Doing Real Chemistry

Patrick Melvin in a lab

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Patrick Melvin recently received a National Science Foundation grant that will help fund his labā€™s research for the next three years, including support for three undergraduate students to work in his lab each summer. Melvinā€™s focus is fluorination chemistry, which is an essential building block for developing drugs that treat everything from cancers to cholesterol.

ā€œThese students are getting firsthand experience,ā€ Melvin says. ā€œThey learn how to properly design an experiment and to perform certain techniques, and those things are all important, but I think itā€™s the intangiblesā€”perseverance, determination, dealing with failureā€”that are going to serve them well, whatever they choose to do beyond ±¬ĮĻ¹Ļ.ā€

Published on: 03/01/2024