College of Arts, Sciences and Education

Dear friends and alumni,

Starting with this issue, our newsletter will highlight one of our CASE departments each month. I am delighted to launch this series by featuring chemistry — a department truly on the move!

Chemistry has a long history at S&T, with courses dating back to 1871 and the department formally established in 1964 after separating from chemical engineering. Today, it continues its tradition of excellence in analytical, physical, organic/polymer, and inorganic chemistry, and is accredited by the American Chemical Society.

The department’s reputation is evident in faculty achievements. Six current and former faculty are listed among the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists (Elsevier/Stanford, 2025). In the past two years, chemistry welcomed three endowed professors—Drs. Shelley D. Minteer, Pablo Sobrado, and Gregory Tschumper—and most recently, Dr. En-Chih Liu as assistant professor. Minteer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Chemical Society, while also securing a $20 million NSF grant for the Center for Synthetic Organic Electrochemistry—the largest in CASE history. Dr. Vadym Mochalin was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Dr. Gary Long, professor emeritus, was named a 2024 AAAS Fellow.

Research productivity remains high: faculty published 76 refereed articles last year in leading journals, with several featured on covers. Chemistry accounts for 40% of CASE doctoral students and external research funding, while faculty earned 33 patents in the past five years. Ph.D. applications have surged 377% in four years.

Students also excel. Sophomore Hossein Libre received the American Chemical Society (ACS) Undergraduate Scholarship, and doctoral candidate Margaret Taiwo was awarded the 2025 AAPG Foundation Grant-in-Aid.

Looking forward, the department is developing a new bachelor's degree in biochemistry, supporting S&T’s Bioinnovation focus. Major facility upgrades are underway with the renovation of Schrenk East, scheduled for completion in December 2026, providing state-of-the-art teaching, research, and office space.

Please join me in celebrating the achievements of our chemistry department—a dynamic community that continues to advance research, education, and innovation at S&T.

Sincerely,

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Ph.D.
Vice Provost and Dean

Gene Gowins, (pictured above) MST Phys'62, MS Phys'64, has established a $2.1 million permanent endowment to help physics students succeed, a gift he says was inspired by both the values he learned growing up during the Great Depression and his passion for physics. He also says it was the encouragement of two S&T professors that moved him to give back.

Dr. Harold Q. Fuller was a physics professor who served as department chair from 1948 to 1970, when he became founding dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He was also on the board of education in Rolla, and helped Gowins obtain a teaching position, which made it possible for him to pursue his studies.

Dr. Franklin Pauls breathed life into the subject as the primary teacher of Physics I. He also became the first director of Missouri S&T’s nuclear reactor, the first operational nuclear reactor in the state of Missouri.

“I’ll never have the kind of impact they had on me, but I’m pleased to be able to make it possible for students to worry less about expenses and focus more on physics,” Gowins says.

The Child Development Center (CDC) has been awarded the Missouri Quality Pre-Kindergarten Grant from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This grant allows CDC to provide free, full-day Pre-K for twenty 4- and 5-year-olds. “We are happy to serve our community through this program, which has allowed many families to enroll their child in preschool for the first time,” said Erika Jacobs, assistant director. Dr. Jami Swindell, assistant teaching professor in education, added: “High-quality, accessible childcare is a true asset for families and children. Early education builds the foundation for lifelong achievement, while reliable campus childcare supports working parents with peace of mind. The CDC team’s dedication to excellence is reflected in receiving this grant and in their ongoing commitment to enhancing programming for our youngest learners.”

Missouri S&T has joined the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory collaboration, thanks to Dr. Xiaojie Wang, new assistant professor of physics. HAWC is an international partnership of more than 30 institutions across Mexico, the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. Located at 4,100 meters high on the Sierra Negra volcano in Puebla, Mexico, the observatory detects gamma rays and cosmic rays from extreme cosmic events such as supernovae, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts.

