Rowland Fellows

Katherine S. Hopstock 2023-2024

Katherine’s research in the Nizkorodov lab focuses on the chemical composition of exhaled smoke from participants in a human trial vaping study.  This project aims to understand primary emissions from vaping devices and the health risks associated with secondhand vaping. The Rowland Graduate Fellowship will allow Katherine to collaborate with Prof. Donald Blake (Department of Chemistry) and Prof. Rufus Edwards (Program in Public Health) to evaluate the role that lung surfactant plays in the absorption of vape aerosol and its impact on the composition of exhaled vape aerosol.

Paul Hurst 2022-2023

Paul's research in the Patterson lab focuses on the polymerization-induced self-assembly of biocompatible nanoparticles. Here, amphiphilic block copolymers are synchronously synthesized and self-assembled in high concentration. He will collaborate with the Nowick lab to incorporate known pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, as polymerization catalysts to prepare drug-nanoparticle formulations and study the efficacy of these formulations in vitro.

Aoon Rizvi 2021-2022

Aoon's research will be a collaboration with the Patterson & Sim Labs to encapsulate living cells within polymer coacervates to build living composite materials with unique hierarchical structures. The project aims to understand the fundamental interactions between cells and coacervates that promote encapsulation and also develop a new method of synthesizing living polymer composites.

Natalie Smith 2020-2021

Natalie has been investigating how chemical processes in atmospheric organic aerosol particles depend on their phase state using different types of synthetic organic aerosol particles and the photochemical smog chamber in the Nizkorodov Group. The Rowland Graduate Fellowship will allow Natalie to use real emissions by working with the group of Prof. Celia Faiola at UCI to generate aerosol samples from plants. Natalie will then work in the group of Prof. Allan Bertram at the University of British Columbia to perform diffusion measurements on these samples using a method called fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP).

Sean Nguyen 2019-2020

In the Prescher lab, Sean Nguyen focuses on developing new chemical tools to probe biological processes. In collaboration with the Spitale lab, his current project aims to incorporate chemically triggered crosslinkers into nascent RNA in whole cells to capture RNA-protein interactions.