College of Arts & Sciences

Research Program

 AFM
Atomic Force Microscope
 NMR
500 MHz NMR

   

Northern Kentucky University's Chemistry Department has one of the most active and productive undergraduate research programs in the country.  Every year approximately 50 students are engaged in research projects directed by faculty in the department. Participation in a research project can provide a significant advantage for students when they apply to graduate or professional schools, or seek industrial positions.

Recent research highlights

1. Since 2007, research faculty have received 3.2 million dollars in externally funded grants from The National Institute of Health, NSF, Research Corporation, American Chemical Society-PRF and Kentucky Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network.

2. Since 2007, faculty have published 36 articles, nearly all of them with NKU undergraduates as co-authors [link].  During that same time period, students gave nearly 350  presentations of their work including 172 at scientific meetings (77 at ACS meetings) and 174 at on-campus events [link].

3.In March, 2011 the chemistry department provided funds to fly fifteen undergraduate research participants and four faculty to the ACS national meeting in Anaheim where they presented a total of 19 papers. In 2010, twenty-three undergraduate research participants and four faculty presented a total of 25 papers.

Major equipment

The department has a wide variety of modern major instrumentation used in both research and instruction, including the following:

  • 500 MHz Fourier Transform NMR (JEOL)
  • Atomic force microscope (VEECO, Dimension 3100)
  • 3 Infrared Fourier Transform Spectrometers (Nicolet)
  • Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer (Varian)
  • High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (Millipore)
  • Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (Varian)
  • 2 Gas Chromatographs (Agilent 6890 Series)
  • 4 UV-VIS Photodiode Array Spectrometers (Hewlett-Packard and Varian-Cary)
  • 2 Scanning UV-VIS spectrometer (Varian-Cary)
  • Nd-YAG Laser (Qunatel)
  • Liquid Nitrogen Optical Cryostat (Oxford Instruments)
  • Emission spectrometer with picosecond time resolve capabilities (JY-Horibe SPEX)
  • Glovebox (Innovative Technologies)
  • Capillary electrophoresis (Waters)
  • Langmuir trough (KSV)
  • Powder XRD spectrometer (Rigaku, shared with Biological Sciences and Physics)
  • Tissue culture facilities
  • Microplate reader (Softmax)
  • Molecular biology equipment
  • Surface area / porosity analyzer (Quantachrome)
  • Microwave synthesizer (CEM)
  • Contact angle goniometer (AST)
  • Electrochemical workbenchs (CH Instruments)
  • Various molecular modeling software packages (Sybyl, Spartan, Gaussian)

Of particular importance is the department's on-campus access to the latest Waters chromatographic instruments provided through an adjunct faculty member and a novel agreement between NKU and Waters. Pictures of select instruments can be found on the departmental website. 

Other major equipment, such as an ultracentrifuge (Sorvall), CHNS Analyzer (LECO 932), scintillation counters, Typhoon multi-mode imager, DNA Sequencer, SEM, confocal microscope, TGA, DSC and Raman spectrometer are available through the other NKU science departments in the building.

Our graduates

Northern Kentucky University Chemistry graduates have accepted positions at numerous area firms (Procter&Gamble, Pantheon, and Wild Flavors for example) and received the MD, PharmD and DVM degrees from the universities of Cincinnati, Indiana, Kentucky and Louisville, among others.  In addition, our graduates have gone on to receive the Ph. D. in chemistry or biochemistry at some of the most prestigious schools in the country, among them Harvard, Illinois-Urbana, Indiana, Johns Hopkins, MIT, UNC-Chapel Hill, Ohio State, Vanderbilt and Yale.

Links to research faculty websites  

Below are links to the web pages of faculty in chemistry who are active in research.  Each page will have a description of the research projects currently under investigation in the faculty member’s laboratory.

Heather Bullen, Associate Professor

Office: SC 349 / Phone: (859) 572-5411
E-mail: bullenh1@nku.edu
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~bullenh1 

Dr. Heather Bullen is tenure-track analytical chemist who joined NKU in 2004. She received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University and was a postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University, Ames Laboratory-Department of Energy.

