Dr Guarr will be attending virtually this spring…

Read about it here

Two high school students from Pennsylvania contacted MSU Bioeconomy Institute’s Director of R and D, Dr. Thomas Guarr, for help with designing a “bio-battery” for the PA Invention Convention competition.

*** 1st Place !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!****

Hi Dr. Guarr,

Hope you are doing well. The results for the competition we submitted our battery system to came back… AND WE GOT FIRST PLACE!!! We are beyond elated and excited, and we could not have done this without your help and guidance. Thanks to you we were able to understand the interesting field of electrochemistry and learn how to use Spartan. We are extremely grateful for your time, patience, and understanding during this venture. The advice you gave us and the opportunities they provided will always be with us even after the competition is over. The next step is nationals, which would have been in Michigan if COVID was not here. Regardless, we are ready to tackle the next round!!

Thank you for everything.

This begins another round of introducing the present researchers that are part of our lab.  Michael has been part of the OESL team since summer of 2019.  He graduated from Hope College with a degree in Biochemical Engineering.  His synthesis skills and his electrochemistry skills have become very strong.  He is the most experienced researcher on the team now and has mentored the rest of our researchers on their projects and lab equipment.  Thanks for sticking with us Michael.  Exciting things are happening in our lab and we are happy to have you be a part of it.

Addison started working with us part-time during his senior year at Hope College in 2018.  When he graduated in 2019, he also graduated to full-time work.  Since then, he has grown to become an amazing lab contributor.  By the end of his time at our lab this August, he would routinely be running several concurrent syntheses in different hoods and his lab notebooks will be held up as examples for students to come.  Addison, we miss you, your hard work, and your fun personality.  Enjoy your PhD studies at Duke University.

Anthony came to us from Alma College as a summer intern in 2017.  He graduated in 2018 and returned full-time that May.  This August he left as a PhD candidate at Wayne State University.  In between, he endured many oral and poster presentations, three summers mentoring interns, one lab relocation, and a pandemic.  All of that while doing mountains of research into synthesis of compounds for electrochemical applications.  Anthony, we appreciate EVERYTHING you have done and believe me, your success at Wayne State is assured!

Kassia joined us after graduating from the University of Chicago in November 2018.  She has done a lot of work on stability testing our battery compounds.  She also mentored two summers of interns and survived a pandemic with us.  She is now furthering her career as a PhD student at Rutgers University in New Jersey.  We wish you all the best for your future Kassia!  Enjoy the East Coast!

Isaac is a junior at Calvin University this year.  This summer he worked on furthering our knowledge of Dinitrobenzene derivatives and their use in linked donor-acceptor compounds.

View his Mid-Sure presentation here.

Isaac also was extremely helpful in organizing our lab (which we needed).  Thank you for everything!  Enjoy your year at Calvin.

Isabella was a Jolt intern this summer, but we would like to claim her as our own.  She is a rising senior at GVSU.

She worked to characterize the linked donor-acceptor D2-A2 system.  She also participated in the MSU Mid-Sure poster presentations.  View her presentation here.

Thanks for your hard work this summer Bella, keep in touch!

Elizabeth has officially graduated from Michigan Technological University and has returned there this fall to complete an accelerated Masters program.  She advanced our knowledge of battery systems and membranes/barriers and did valuable research on redox batteries this summer.  Thank you Liz!