Previous APMS Colloquia
Spring 2026
Thursday, April 9, 9:45 – 10:45 pm
Prof. Caitlin Sample
Arizona State University
Polymer Design for Advanced Recycling
Abstract: While polymer materials have provided a century of technological innovation, the increase in their production has led to a crisis of plastic waste accumulation, whether in landfills, the environment, or our own bodies. Fortunately, the same chemical tools that enable us to control their structure and properties also give us opportunities to mitigate their environmental damage. This talk will present two molecular design strategies to enhance recycling and reduce plastic waste. In the first half, a solid-state synthetic approach in semi-crystalline polymers produces crystallite-templated functionalization along the backbone; the results are blocky polyethylene copolymers to be used in the compatibilization of plastic blends. The second half will focus on “monomaterialization,” i.e., the macroscopic patterning of a chemically homogeneous material to replace multi-material parts that cannot be conventionally recycled. By harnessing advanced manufacturing approaches, such as 3D printing and foaming, polyethylene parts with diverse and spatially resolved properties are produced. Despite their complexity, these materials’ structural similarity to commodity polyethylene enables recycling in the same waste stream using existing approaches.
Bio: Caitlin Sample is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Arizona State University, where she holds a joint appointment in the School of Molecular Sciences and the Biodesign Center for Sustainable Macromolecular Materials and Manufacturing. Dr.Sample earned her Ph.D. in Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara with Prof. Craig Hawker and Prof. Chris Bates, followed by training as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Marc Hillmyer at the University of Minnesota. In 2023, she joined the faculty at ASU, where her research focuses on designing and redesigning polymers for improved circularity.
Wednesday, April 1, 4:00 – 5:00 pm
Prof. Bruce Armitage
Carnegie Mellon University
PNA: Bridging the Protein and Nucleic Acid Worlds
Abstract: We often think of proteins and nucleic acids in terms of a progression, i.e. DNA leads to RNA which leads to protein, or cooperation, e.g. RNA-protein assemblies like the ribosome or polymerase enzymes that replicate or transcribe DNA. In other words, these two classes of biomolecules often work together or depend on one another, but their chemical structures are distinct. Synthetic chemistry gives us the ability to covalently link peptide and nucleic acid units together to make conjugates which exhibit and leverage the properties of both. A fundamentally different structure, peptide nucleic acid (PNA) was reported in 1991 and fully integrates the two classes, with hydrogen-bonding nucleobases (G, A, C and T) covalently attached as side chains to a polyamide backbone. Over the ensuing three decades, numerous applications of PNA in biomedical research and clinical diagnostics have been reported and a wide variety of second generation PNAs have been reported. This seminar will introduce PNA and then focus on recent developments with a backbone-substituted analogue known as gamma PNA, which exhibits significantly improved affinity and better biocompatibility compared to the original PNA. In particular, the unique combination of protein- and nucleic acid-like properties of PNA has enabled important advances in the areas of cell delivery and DNA/RNA imaging and detection.
Bio: Dr. Bruce Armitage earned his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rochester (1988) and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Arizona (1993). After postdoctoral appointments at the University of Illinois, Georgia Tech and the University of Copenhagen, he joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in 1997. In 2007, he co-founded the Center for Nucleic Acids Science and Technology and in 2022 became the Head of the Chemistry Department. His research involves the development of PNA for regulating gene expression and fluorescent molecules for use in cellular imaging applications. He also teaches courses in Organic Chemistry and The Chemistry of Addiction.
Thursday, March 5, 9:45-10:45 am
Dr. Danyel Cavazos
University of Chicago
The role of experiential learning in Quantum Science Education
Abstract: The growing interest in quantum information science has also increased the demand for effective and engaging resources for learning about quantum mechanics in general, starting at the entry level and going all the way up to sophisticated expertise. With an expanding number of open-source resources that are available online, there are now multiple pathways to build up foundational knowledge in this field. However, it is clear that in terms of hardware sometimes notes and simulations can only take you so far, either because you might be eager to try interacting with “real” quantum systems, or because you actually need to develop hands-on experience to carry out experiments or research in general.
At the University of Chicago we have developed a Quantum Educational Laboratory (the “QuantumLab”) that acts as a space where people from different backgrounds can come in and acquire hands-on experience on quantum technologies across multiple platforms such as single photons, trapped neutral atoms and nitrogen vacancy centers. The space was introduced to host a flagship laboratory course for our students concentrating in quantum engineering, and since then it continues to function as a common node for all of our quantum science outreach efforts such as a professional development program for high-school teachers and a short quantum engineering “crash-course” that we run every year with first year students enrolled in City Colleges of Chicago. In this talk we’ll discuss how we developed and continue to run this space, and how we integrate it into different classes and programs, including execution of the experiments in terms of equipment and implementation, and how we organize the class material to guide the learning process with a student-first approach. We will also introduce the challenges that we encountered and share the success stories that we have experienced as well as pathways for replicating similar spaces.
