive and then really study the molecular interactions that are happening in a piece of tissue Wow 

13:00 

Among these chemists do some of them have joint appointments with our school of medicine or some of these research 

13:06 

projects shared projects with our medical professors yes absolutely Many 

13:11 

of our faculty have a joint or a courtesy appointment in the school of medicine and also our graduate faculty 

13:19 

in the biomed sciences program One of the things I love about UVA is that the barriers are really low to collaborate 

13:26 

and having the medical school on grounds in the same location as the chemistry 

13:32 

department means that it's very easy just to walk down the street and be able to work with different biomedical labs

13:39 

So Jill the fluoresence is fascinating I only think of two things really First of all how to spell fluorescent It was a 

13:45 

spelling word uh in second grade a hard one But I also think about the flickering old fluorescent lights And I 

13:51 

think about like a fluorescent bay that I recently visited where the organisms 

13:57 

have this ability to bofllores So tell us tell us about the work and the 

14:03 

applications of fluoresence So one of the examples of fluoresence that I think about in nature is the 

14:10 

firefly And so it turns out the firefly has a chemical reaction that happens to 

14:17 

make it light up And we call that enzyme that does that firefly luciferase Well 

14:23 

it turns out when I talk about making assays to turn on some fluorescents in 

14:30 

the body to look at a protein that we often are borrowing from nature And so 

14:36 

in this case we can borrow the enzyme like firefly luciferase and then use it 

14:43 

to make a luciferase then reaction that might be able to track a different type 

14:49 

of enzyme in the body And we talked before a little bit about catalysis and that inorganic people were using 

14:55 

elements like iron to make catalysts Well it turns out enzymes are the body's catalysts They are biomolecules proteins 

15:03 

that change one molecule to another And so we borrow from nature like the 

15:08 

luciferase to understand other types of enzymes in the body That reminds me of 

15:15 

one of our earlier episodes with former UVA vice president of research Mel Ramos 

15:21 

Sububbermanian And I asked him uh what he was most well known for in his research And he had a very similar story 

15:28 

where instead of studying the firefly he studied the mosquito And it was on a 

15:34 

trip to some faraway camp I believe it was in northern Wisconsin where he got 

15:40 

bit by a mosquito and he had a flash of insight and he thought that by studying 

15:45 

the mosquito he could improve uh vaccine needles and that turned out to be one of 

15:52 

his research accomplishments that he's most well known for So I love it when we learn from nature We want to understand 

15:58 

nature and of course that requires first trying to study and then in I guess some cases emulate what nature does so well 

16:06 

Now Jill I know as chair you've described a number of the research projects and the work of the faculty in 

16:12 

your department That's rather humble I've got to talk about you too Tell us about your research I want to know what 

16:18 

are you known for obviously it's significant You're the Thomas Jefferson Professor of Chemistry It's an honor 

16:23 

that recognizes your scholarship Tell us about it So my area of research is 

16:28 

really neurochemistry So neurochemistry again is the study of chemicals in the brain 

16:35 

My expertise is designing tiny little electrochemical sensors that allow us to 

16:42 

peer into the brain and really understand neurochemistry So part of my 

16:47 

lab develops these tiny little sensors and we use really cool new technology like nano 3D printing And so we can make 

16:57 

electrodes that are only a few hundred nanometers wide So that's like 1/100th 

17:03 

the size of a human hair We take these electrodes and we use them to study 

17:08 

chemical signaling in the brain And we call this chemical signaling neurotransmission So you have neurons in 

17:15 

your brain and they all communicate by releasing little packets of 

17:20 

neurotransmitters And that's what my lab wants to measure and understand How does 

17:26 

your brain communicate using neurotransmitters and so we know that this 

17:32 

neurotransmission can change often during disease So it's really important to study both the healthy brain to 

17:39 

understand how it works normally and then we use our techniques to study 

17:45 

disease models to understand how neurotransmission might change during 

17:50 

disease My lab for instance studies model organisms and so we've become an 

17:55 

expert in fruitfly neurochemistry Believe it or not the fruitfly has very similar neurotransmitters to what you 

18:02 

and I have It's very easy to do genetic models in the fruitfly And so for 

18:08 

instance our lab has taken a genetic model of Parkinson's disease where we've 

18:14 

inserted a gene that's known to cause Parkinson's disease and then we've studied how that changes your dopamine 

18:22 

neurotransmission So we do a lot of studies on dopamine It's a neurotransmitter that's important in 

