The department of chemistry welcomed two new faces, Jody Modarelli and Carol Shreiner, in the fall of 2007.

Jody joined us full time after serving as a visiting assistant professor in Biochemistry this past year. She received her doctoral degree in bioanalytical chemistry/mass spectrometry in November 2001 with Professor Chrys Wesdemiotis at The University of Akron working in the area of mass spectrometry focusing on the generation and characterization of protonated and alkali metallated radical cations. After graduation, Jody completed two post-doctoral fellowships. The first fellowship was at the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in Cincinnati, OH, and focused on the detection of water-borne Coxsackie A and B viruses by MALDI-TOF MS. The second fellowship was at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s Lerner Research Institute (LRI) where she was hired as a proteomics specialist focusing on the identification of novel substrates shed by the metalloprotease, MMP-14, expressed on the surface of breast cancer cells. After her post-docs, Jody went to work in industry. Her most recent industrial position was as a senior scientist for a start-up company, Frantz BioMarkers, in Cleveland, OH. Her work at Frantz involved the development of fast and efficient methods for the detection of early stage disease states for the purpose of commercialization by LC MS/MS, MALDI TOF/TOF and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA). She developed the first clinical assay for the detection of dry age-related macular degeneration.

Carol joined us for the first time in the fall of 2007. She received her Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2004 with Professor David Modarelli at The University of Akron. Carol is currently working at The University of Akron under the direction of Professor George Newkome in the Department of Polymer Science. Her current research is focused on the design and synthesis of shape-persistent transition metal polypyridinyl complexes and the design and synthesis of 1->3 C-branced, amine-terminated polyurea dendrimers. The shape-persistent architectures allow for the design of highly ordered materials, which have potential utilitarian applications. It is hoped that the 1->3 C-branching will overcome problems associated with the commercially available 1->2 N-branched PAMAM dendrimers that are widely used in biomedical applications. You can learn more about the work in: Shreiner, C.D. et al. J. Inorg. Organomet. Polym. Mat. 2005.