2025
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This is my 30th year at UIC. The University and the department improved so much since 1996. I am glad to be part of that adventure and to have contributed to this evolution. I thank my great colleagues.
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Sunrise on Lake Michigan, from my windows.
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2024
August 30: Above is the graphical abstract of the first manuscript published by Muna Zabarmawi (Ph.D. 2021) in the journal Heliyon. Congratulations Muna.
2023
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Jun 12: Charissa Lindquist just defended her Master's thesis "The Applicability of the TEX86 Paleotemperature Proxy on the Peterborough Member of the Oxford Clay Formation: (Callovian, Central England)." Congratulation Charissa. Charissa has already organized her future working with the US Army Corps of Engineers.
June 7: The Nature News and Views (The Long Infancy of Sterol Biosynthesis) I wrote about the fantastic Nature paper written by Jochen Brocks and his ex-PhD student Benjamin Nettersheim (Lost World of Complex Life and the Late Rise of the Eukaryotic Crown) is now available on the WWW. |
Charissa Lindquist after a superb defense of her MS dissertation.
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May 10: We tested two new hydrogen gas regulators for leaks. One was perfect, absolutely no leaks. It was not the same for the second one who was leaking H2 in two different places. Even with the valve closed, H2 was escaping in huge amounts. Come on, manufacturer (I will noy give a name), you can do better than that. They exchanged it for a leakproof one quickly.
May 2: We have changed the carrier gas of our Agilent 5890 GC-MSD to hydrogen (yes, alumni this mass spec still works well after 20++ years). We could not get helium at all with the company under contract with UIC. Not that H2 5.0 (99.9999% pure) is that much cheaper than He was. The methods were just transferred and an H2 flow of 1 ml/min is just right. Better peak resolution, and faster GC, but not that great for high molecular weight compounds. Just be patient, you will eventually see that gigantic background go down. Now we need to change the carrier gas to H2 on another instrument.
2022
Oct 13: Joey Pasterski defended his Ph.D. thesis with Maestria. CONGRATULATIONS. The whole department is wondering, how things will work without you. Can we really teach Fieldwork in Missouri properly without your dedication? Will we survive without your laugh? You are already being missed. Joey is the recipient of a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowship. He will be joining Luoth Chou, his UIC office mate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This is the second NPP fellowship ever coming from UIC; both from OGL.
2021
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April 30: Muna Zabarmawi defended her thesis. She will soon leave us to return to Saudi Arabia. We will all miss her smile..
Luoth Chou was awarded a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship. It is the first one ever given to a UIC alumni. Congratulation. |
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2020
July 1: After a year, Dr. Olivier Bollengier, following the confirmation of his hire as a permanent staff at the Université de Nantes (France) will be leaving us on July 31. We are all sad to see him leave but the whole high pressure team learnt a lot from his experience of high pressure research and equipment. His concern for safety was highly appreciated and the team's confidence in using our high pressure panel is a product of his patient explanations and his desire to share with us his good and bad experiences with high pressure systems. Good luck, Olivier, at Université de Nantes, we all learnt a lot from you.
2019
August: Olivier Bollangier arrives at UIC and will work with OGL and EDGELAB on the growth of bacteria under pressures relevant to Titan. .
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June 21: Luoth Chou brilliantly defended her dissertation. CONGRATULATION. Dr Chou is moving soon to Washington DC to work at Georgetown University and at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a postdoctoral fellow. Good luck for your career, Dr Chou. The whole laboratory crew is happy for you but sad to see you go.
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June 13: We are now using Findensers on four of our Soxhlet extractors. No need for cooling water. These Findensers were provided by the Office of Sustainability. This will save a lot of water.
Addendum (Summer 2020): The Findensers worked well for a while but after a year they really were not functional anymore. |
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March 6: OGL at UIC submitted four abstracts to Abscicon, the annual astrobiology conference. Good job to OGL's Luoth Chou, Joey Pasterski, and to our collaborators and friends Professor Luke Hanley (UIC, Chemistry), Ravi (UIC Chemistry), as awell as colleagues and friends D'Arcy Meyer Dombard (EAES, UIC), Steve Vance (NASA JPL), and Alison Murray (DRI). We are all looking forward to attending this conference June 2-28 in Bellevue, Washington..
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February 26: First time. I was quoted in article in Scientific American commenting on a PNAS article (El Albani et al. 2019). This PNAS paper describes potential early burrows that are proposed to be made by a slime molds-type organism. It is an interesting and provocative manuscript. Right or wrong? Difficult to tell. The Scientific American article, "Did crawling critters leave these cracks? The answer could rewrite evolutionary history" was written by Jim Daley.
2018
November 29: The NASA Astrobiology Institute funding is here. Murphy's Law: It took three attempts for these funds to reach UIC. Now we can start purchasing the necessary very high pressure equipment. A press release on this project was distributed by UIC.
