News

15 October 2025 - Congratulations to Alex Ervin (G5) and Fynn Cooper (G4) who have been named recipients of research funding support from the KU Doctoral Student Research Fund (DSRF) for 2025! Alex and Fynn wrote individual proposals for consideration in the DSRF competition which takes place annually at KU. Alex's proposal focuses on synchrotron spectroscopy being conducted jointly with Tonya Vitova's group, and Fynn's proposal focuses on generation of new thorium compounds via aqueous processing. Congrats, Alex and Fynn! 

25 September 2025 - James attends NateFest 70, the birthday symposium for Prof. Nate Lewis held on the campus of Caltech, and presents a poster on our group's work in using crown-ether ligands to control the redox properties of uranium complexes. Congratulations to Nate on reaching this milestone, and for the years of great science! James is also sending his thanks for the mentoring he received during his postdoc at Caltech from 2012-2015. Great to see old friends and collaborators and discuss science in the Pasadena sunshine! 

17 September 2025 - James was interviewed today on an episode of CrimsonChat at the KU William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He discussed our group's research in inorganic and heavy element chemistry, as well as the science behind nuclear power generation. Thanks to Jaden Huehl, the host of CrimsonChat who is studying journalism at KU on a pre-law track, for the opportunity to share about our group's work and motivations for working in the chemistry of energy! 

12 September 2025 – Today, our graduate student Davis Curry visited the Department of Chemistry at Louisiana State University to deliver a seminar on his graduate research in actinide chemistry conducted at KU over the past four years. Davis completed his B.S. in Chemistry at LSU in 2021, carried out undergraduate research with Prof. Rendy Kartika at LSU in the area of organic chemistry, and returned this year under the auspices of the KU Chemistry Ambassadors Program, which provides financial support for up to two current graduate students per year to visit their undergraduate institutions and share their KU research. Thanks to Prof. Kartika and colleagues for welcoming Davis back to LSU, and KU Chemistry for supporting this valuable program! 

27 August 2025 - Our former undergraduate student Cecilia Paranjothi has been named the recipient of the 2025 Charles D. Coryell Award from the ACS Division of Nuclear Science and Technology. The Coryell Award honors undergraduate students who have completed research projects in nuclear or nuclear-related areas, and was awarded to Cecilia, in part, based on her KU Chemistry Honors thesis, which addressed immobilization of molecular uranyl complexes supporting by tailored organic ligands on electrode surfaces, among other topics. The award is named in honor of Charles D. Coryell, who led the discovery, in 1945, of the manmade element promethium at the Clinton Engineer Works, now known as Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Congratulations on this national award, Cecilia! 

18-20 August 2025 - This week, James attended the workshop titled "Redox Chemistry with Heavy Elements: From Biotic Isotope Fractionation to Photocatalysis" at the Telluride Science and Innovation Center in Colorado. This workshop was hosted by the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences (CSGB) Division within the Basic Energy Science Program of the DOE Office of Science, which is one of the only supporters of fundamental research in actinide chemistry around the world. Thanks to organizers Stosh Kozimor (LANL), Rebecca Abergel (LBNL), Richard Wilson (ANL), and Philip Wilk (DOE HEC) for the opportunity to participate! 

17-21 August 2025 - This week, our graduate student Jared Schaeffer attended the Fall National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, DC. Jared attended the meeting with support from the National Science Foundation Research Traineership in Chemical Data Science here at KU, a program which has afforded him and other students in our group training in data science, machine learning, and coding as applied to problems in chemistry and catalysis. Thanks to the NRT program for supporting Jared's visit to the national meeting! 

17 July 2025 – Today, James served as a discussion panelist for an event hosted by the NIH COBRE "Leveraging Big Data to Improve Women's Health" (BD-WH). This event was hosted to provide a forum for early stage and experienced researchers to discuss best practices and tips for success in scholarly publishing. Thanks to Heather Desaire for the invitation and to panel leads Rebecca Whelan and Jarron Saint Onge for guiding the discussion! We wish our colleagues many great papers to come, especially in the BD-WH group! 

