Furman University announced Oct. 4 that George C. Shields, one of its chemistry professors, was awarded a shared $300,000 major research instrumentation program grant from the National Science Foundation.
The three-year grant will be shared with Maria A. Gomez of Mount Holyoke College and Carol A. Parish of the University of Richmond and used to support the trio’s project Mercury, a molecular education and research consortium in undergraduate computational chemistry.
The funds will be used to:
- Purchase an additional high-performance computer cluster to join Mercury resources hosted at Clemson University’s Palmetto Cluster HPC Center.
- Add 13 more undergraduate-focused research groups to the consortium, raising the number of participants to 47 computational scientists at 41 institutions nationwide.
- Enable the scientists to encourage more students, especially women and students from traditionally underrepresented groups, to pursue studies in chemistry.
“Our students will have the best of both worlds,” Shields said. “Students will benefit from inclusion in peer groups at the local level as well as at the consortium level.”
The grant’s impacts are expected to include:
- Forty-seven faculty using the HPC with their undergraduate students will be able to perform high-level, publishable science.
- The research supported by the grant will support projects ranging from developing novel anti-viral drugs to understanding atmospheric aerosols and their role in global warming to unpacking the molecular behavior of model compounds important in alternative energy.
- A significant number of students from groups traditionally underrepresented in chemistry, including women and students of color, will have the opportunity to work alongside faculty on meaningful research projects in highly mentored research environments.
- Approximately half the students who work on projects will go on to further graduate work in STEM fields, with a high degree of data literacy, and with two-thirds of them being underrepresented in STEM.
