James Louis-Jean (Chemistry) recently was published in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry for his work on isotope analysis of nuclear materials with collaborators at Los Alamos National Lab. His other accomplishments include receiving the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fellowship in fall 2020, the African American…

Maria Aladjova (Health Sciences), Marlon Urquico (Liberal Arts), Peter Clancy (Sciences) and the College of Engineering Advising Center are the winners of the 2020-21 UNLV Academic Advising Awards presented by the office of the vice provost for undergraduate education and the Academic Advising Council leadership team. These awards recognize…

Arya Udry (Geoscience) published the review article "What Martian Meteorites Reveal About the Interior and Surface of Mars" in Journal of Geophysical Research : Planets.  Scientists learn about the formation and evolution of planets, such as Mars, by studying rock samples. Obtaining rock samples from Mars makes it possible to study them in…

Satish C. Bhatnagar (Mathematical Sciences) gave a keynote address, "What Ramanujan Means To You?" at the one-day online conference History and Development of Mathematics held Dec. 22. It was the celebration of what would have been mathematics legend Srinivasa Ramanujan’s 133rd birthday, which was recently declared National Mathematics Day in…

Ashkan Salamt (Physics and Astronomy) was awarded a grant from the Air Force office of scientific research. The grant, "The synthesis of supernitride compounds via extreme (pressure, temperature) conditions: a new generation of high-energy density materials," is for $452,184. Modern calculations reveal a novel group of binary…

Dale Devitt (Life Sciences) recently published a book, "Selecting and Maintaining Trees for Urban Desert Landscapes." Growing trees in an urban desert environment can be challenging, especially if water is a limited resource. In the book, Devitt provides guidance to those living and working in the Desert Southwest on how to select  and…

Ashkan Salamat's (Physics and Astronomy) recent research about room-temperature superconductivity with colleague Ranga Dias from the University of Rochester was announced as one of 10 finalists in Physics World magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 2020.  The announcement of the Breakthrough of the Year …

Gary Kleiger (Chemistry and Biochemistry) is a co-corresponding author on a paper titled "Linkage-Specific Ubiquitin Chain Formation Depends on a Lysine Hydrocarbon Ruler" that was in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Alums Nicholas Purser, '19 BS Biology; Nicole Burton, '20 BS Chemistry; and Daniel Houston, '09 BA Psychology and BS Biology,…

Mary Blankenship (Economics, Chemistry, Brookings Mountain West, The Liny Institute, Honors), was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award during the fall 2020 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium, sponsored by the office of undergraduate research (OUR). This award recognizes one outstanding UNLV undergraduate student…

Arya Udry (Geoscience) has been selected for the Mars 2020 Participating Scientist Program. Udry's proposal "Using Jezero Crater Igneous Compositions to Constrain Martian Interior and Surface Processes from the Noachian to Amazonian" was selected for funding. She was one of 13 proposals out of 119 chosen for the award. UNLV now has…

Mary Blankenship (Economics, Chemistry, Brookings Mountain West, Honors) recently was featured in the Global News article "‘Playing with Fire’: How Politicians Can Perpetuate Baseless Conspiracy Theories" where she discusses steps individuals can take to stop the spread of misinformation on Twitter.

Hui Zhang and Hong Sun (both Chemistry and Biochemistry) received an RO1 grant, “Regulation of SOX Proteins by Methylation-dependent Proteolysis in Stem Cells and Development,” from the National Institutes of Health for four years for a total of $1,238,360. The objective of this RO1 grant is to investigate how the pluripotency…