2 July 2025 – Congratulations to our graduate student Alex Ervin, who has been named the recipient of the Department of Chemistry's Chaffee Fellowship. This fellowship will support Alex's appointment as a graduate research assistant in Fall 2025, fueling his research on heterobimetallic actinide chemistry and accelerating work on his Ph.D. dissertation. Congrats, Alex! 

30 June 2025 – Welcome to senior undergraduate student Chris Rupp, who is visiting our laboratory from the group of Dr. John Gilbertson at Western Washington University (WWU) for a week of collaborative surface electrochemistry! We have recently started collaborating with Dr. G at WWU, and we are excited to get the latest experiments underway. Chris is being co-mentored by Davis Curry at KU. Welcome again, Chris! 

23 June 2025 – Prof. Dr. Tonya Vitova of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology visited KU today and delivered a seminar, "Probing electronic structure and bonding properties of f-elements by high resolution X-ray spectroscopy." Thanks to Tonya for visiting KU, and for taking the time for collaborative discussions regarding our ongoing joint work during her visit to the United States! 

23 June 2025 – This week, Grant Arehart and Natalie Lind attended the ACA Summer Course in Chemical Crystallography, which was held at Northwestern University. They were trained in both single-crystal as well as powder diffraction, focusing on study of small molecules. The long-running ACA Summer Course is taught by experienced, expert faculty, and was brought to our attention by our collaborator Allen Oliver. James attended the course in 2022, kicking off a deepening of our group's expertise in this area. 

15 June 2025 – The Blakemore Group attended the 30th Rare Earth Research Conference at Argonne National Laboratory this week. At this meeting, we presented our work in actinide redox chemistry and reactivity; James and Alex delivered talks and others presented posters on our work. Thanks to Dr. Richard Wilson for the invitation to present at the meeting and for organizing a productive and exciting program! 

2 June 2025 - Incoming graduate student Ty OJanovac has arrived for summer of research in the Blakemore Group! Ty is getting a jump on research this summer before starting coursework at KU this fall. Welcome, Ty! 

27 May 2025 - We are happy to welcome Aubrey Brown to the group as a summer REU student! Aubrey is a rising senior at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and will be working this summer with Grant Arehart as her co-mentor. Welcome, Aubrey!

15 May 2025 – Cecilia Paranjothi has been named the recipient of the Class of 1913 Award. This prize, which is one of the prestigious University Awards, is granted annually to two graduating students “who, by their evidenced intelligence, devotion to their studies, and personal character, give promise of . . . usefulness to society.” The central criterion for this award is a stellar academic record, making Cecilia a very deserving recipient indeed. Cecilia has been conducting research in our group for over three years, and has been co-mentored throughout that time by Davis Curry. She will begin graduate studies in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology later this year as an NSF predoctoral fellow. Congratulations, Cecilia!

4 May 2025 – Congratulations to all the student members of the Blakemore Group that were honored this year with scholarships and prizes from the Department of Chemistry at KU! This year's recipients include graduate students Alex Ervin, Davis Curry, Fynn Cooper, Grant Arehart, Natalie Lind, and Sunidhi Arora as well as undergraduates Cecilia Paranjothi, Celine Khalife, and Colleen Thach. All the award were announced at the Department Awards & Scholarship Recognition Ceremony today; this ceremony is held annually and honors both award recipients and this year's graduates from our department's academic programs.

9 May 2025 – Graduate student Davis Curry has been named a co-recipient of the 2025 Bernstein Award for Future Faculty. This award is given annually by the KU Center for Teaching Excellence and recognizes KU graduate students who have both approached their teaching as inquiry into learning and plan to pursue future teaching opportunities in their careers. Congratulations, Davis! 

