{"id":24535,"date":"2018-09-14T11:26:28","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T15:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/?p=24535"},"modified":"2018-09-14T13:55:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T17:55:09","slug":"uri-chemistry-professor-mindy-levine-earns-early-career-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/2018\/09\/14\/uri-chemistry-professor-mindy-levine-earns-early-career-award\/","title":{"rendered":"URI chemistry professor Mindy Levine earns early career award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Levine\"
URI Associate Chemistry Professor Mindy Levine has been awarded the Sessler Early Career Researcher Award by the journal Supramolecular Chemistry. Photo by Michael Salerno<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2014 Mindy Levine, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, is the first recipient of the Sessler Early Career Researcher Prize, awarded in July by the editors of the journal Supramolecular Chemistry for a research paper published in the journal in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe panel was unanimous in its belief that Mindy\u2019s paper described excellent, cutting edge research of considerable interest to the supramolecular community,\u201d said Bruce Gibbs, U.S. editor-in-chief of Supramolecular Chemistry.<\/p>\n

Levine, of Sharon, Mass.<\/b>, was honored for her paper, \u201cSensitive and selective detection of alcohols via fluorescence modulation,\u201d written with graduate student Dana J. DiScenza, of Pomona, N.Y.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThe award is a reflection of the fact that the supramolecular chemistry community has been outstandingly supportive of younger scientists,\u201d Levine said. \u201cTo the extent that it\u2019s named for Jonathan Sessler, he in particular has been a model for that in the community at large and for me personally. I think it\u2019s a real privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the prize, Levine presented her research at the July conference of the annual International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. Levine, in her eighth year at URI, has also been named to the journal\u2019s editorial board.<\/p>\n

The paper focused on detecting alcohols, many of which are known or suspected toxicants, and could benefit the fields of public health and the environment. Using a compound of a ring of repeating sugar molecules, cyclodextrin, alcohol molecules were held in close proximity to a fluorescent dye in or near the cyclodextrin cavity, leading to interactions between the alcohol and dye, said DiScenza, lead author on the paper. The interaction ultimately induced an alcohol-specific change in the fluorescent signal of the dye.<\/p>\n

The use of fluorescence, which makes the detection easier in a complex environment such as a river contaminated by a chemical spill, is a new detection approach, Levine said.<\/p>\n

The end goal, said Levine, would be the development of a versatile sensor that would identify classes of toxicants present in a complex environment to aid first responders to an environmental accident. Currently, first responders need precise information on the toxicant involved before devising a response plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re bad as a scientific community of doing unguided detection, so if you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re looking for or if you have mistaken information we\u2019re terrible at it,\u201d Levine said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to solve this problem by developing methods that are sort of counterintuitive in the detection science community. We want things that are less sensitive for any particular analytic compound and more sensitive for classes of compounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levine got the idea for her research as she does for many others \u2013 from everyday life. Determining if the milk in the fridge is spoiled, or if your microwave lunch is OK to eat after its plastic container melted may seem mundane for scientific study. But those concerns sparked a question: Can scientists quickly and accurately detect unknown toxicants at play in a complex environment?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Levine\u2019s willingness to chase unusual ideas that attracted DiScenza to URI after earning her bachelor of science degree in chemistry at Marist College. \u201cI loved how excited she was to solve problems,\u201d said DiScenza, who is scheduled to earn her doctorate in chemistry this fall. \u201cI really wanted to work with her \u2013 just finding someone who was just as excited about solving problems and doing detection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s focus was sharpened after she learned of the January 2014 chemical spill in the Elk River, in Charleston, West Virginia. About 7,500 gallons of an alcohol used to remove impurities in coal that contribute to pollution during combustion leaked into the river upstream from a water treatment facility. The company involved in the spill immediately identified the leaked alcohol, and first responders developed a cleanup plan. But days later, the company announced that the leak included a second agent \u2013 a solvent \u2013 hampering remediation.<\/p>\n

The potential detection tool to come out of the incident would be similar to common color-changing paper strips, such as those used in pregnancy tests. But instead of testing for one expected substance, the strip would determine the presence of multiple agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the West Virginia spill, you would have gotten a hit for alcohols and would have gotten a hit for ether [the solvent],\u201d Levine says. \u201cThat would have been enough to go back to the company and say, \u2018What else is in here?\u2019 They could have done that right away without waiting the 10 days as everyone kept being exposed to that second compound.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sessler prize is the first international recognition for Levine, winner of a national Rising Star Award from the American Chemical Society in 2015. The award is sponsored by international publisher Taylor and Francis and named for chemistry pioneer Jonathan Sessler, of the University of Texas at Austin, a longtime editor of the journal and member of its editorial board.<\/p>\n

Media Contact:<\/b>
\nTony LaRoche
\n401-874-4894
\nPosted on August 8, 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mindy Levine, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Rhode Island, is the first recipient of the Sessler Early Career Researcher Prize, awarded in July by the editors of the journal Supramolecular Chemistry for a research paper published in the journal in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1994,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-front-page-slider-post","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1994"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24535"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24562,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24535\/revisions\/24562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}