The STEM Center had a summer of outreach and engagement. The staff at the center welcomed hundreds of K–12 students to campus through 29 hands-on summer camps (like the CASE Apocalypse summer camp, pictured above) and hosted 150 K–12 STEM educators for their annual two-day STEM Conference, which continues to grow in reach and impact each year. The team also spent the Missouri State Fair connecting with youth from across the state, partnering with S&T's marketing and communications department and various academic departments to showcase the excitement of STEM and the opportunities available at S&T. During the Fall 2025 semester, the STEM Center will welcome K–12 students for on-campus field trips — experiences that help young learners envision themselves as future members of the S&T community.

Dr. En-Chih Liu has joined Missouri S&T as an assistant professor of chemistry. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan and Texas A&M University. Liu’s research group focuses on developing new organic reactions using photochemical and electrochemical methods, with an emphasis on understanding reaction mechanisms to streamline the synthesis of complex molecules. At S&T, he teaches intermediate organic chemistry and mentors students in research, helping them connect fundamental principles to modern synthetic practice.

Beyond the lab and classroom, Liu enjoys road trips to explore new places, especially national parks. His favorite so far is Glacier National Park, and he looks forward to visiting many more across the U.S.

Jackson Loehr, a senior in mechanical engineering and biological sciences, is the new president of the CASE Student Advisory Council. Loehr has previously served on S&T’s Student Council and is currently the CASE Lead on that council. He is also vice president of the S&T Astronomical Research Society (STARS) and has partnered with NASA as an Eclipse Ambassador. CASE looks forward to Loehr’s leadership in advancing student engagement across CASE. He can be reached at Jslf59@mst.edu. 

Dimitris Diplaris, a Ph.D. student at the Center for Optical Quantum Technologies at the University of Hamburg, Germany, spent three weeks in the physics department collaborating with Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics. Their work focused on research projects exploring the quantum many-body dynamics of rogue waves using ultracold atom platforms. This collaboration builds on the strong ties between Mistakidis’s group and the "Theory Group of Fundamental Processes in Quantum Physics" at the University of Hamburg, led by Dr. Peter Schmelcher.

Jonathan House, Phys'25, is the first author of the article “Fractional Brownian motion with mean-density interaction: A myopic self-avoiding fractional stochastic process,” recently published in Physical Review E. The publication stems from an undergraduate research project House had pursued under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Vojta, chair and professor of physics, since summer 2023. Additional collaborators include physics Ph.D. student Rashad Bakhshizada, as well as professors Skirmantas Janušonis (UCSB) and Ralf Metzler (University of Potsdam, Germany). This work is part of an ongoing physics–neuroscience collaboration that seeks to explain the distribution of serotonergic neurons in the brain.

Dr. Michael Eze, assistant professor of chemistry, and his graduate student, Margaret Taiwo, along with Dr. Dave Duvernell, professor of biological sciences, published a research paper titled "Bioaccumulation pattern of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in fish tissues from two freshwater systems" in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances.

Dr. Daniel Fischer, associate professor of physics, and graduate student Shruti Majumdar attended the International Conference on Photonic, Electronic, and Atomic Collisions, held this summer in Sapporo, Japan, as well as two satellite conferences, the International Symposium on Ion–Atom Collisions in Kyoto and the International Symposium on Correlation, Polarization, and Ionization in Atomic and Molecular Collisions in Tokyo. Fischer traveled to Japan to participate in person and serve on the committees. Majumdar attended remotely and presented two posters and two invited talks. 

Courtney Jones, director of Kummer Center for STEM Education, received a $5,000 grant from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for a project titled “14 - Drone Soccer.”

Dr. Simeon Mistakidis, assistant professor of physics, and Dr. Lia Katsimiga, assistant teaching professor of physics, along with collaborators from WSU Pullman, University of San Diego, and UMass Amherst, published an article titled “Nonlinear Stage of Modulational Instability in Repulsive Two-Component Bose–Einstein Condensates” in Physical Review Letters. Their work presents the first observation of modulational instability in repulsively interacting media using ultracold atom quantum simulators, demonstrating the platforms’ potential for studying dispersive shock and rogue waves.