2 May 2025 – Our graduating senior Colleen Thach has been named the recipient of the Dr. Arnold Mitchem Award by the McNair Scholars Program at KU. This award is presented to a student who exemplifies the tenacity, resiliency, and exceptional level of fortitude necessary for successful completion of graduate study. This award is named after Dr. Arnold L. Mitchem, President Emeritus and founder of the Council for Opportunity in Education. Congratulations, Colleen! 

28 April 2025 – Our graduate student Chad Lakin has been named a recipient of the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship! This fellowship provides support for four years, including full graduate research assistant support, professional development funds, and support for travel, technology, and textbooks, and is the most prestigious award at KU for graduate students. Congratulations, Chad! 

17 April 2025 - James and Fynn delivered an invited tag-team seminar at Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Thanks to Dr. Mitch Refvik, Dr. Graham Lief, and the entire Polyolefin Catalysis Group for the opportunity to visit the Bartlesville Research and Technology Center and share details on our research. A huge thanks to Dr. Orson Sydora of CPChem for his collaboration on a portion of the research presented. 

11 April 2025 – Congratulations to our undergraduate researcher Tej Gumaste, who was recently named a prize winner at two different hackathon events! At the Midwest Blockathon event, he developed a project called the Decentralized AI Marketplace which won the Autonomy AI Challenge. And, at the HackKU event, Tej and a teammate placed 2nd in the themed track for their project project EirAI, an AI-powered tool for assisting medical professionals with clinical documentation and medical coding. Tej is pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science at KU, and works in our group on data engineering approaches to learning new lessons from literature crystal structure data. Way to go, Tej! 

8 April 2025 - Congratulations to our undergraduate researcher Cecilia Paranjothi, who has been named a recipient of a US NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! The NSF GRF is the most prestigious predoctoral fellowship in the US, and provides full support for three years. KU News recently covered this story as well. Way to go, Cecilia! 

6-9 April 2025 - James attended the biannual PI Meeting of the DOE BES Heavy Element Chemistry Program and delivered a talk on our ongoing work in actinide redox chemistry and reactivity. Thanks to Dr. Philip Wilk for organizing a great meeting, and for our many domestic and international collaborators for their contributions to the science that we are doing! 

22-27 March 2025 - James attended the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, California this week. Thanks to Drs. Stefan Minasian, Rebecca Abergel, and Korey Carter for an invitation to present our collaborative work with Dr. Tonya Vitova on the electronic structure of uranyl crown ether complexes, and thanks to Dr. Vanda Glezakou for the invitation to present our ongoing work on heterobimetallic complexes containing redox-active actinide elements. 

14 March 2025 - James has been named an Outstanding Reviewer by the New Journal of Chemistry for 2024! Thanks to the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) for this distinction, and their efforts in making NJC a great journal for the chemistry community! 

9-13 March 2025 - James attended the Gordon Research Conference on Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms and presented a poster on our ongoing work addressing the redox chemistry and electronic structure of uranyl crown ether complexes. Great to see old friends and make new ones while talking meaningful science! 

3 March 2025 – The Blakemore Group at KU and the Heavy Element and Separation Science Group at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have been named the recipients of the KU Department of Chemistry's Sutton Family Research Impact Award for January 2025. This award is given monthly to support outstanding research publications from our department, and our joint paper on the proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) chemistry of neptunium complexes that was published in 2024 in Chemistry – A European Journal earned the recognition in this case. Congrats to the research team involved, and thanks to Dr. Richard Wilson at ANL for working with us on the project!

27 February 2025 - James visited the University of Texas at San Antonio to deliver an invited seminar in the Department of Chemistry. Thanks to Dr. Audrey Lamb, our former colleague at KU, for the invitation to visit and learn more about the research and scholarship at UTSA! 

5 February 2025 - The cover art for our recent collaborative paper with Dr. Richard Wilson of Argonne National Laboratory has been selected by the Editorial Board of Dalton Transactions for a 2024 Best Cover Art Award from the journal. Thanks to the board for their support of our work and the entire inorganic chemistry community!