18:28 

locomotion and walking and also in addiction and reward So we can take our 

18:35 

tiny little sensors and insert it into a tiny little fruitfly brain and then understand how dopamine is changing in 

18:42 

Parkinson's mutations Perhaps not surprisingly what we found in this study 

18:47 

is that the effect of having the Parkin gene that caused Parkinson's disease is 

18:53 

worse in older flies than it is in younger flies So again this is a disease 

18:58 

that often happens in aging And so we see a lot more deficits in dopamine 

19:04 

neurotransmission in aged flies with Parkinson's disease than in younger 

19:09 

flies with Parkinson's disease So Joe lots of questions there My first question is rather naive How old is an 

19:16 

old fruitfly they're not very old which makes it a great project for graduate and undergraduate students It's just 

19:23 

about 45 days So the lifespan of a fruitfly is only about 60 days So that's 

19:30 

one of the reasons it's such a great model organism We don't have to wait years for it to get old It's just a 

19:35 

couple months is the idea then that you can also use the chemical sensors that 

19:41 

you've produced in other organisms Yeah that's the ideas So right now our 

19:48 

particular goal is usually to understand neurotransmitters in model systems We're 

19:53 

not particularly interested in going to humans It would be an invasive technique that might not be well suited But we do 

20:00 

have some studies for instance in mice as well So another fun study that we're doing right now is to look at the 

20:08 

effects of focused ultrasound on your brain chemistry So UVA has a lot of 

20:14 

expertise in focused ultrasound and this is a project that I'm working on with 

20:20 

Wendy Lynch who is a professor of psychiatry and she and I were able to 

20:26 

get both three Cavaliers funding and brain institute funding as a seed 

20:31 

project that led to us getting an NIH grant then to study uh focused 

20:37 

ultrasound as a possible treatment for addiction So we are currently in rats 

20:43 

We're studying this in model organisms But what we're doing is we're applying focused ultrasound So this is really 

20:49 

sound waves that go through your brain So no blood no scalpel No scalpel 

20:55 

because you can just sit the focus ultrasound on your intact scalp So it's noninvasive You don't have to do real 

21:01 

brain surgery And so you apply some sound waves and we're applying them at a low frequency So it's not going to cause 

21:08 

um any damage to your brain Instead what my lab is doing now is seeing how this 

21:14 

changes the neurochemistry And we've been able to work out parameters that 

21:19 

will either increase the dopamine in your brain or decrease the dopamine in your brain if you use a completely 

21:25 

different set of parameters Where are you focusing the ultrasound to generate these effects right now we're doing a circuit So we are focusing the focused 

21:32 

ultrasound on the prey cortex That's an area that's involved in reward and 

21:38 

motivation And then we're seeing how it changes dopamine in the nucleus encumbent which is important for 

21:43 

addiction And so the idea is that we are hoping we can use these parameters which 

21:49 

our lab has worked out and then my collaborator professor Lynch is going to use these parameters to look and see how 

21:55 

it changes behavior And so the idea is to look at at relapse So you know people 

22:01 

have been taking drugs they go off the drugs they experience intense feelings of craving And so our idea is if we can 

22:08 

modulate the neurochemistry using this non-invasive focus ultrasound we might 

22:13 

be able then to reduce craving and help people stay off drugs Well Joe that's really great There's so much happening 

22:20 

there But I also like to talk about the future Time flies and in the world advances an incredible rate certainly in

22:26 

the world of AI and a world a wash in data tell us about the future of chemistry research Maybe show and tell 

22:33 

us about some potential applications that would affect us all Right So I think that chemistry is really at the 

22:40 

heart of many scientific innovations So like we just talked about my lab is 

22:45 

trying to understand brain chemistry so that we can eventually regulate it and treat disease and other labs are 

22:51 

developing novel drugs uh for disease as well And so while we've talked about a lot of fun applications of chemistry I 

22:59 

want to emphasize that at the heart we are a basic science and a basic research department And so basic science is 

23:07 

really just understanding the world around us making new molecules 

23:12 

understanding molecules in nature And you never know where that's going to lead You may invent a synthetic 

23:18 

technique today publish that in the literature and somebody may pick that up and use that to make an amazing drug in 

23:24 

the future You may invent an analysis that you use for one thing today but somebody may pick that up and use that 

23:31 

for the latest COVID testing or whatever the next epidemic or disease of interest is in the future And so I want to 

23:38 

emphasize that while applications are super cool and important that I think basic science also just doing science to 

23:45 

study molecules is at the heart of everything we do and that's going to lead I think to some amazing new 