Dr. Matthew Ng, assistant professor of psychological science, published an article in Group & Organization Management titled "Rest Easy, Applied Researcher: Latent Profile Analysis is for You." The article provides a practitioner-friendly tutorial and an illustrative example of how to use Latent Profile Analysis to help inform organizational decision-making.

Dr. Gayla Olbricht, professor of mathematics and statistics, has been awarded a $153,867 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her project “Modifiers of Down Syndrome Co-occurring Phenotypes.” She will collaborate with colleagues at Indiana University on statistical modeling to identify genes linked to skeletal traits in Down syndrome. Olbricht, currently serving as President of the Mid-Missouri Chapter of the American Statistical Association, also received a $131,737 grant from Missouri State University for her project “Integrating Explainable AI in Trajectory Modeling of Serum Biomarker Profiles to Enhance Management of Patients with Severe to Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.”

Dr. Andrea Scharf, assistant professor of biological sciences, has been selected to participate in the 2025 Butler-Williams Scholars Program, a training initiative of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the NIH. This highly competitive program offers intensive training in aging research, grant writing, and collaboration with leading experts in the field. By completing the program, Scharf joins the Butler-Williams alumni network, which fosters the development of future leaders in aging research.

On Sept. 8, Dr. Kathleen Sheppard led the inaugural American Research Center in Egypt Book Club discussion. She moderated a presentation by Dr. Julia Troche of Missouri State University and guided a Q&A session on Troche’s book, Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt: Old and Middle Kingdoms (Cornell University Press, 2021).

Dr. Pablo Sobrado, the Richard Vitek/FCR endowed chair of biochemistry, and his team published a paper in Protein Science investigating the final step of flavin-dependent monooxygenase oxidation, a key process for iron acquisition in pathogenic fungi. Using mutagenesis, kinetic analyses, and isotope effect measurements, they identified a hydrogen-bonding network essential for proton transfer; disruption of this network makes this step rate-limiting.

Congratulations to Dr. Jami Swindell, assistant professor of education, on her two-year appointment as secretary of the Missouri Association for the Education of Young Children. Swindell joined the education department this fall as an assistant teaching professor in early childhood education.

A research team led by Dr. Klaus Woelk, associate professor of chemistry, has solved a 35-year-old puzzle in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) science: why certain “antiphase” signals decay faster than normal “in-phase” signals. Published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, the study shows that this faster decay is an intrinsic property of quantum-mechanical relaxation modes, not an experimental artifact. The findings could improve advanced NMR and MRI techniques that use hyperpolarization. Graduate students Lauren Kehoe and Zachary Mayes, along with undergraduates Kelsey Brakensiek, Emma Ellis, and Adam Alderfer (supported by OURE and FYRE stipends), designed experiments and developed a new spectroscopic procedure to test the theory. 

Dr. Gina Yosten, professor and Kummer endowed chair of biological sciences, has been awarded a $3.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for her project titled "Role of GPR173 in the central control of plasma volume expansion in pregnancy." Yosten will collaborate with her long-time colleague, Dr. Willis K. Samson, professor of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, on the project. The overall goal of the project is to better understand how shifts in fluid balance are regulated during pregnancy, which could have broad implications for pregnancy complications including pregnancy-associated hypertension, preeclampsia, and HELLP syndrome.

Dr. Aaron Zalis, director of the South Central Regional Professional Development Center, received three grants from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE): $3,329,150 for the South Central Regional Professional Development Center Consolidated Contract; $7,500 for the Non-Traditional Event Program; and $3,500 for OEQ2600029 FY26 MLDS & LA Practitioner Facilitator Support.

Disclaimer: CASE does not endorse the arguments presented in any of the essays listed in this section of the newsletter. We share them solely as "food for thought" and encourage our enlightened audience to form their own opinions on the subjects discussed.

College of Arts, Sciences and Education

Missouri University of Science and Technology

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301 W. 14th St., Rolla, MO 65409

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