Chemistry undergraduates help fuel innovative energy research

Paul Lauridsen is a year away from earning his bachelor’s degree, but the chemistry major is already working on the front lines of USC efforts to turn greenhouse gas into methanol fuel.

Lauridsen ‘18 spends 10 or more hours a week conducting research on transition metal catalysis in an organometallics lab. He considers this experience crucial to feeding his passion for chemistry and guiding his plans to attend graduate school.

“Sometimes class is very theoretical,” Lauridsen said. “This is very hands on, real-world experience.” The work underway in the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute is also helping solve one of the world’s biggest challenges — the clean generation and storage of renewable energy.

Lauridsen is one of several undergraduates performing research under the mentorship of Travis J. Williams, associate professor of chemistry. Lauridsen earns class credit (CHEM 490: Directed Research) and a stipend as well as something he considers priceless: bona fide research experience.

So far, the group has identified certain complexes and shown that they can convert harmful carbon dioxide to formic acid and vice versa, an intermediate step to producing methanol. Development of these complexes is enabling new options, bringing total conversion to the clean-burning fuel closer to reality.

“We have a couple of undergrads who behave like graduate students and postdocs,” said Williams, who has enthusiastically mentored 15 undergraduate researchers since 2007. He also spurs them to attend scientific conferences and seminars and participate in writing scientific papers.

“External experience is important and learning how to communicate science is critical,” he said.

Williams speaks from his own personal experience. “When I was an undergraduate I got unfettered access to the leaders in the chemistry community, and it’s through programs like this we create that environment here.”

Chemical engineering major Elyse Kedzie has worked five to 10 hours a week in the Williams lab since 2015. Early on, Kedzie did online research to learn more about what USC professors were studying and investigating with applications to her interest in developing sustainable energy technology.

“One of the things that drew me to USC is that it’s a huge research university with professors distinguished in their fields doing cutting-edge research. So I wanted to tap into that,” said the senior, who graduates this spring. “And I saw that [Williams] does a lot of energy storage reaction chemistry, which is something I wanted to study, so it was a perfect fit.”

Elyse Kedzie has won several prizes for poster presentations on research aimed at generating hydrogen from small molecules, specifically formic acid. She also landed a 2017 NSF Research Fellowship and is headed to a Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley.

Confidence boost

Kedzie, who received support through the USC Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship (PURF) program, performed kinetic studies and rate measurements, then moved on to performing more complex procedures. Her steady progress has boosted her confidence as well as her determination to build a career in research. That’s just what the PURF fellowships, offered three times each year to juniors and seniors, are intended to bolster, along with research mastery.

Kedzie has received several research fellowships and presented a poster at the 2016 Mork Family Department Student Research Symposium, winning first prize in the undergraduate category. Her poster described research on generating hydrogen from formic acid and similar molecules.

“I was initially shocked to get the USC award,” she said. “That boosted my confidence and I thought, ‘I’m actually okay at this!’”

In late 2016, Kedzie grabbed third-place honors in reaction engineering for a poster presentation at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers annual meeting, competing with graduate students and postdocs. It was the first national conference she had ever attended.

Her soaring trajectory continues on news that she landed a 2017 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. One of 24 USC students and alumni to receive the award this year, she will attend the University of California, Berkeley starting this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.

Communicating science on a big stage

Lisa Kam, a junior majoring in biochemistry, started working in the Williams lab in spring 2015, grabbing hold of a steep learning curve and refusing to let go.

“We crack syntheses problems in group meetings,” Kam said. “We strive to understand how and why things work. Professor Williams, especially, is the kind of person who studies science for the sake of science, and that passion shows through in our lab.”

The undergraduate research experience is about much more than donning a lab coat and setting out to catalyze reactions, however. It also involves public speaking, networking and other “soft skills” developed on the path to becoming a scientist.

Kam has delivered high-profile scientific presentations outside the lab, including a 20-minute presentation at the American Chemical Society national meeting this April in which he discussed ammonia borane hydrogenation, which could provide fuel for hydrogen-based vehicles.

“It was a nerve wracking moment, standing in front of 20-plus professionals, professors and grad students in the audience,” she said, “but it’s a memory I definitely won’t forget.”

With an eye to attending medical school, this summer she’ll be working full time on a collaboration project between the Williams lab and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.  Kam will try to create a simple, stable probe targeting nucleic acids, key ingredients in genetic molecules, for USC’s new mass cytometry core lab. Mass cytrometry enables new ways of analyzing single cells and holds promise for a better understanding of disease progression and treatment options.

And Kam has found success, winning multiple poster awards. She’s already published three scientific journal articles, co-written with one of her graduate student mentors.

Perhaps ironically, her success has led her to a better understanding of failure, the kind that’s central to science and the scientific method.

“After the 99 times an experiment fails comes that one time it actually works, and you can leave the lab satisfied, knowing that you’ve created something innovative. Then you toughen up and repeat the cycle,” she said. “No sugarcoating it: Lab work is grueling, but it makes success that much sweeter.”