Patrick Hare, Assistant Professor

Office: SC 351 / (859) 572-1928 
E-mail: harep1@nku.edu 
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~harep1

Since August 2008 Patrick Hare has taught general and physical chemistry at NKU. He received his B.A. in chemistry in 2001 from Case Western Reserve University followed by a Ph. D. from The Ohio State University in 2007 where he used ultrafast laser spectroscopy to study nucleic acids. Prior to arriving at NKU, Hare was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory.

Robert Kempton, Professor Emeritus

E-mail: kempton@nku.edu
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~kempton

Following two years as a postdoctoral student at University of Illinois, Dr. Robert Kempton started teaching organic chemistry at NKU in 1976. He received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 1975, M.S. from Auburn in 1969 and B.S. from St. Peter's College in 1966. Kempton has been the leader in establishing undergraduate research on campus and still works with students. He taught organic chemistry, spectroscopy and advanced organic synthesis and received the honor of Regents Professor in 1993.

Isabelle Lagadic, Assistant Professor

Office: SC 449 / (859) 572-7785 
E-mail: lagadici1@nku.edu

Dr. Isabelle Lagadic joined the department in August 2007. She received her doctorate in 1994 from the Universite of Paris-Sud (Orsay, France). She taught at both Oklahoma State University and the University of Connecticut and also worked for Nanoscale Materials, Inc., a start-up company located in Kansas. She teaches general chemistry lecture and lab and inorganic chemistry lab.

Lili Ma, Assistant Professor

Office: SC 448 / (859) 572-6961 
E-mail: mal1@nku.edu
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~mal1 

Dr. Lili Ma received her B.S. (1999) and M.S. (2002) from Nanjing University (China) and her Ph.D. (2007) from Brown University. After two years of postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Medical Branch, she joined the chemistry department at NKU in August 2009. She teaches organic chemistry lecture and lab.

Kereen Monteyne, Assistant Professor

Office: SC 446 / (859) 572-5408 
E-mail: monteynek1@nku.edu

Dr. Kereen Monteyne received her B.Sc. (1993) in chemistry and M.Sc. (1996) in theoretical chemistry from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She received her Ph.D. (2004) in chemistry, with a focus in chemical education, from The University of Montana. Prior to arriving at NKU in Fall 2009, Dr. Monteyne was an assistant professor at California State University Fullerton. She teaches general chemistry lecture and lab.

Stefan Paula, Associate Professor

Office: SC 445 / (859) 572-6552
Email: paulas1@nku.edu 
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~paulas1

Dr. Stefan Paula joined NKU in 2004 after a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He received his diploma in chemistry (equivalent to an M.S.) from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1992 and his Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Before coming to the Cincinnati area, he spent two years at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich as a postdoctoral research associate. Paula teaches biochemistry lecture and lab and physical chemistry lab.

K. C. Russell, Associate Professor

Office: SC 350 / (859) 572-6110
E-mail: russellk@nku.edu 
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~russellk 

Dr. K. C. Russell received his B.S. at Oregon State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. He then traveled to Strasbourg, France, to work under the tutelage of 1987 Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn. Russell returned to the U.S. to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and began his academic career in 1995 at the University of Miami (Florida). Russell joined the faculty at NKU in 2001 and received the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 2004. He teaches organic chemistry, chemistry seminar and advanced organic chemistry.

Keith Walters, Associate Professor

Office: SC 348 / (859) 572-5315
E-mail: walterske@nku.edu
Website: http://www.nku.edu/~walterske

Dr. Keith Walters came to NKU in 2002 after a two-year postdoctoral position at Northwestern University. He received his B.S. from Furman University in 1996 and his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 2000. Walters teaches general chemistry, history of chemistry, inorganic chemistry, organometallic chemistry and materials chemistry. He received the NKU Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 2007. 


This page was last updated on 4/1/2011