23:52 

applications and you just never know kind of where the science is going to take you Yeah Thank you Joe It reminds 

23:58 

me when I was a a a a graduate student many many many years ago One of our 

24:05 

friends you might know her name was Nancy Gorov and her advisor had just 

24:10 

invented a molecule I remember her telling me about this and said "How do you invent a molecule haven't these

24:16 

things have all happened somewhere in the universe before?" She said "No no." And they call it the Bucky Ball Three 

24:22 

months later it's the rage I'm learning about it on television It's on the cover of Scientific American and it was an 

24:29 

example of a carbon compound that mathematically was I guess theoretically 

24:35 

conceivable Some might be something that a theoretical mathematician might come up with but turned out to be a major 

24:42 

discovery in the real world And I and I thought that was fascinating So I'm glad that continues to this day So Jill I

24:49 

want to talk about your career path It's something that I'd like to talk about with everyone that's on the podcast Can 

24:55 

you tell us when you when were you first drawn to chemistry was it high school elementary school did you do experiments 

25:01 

in the basement with your dog like I did yeah So I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC And so my dad 

25:09 

was actually a chemistry professor So apple doesn't fall far from the tree It does not And but he taught at a small 

25:15 

college called Galedet University which is the university for the deaf And so my 

25:20 

dad actually taught chemistry in sign language which still blows my mind I'm fluent in ASL but I can't teach 

25:27 

chemistry uh in ASL And so I was around chemistry uh from my whole life I feel I 

25:34 

would go and visit my dad's lab sometimes in the summer and I was just kind of interested in chemistry Um and I

25:41 

got into a special competitive science and technology school called Elellanena Roosevelt High School in Green Belt 

25:47 

Maryland And then I was surrounded in high school by all these kids who were just amazing and interested in STEM I 

25:54 

loved AP chemistry and we were required to do an independent research project at 

26:00 

this science and technology school And so I ended up working in a lab at the US 

26:05 

Department of Agriculture at something place called the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center And in this lab it was a 

26:11 

chemistry lab Uh they made insect attractants And so I wrote a high school 

26:16 

thesis entitled monofllorinated analoges of methyl eugenol as attractants for the oriental fruitfly You probably have no 

26:24 

idea what that means but I think it shows I was doing a high level of science uh in high school right and so I 

26:30 

knew I wanted to study chemistry in college I went on to the University of Delaware They had an amazing honors 

26:36 

program that allowed a lot of research experience So I was able to study chemistry there um and do some research 

26:43 

I began studying analytical chemistry there studying mass spectrometry of DNA 

26:49 

and I also was able to do a research exchange program where I went over to London and went to Imperial College and 

26:55 

there I started to study bio sensors which is pretty much what I still study uh today And so those experiences really 

27:02 

shaped me gave me great research experience early I went on to study um 

27:08 

at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for graduate work and my adviser there really was in the heart of 

27:14 

this field of doing analytical chemistry and neuroscience and so I got into that 

27:20 

field and I just absolutely fell in love you know did a posttock with a psychologist doing behavior and 

27:27 

neurochemistry at the University of Michigan and then I came here to University of Virginia in 2005 and have 

27:34 

worked my way up all the way from assistant professor to associate to professor to chair Uh I love it here and 

27:40 

I've really uh had a great time establishing my career here That's super exciting The apple doesn't fall far from 

27:46 

the tree I I get that My my father was a mathematician and when I was a kid different from your experience in the 

27:51 

lab but as a kid my dad would sit me at a little table and I'd have to do geometry problems in the summer while he 

27:58 

did his big boy research I actually didn't think that was very cool So as department chair I feel the need 

28:05 

to talk about the undergraduate program So as I understand it UVA chemistry has 

28:10 

done a deep dive thought very seriously about redesigning or updating the 

28:16 

undergraduate curriculum Tell us about that Yes So we've spent a lot of time really thinking about the success of all 

28:23 

of our students in chemistry classes at the University of Virginia And the chemistry faculty really have a heart 

28:29 

for this And so what we realized was that in some of our chemistry classes 

28:34 

underserved students and first generation students didn't always do as well as more traditional background 

28:41 

students And so we had a team of faculty including uh Professor Linda Columbus Kevin Welch Lisa Morochuk Marilyn Stains 

28:49 

and they worked with also some staff members at the College of Arts and Science to redesign our general 

28:54 

chemistry curriculum And so what we have now is just one lecture per week where we introduce material and then one 

29:01 

team-based active learning class per week where you work with a group of students to work through problems and 

