Molecular Spectroscopy Research Team News

Congratulations to Jean Gillis on winning second place in the Undergraduate Student Competition at the 11th Atlantic Theoretical Chemistry Symposium held at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax. Jean’s oral presentation was entitled ‘Simulation of the Infrared Spectrum of Liquid Methanol using Small Clusters’. Jean has joined the Keefe research group in May 2010 and has been studying the intermolecular interactions involving methanol using both experimental and computational methods. Two other members of the group also attended the ATCS: Margaret Gillis presented her study entitled ‘Conformers of 2,4-pentadienal: A Computational Study on Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding’ and Zuzana Istvankova presented the study of ‘Charge-shift bonding in propellanes’.

Congratulations are extended to Dr. C. Dale Keefe on his appointment as The Dean of Research at Cape Breton University.

Margaret Gillis and Zuzana Istvankova were honoured at an awards reception hosted by Cape Breton University Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) representative Dr. Dale Keefe. Margaret received Undergraduate Summer Research Award (NSERC USRA), and Zuzana received NSERC USRA and Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS-M).

Margaret has completed two years of study in BSc (Chem.) program at CBU. Margaret has joined the Keefe research group in May 2010, and while working under the supervision of Dr. Dale Keefe, Margaret will be using computational methods to investigate the intramolecular hydrogen bonding in various molecules.

Zuzana recently graduated from CBU with BSc (Honours) degree in chemistry, and will begin her graduate studies in September through joint supervision by Dr. Ray Poirier (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and by Dr. Dale Keefe (Cape Breton University). She has been working with Dr. Dale Keefe since May 2008, carrying out research of non-covalent interactions involving methanol complexes as well as studying the nature of chemical bonding in propellanes.