Bio: Danyel Cavazos is the laboratory instructor for the Quantum Educational Lab (“QuantumLab”) at the University of Chicago. He works with faculty to design and implement teaching experiments and demonstrations in various quantum platforms. Before joining UChicago, Danyel completed his PhD at Rice University, where he worked on realizing quantum analog simulations using ultracold atoms. Prior to that he completed his B.S. degree in physics engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Mexico.
Thursday, February 5, 9:45-10:45 am
Prof. Melanie L Johnston
NAU
Studying Fatty Acid Synthesis in Non-tuberculous Mycobacteria
Abstract: Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) include mycobacteria other than Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agents of Tuberculosis (TB) and Leprosy. NTM cause infections that are challenging to treat, and infections occur at approximately 10 times higher rates than Tuberculosis (TB) in the United States, with approximately 100,000 infected individuals annually. Thus, antimycobacterial drug discovery efforts are crucial to the treatment of NTM infections. Mycolic acids, in part generated by the fatty acid synthesis II (FAS-II) pathway, are crucial to mycobacterial growth and pathogenesis. FAS-II elongates C16-18 or greater acyl chain substrates, forming C50-56 meromycolate products, which are further modified into mycolic acids. Here, I’ll discuss our work toward understanding the organization and regulation of FAS-ll and our efforts to develop an inhibitor for MabA, the NADPH-dependent B-ketoacyl-AcM reductase. Exploring MabA inhibition is critical since it currently lacks a specific inhibitor in mycobacteria, and inhibition of multiple enzymes in this pathway is synergistically lethal to mycobacteria. Our work will provide information essential to the development of improved inhibitors, which can be used to gain a better understanding of FAS-Il pathway.
Bio: Dr. Melanie Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Northern Arizona University. Her research focuses on the biochemistry and enzymology of the mycobacterial fatty acid synthesis Il pathway, toward inhibitor development and biocatalysis. Dr. Johnston earned her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine studying the enzymatic mechanism and substrate specificity of a target enzyme in E. coli under the supervision of Dr. Caren Freel Meyers. She then did her postdoctoral work at Rutgers New Jersey School of Medicine, where she was an NIH-IRACDA fellow. There, in the lab of Dr. Joel Freundlich, she focused on developing biochemical assays to support mycobacterial drug discovery, as well as bacterial drug uptake and metabolism. Now, at Northern Arizona University, Dr. Johnston continues her research on the enzymes in mycobacterial metabolism.
Thursday, January 22, 9:45-10:45 am
Dr. Diego Dalvit
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Quantum Radar with Undetected Photons
Abstract: Quantum sensing promises to revolutionize sensing applications by employing quantum states of light or matter as sensing probes. Photons are the clear choice as quantum probes for remote sensing because they can travel to and interact with a distant target. Existing schemes are mainly based on the quantum illumination framework, which requires a quantum memory to store a single photon of an initially entangled pair until its twin reflects off a target and returns for final correlation measurements. Existing demonstrations are limited to tabletop experiments, and expanding the sensing range faces various roadblocks, including long-time quantum storage and photon loss and noise when transmitting quantum signals over long distances. We propose a novel quantum sensing framework that addresses these challenges using quantum frequency combs with path identity for remote sensing of signatures (“qCOMBPASS”). The combination of one key quantum phenomenon and two quantum resources, namely quantum induced coherence by path identity, quantum frequency combs, and two-mode squeezed light, allows for quantum remote sensing without requiring a quantum memory. The proposed scheme is akin to a quantum radar based on entangled frequency comb pairs that uses path identity to detect/range/sense a remote target of interest by measuring pulses of one comb in the pair that never flew to target, but that contains target information “teleported” by quantum-induced coherence from the other comb in the pair that did fly to target but is not detected. This work was recently published in D.A.R. Dalvit et.al., Quantum Frequency Combs with Path Identity for Quantum Remote Sensing, PRX 14, 041058 (2024).
Bio: Diego Dalvit is a Senior Staff Member at the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is a quantum optics theorist with expertise in quantum sensing and metrology, Casimir physics, and metamaterials. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1998, came to LANL in 1999 as a Director Funded Postdoctoral Fellow, and was converted to staff in 2002. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and Optica (former Optical Society of America), and APS Outstanding Referee. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 9,600 citations. He has also co-authored two physics textbooks, one a guide to the essence of Casimir physics, and one a volume on statistical mechanics. He is the holder of two patents, including one submitted in 2024 in connection to his development of the groundbreaking qCOMBPASS quantum
remote sensing technology. His hobbies are bodybuilding and aircraft spotting.