29:09 

get a deeper understanding of the material And so this radical change has 

29:14 

really improved student performance for all groups of students but especially underserved students who now have a team 

29:20 

to help them understand concepts And so we've now really expanded this active learning to many of our different 

29:26 

classes in the undergraduate curriculum So previously if chemistry was taught 

29:32 

here in a way that was similar to how I learned chemistry in college in the 1980s it was boring 

29:39 

lectures 150 of us in a room old professor actually smoking a pipe back 

29:45 

then Monday Wednesdays and Fridays 8 to 8:50 and frightening exams a couple 

29:50 

times a semester I want to take a chemistry class It sounds like much more meaningful And right the students are 

29:57 

really now getting more engaged in their own learning And that's what's so exciting They're not just watching the 

30:03 

professor do chemistry They're able to do it themselves And in that line we've also redesigned some of our lab classes

30:10 

You know a traditional chemistry lab is like a cookbook Mix this mix that get 

30:16 

this result kind of thing And don't burn down the lab And don't burn down the lab but it doesn't teach you that much It 

30:22 

doesn't allow you to really learn the scientific method of designing your own experiments We've introduced more active 

30:29 

learning experiments into the lab as well allowing students the chance to design their own experiments So I'll 

30:36 

give you an example from the class that I teach I teach the analytical chemistry lab And if you walk in it kind of looks 

30:42 

like the labs that you see on those TV shows like CSI or NCIS All those amazing 

30:49 

instruments that just spit out answers on TV they're not quite like that in real life And so my students learn to 

30:56 

use all of those instruments and analyze real life samples And so at the end of 

31:01 

the class I give them real life samples like food or vitamins alcohol vanilla 

31:08 

that kind of thing And I say "Pick an instrument and go back and analyze it like you're the FDA Tell me what's in 

31:14 

the sample Tell me if it's pure tell me about any contaminants that you see And 

31:20 

so they're learning real life applications I don't tell them a procedure They have to figure it out themselves And so with that I think 

31:27 

we're producing much better scientists and much better chemists by allowing them to practice the scientific method 

31:34 

in these lab courses That sounds fun For students and the members of the UVA 

31:39 

community that are interested in chemistry they're not already yet in the department How can they learn more about the department and get involved going 

31:46 

beyond signing up for classes right So I think you could go to our department website to learn about our special 

31:52 

events and seminars and also we have some social media like LinkedIn that you 

31:58 

can look at But even more than that if you're out in the community you might actually be able to interact with our 

32:04 

chemistry graduate student outreach group that's called Chemistry Lead And their mission is to bring chemistry to 

32:11 

kids And so they're out in the local schools oftentimes local community fairs 

32:16 

the discovery museum designing simple experiments to allow kids to get excited about chemistry So there you have it 

32:23 

This has been wonderful Jill let's wrap up with maybe a fun unrelated story maybe a fun tidbit What would you like

32:30 

to tell us well if I think about what I love here about Charlottesville I have this real passion kind of for the 

32:35 

outdoors and we're blessed to live on a large property out in Ivy on the Mechums River And what's so cool about it is

32:42 

that there's so much wildlife So just a few weeks ago I was home with my daughter She was sick from school and 

32:48 

she's like "Mommy look there's a bear on the porch." And they're rambling across the porch is a bear who takes its time 

32:53 

to enjoy our property with us We're watching him out the window Uh you never know what you're going to see out there 

32:59 

And so when I'm not too busy doing tons of chemistry experiments in the lab or running my kids around to their sports 

33:05 

and activities I love to spend time outside And Charlottesville is just such a great place to live and be Well Jill

33:12 

thank you very much We're delighted to have you here at UVA leading the chemistry department You're definitely 

33:18 

fulfilling Jim Ryan's mission for UVA his charge to be great and good in 

33:24 

everything that we do And I'm Kenono STEM adviser to the provost and the Marvin Rosenlum Professor of Mathematics 

33:30 

And you've been listening to Who's in STEM Who's in STEM is a production of WTJU 

33:35 

91.1 FM and the office of the provost at the University of Virginia Who's in STEM is produced by Katherine Kosaboom Claire 

33:42 

Kerzen Benjamin Larson Mary Garner McGee Katie Nichols and Ria Verma Our music is 

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composed and performed by Robert Schneider and John Ferguson of Apples and Stereo Follow us on Facebook 

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Instagram and Twitter Listen and subscribe to Who's in STEM on Apple Podcast Spotify or wherever you get your 

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podcast We'll be back soon with another conversation about scientific and technological innovation at the 

34:03 

university