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May 15: The NASA Astrobiology Institute proposal "Habitability of hydrocarbon worlds: Titan and beyond" was funded. D'Arcy Meyer-Dombard and Fabien Kenig are co-principal investigators (co-PI) on this 5 year awards led by Rosaly Lopez (PI) and Michael Malaska (Deputy PI) of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. This award will bring $ 1.1 Million for research and equipment at UIC. D'Arcy and Fabien will study how life may have adapted to the conditions of Titan's ocean and ice crust.
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April 30: Luoth Chou just learnt that she will be awarded a NASA Early Career Collaboration Award to work with Prof. Josef Werne (University of Pittsburgh) on the intact lipids of Lake Vida brine.
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February 6: We are all delighted that Kevin Engelbert's research with the Organic Geochemistry Laboratory is now supported by a Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Award (CURA).
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2017
December 10-16: Luoth Chou, Joey Pasterski and Fabien Kenig attended the Fall AGU 2017. It was a pleasure to see the graduate students present their work so well (Joey above). It also was a joy to meet so many alumni and friends.
June 28: Ioana Stefanescu (our ex Super Laboratory Assistant who left a year ago) now at the University of Wyoming just had a very visible publication about early human settlement in the Andes. It was covered by USA Today and many other WWW sites. Ioana was also interviewed by NPR. We love to see the UIC EAES and OGL alumni do well.
June 26: Congratulation to Luoth Chou who just renewed her NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship for 2017-2018. Her projects are moving along well.
May: Fabien Kenig (PI) and Luke Hanley (co-PI; UIC, Chemistry) were awarded a NASA Astrobiology grant to work on the use of femtosecond laser desorption postionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (LDPI-TOF MS) to map organic compounds in sediments and rocks. This provides funding for both Joey Pasterski and a student in Department of Chemistry.
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April: March for Science. The entire lab was there, most of us a Marchers, but Luoth Chou was part of the organization.
April: Luoth Chou was accepted in the 2017 Planetary Science Summer Seminar at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She will learn how to organize a New Frontier class mission to Centaur bodies in the outer solar system. A New Frontier class mission is a mid to large size mission that addresses high priority NASA science questions. This will be a fascinating learning experience.
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2016
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October 24: CONGRATULATION JOEY! Joey Michael Pasterski successfully defended his MS Thesis on making high resolution molecular maps of geological samples. Good Job! Welcome to the Ph.D. Program. Everyone in the laboratory is delighted that you stay here for few more years. We all laughed a lot during your second defense at Cole's bar.
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June 20: All in the UIC-OGL lab are happy for Ioana Stefanescu who graduated with a BSc In Earth and Environmental Sciences and is leaving us for Graduate School at the University of Wyoming. Congratulations to Ioana. We are all sad to see such a nice and efficient laboratory companion leave. We are all sure that she will excel in graduate school.
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May 18,: CONGRATULATION LU. Miss Chou was awarded the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship 2016. Lou will be supported by this award for the remaining of her Ph.D. work at UIC. A great success for a great project "Evaluation of oxychlorine removal methods using the brine of Lake Vida (Antarctica), a potential Martian analogue: Implications for organic matter analysis on Earth and Mars".
Feb 29: Five out of six new hoods are now functional. Everybody is back at work. The new air conditioning system works well, notably in SES 2450 where the temperature is now stable. The high vacuum pumps are happier. Having lost few degrees, they will last much longer. The GCxGC-TOF MS is now back on. It just got a new vacuum gauge and new filaments. The stainless steel hood in Lab 3 (SES 2461) is still not usable and this lab will remain dry until then.
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2015
Oct 18, 2015: New hood and new air conditioning system in SES 2455 (Lab 1). All the equipment and instruments are back in the lab. The GC and GC-MS are back to working conditions. Monday it will be turn of the the GCxGC-FID and GCxGC-TOF MS to be resuscitated.
Lab 3 is now empty, the incredible stainless steel hood was broken down (sad). It was like an old Rolls Royce, beautiful and rarely working. It will be replaced after removal of the ceiling and installation of the air conditioning pipes. As you can guess, all this distracted us from research but we made some muscle
Lab 3 is now empty, the incredible stainless steel hood was broken down (sad). It was like an old Rolls Royce, beautiful and rarely working. It will be replaced after removal of the ceiling and installation of the air conditioning pipes. As you can guess, all this distracted us from research but we made some muscle
June 10, 2015: Nnamdi Lionel Mojekwu successfully defended his MS thesis "Reconstruction of the pollution and limnological history of Douglas Lake (Michigan) using biomarkers". Congratulation.
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Sept 6, 2015: We have two undergraduate, independent research students working in the laboratory this semester, Scott and Ioana.
The 4 new hoods in SES 2459 are now installed. We can use the laboratory again. It took two weeks to change the hoods and to install a new air conditioning system. We had to remove every thing from the the "2nd" laboratory. After Labor Day we will bring all the equipment and instruments back in the laboratory. In a couple of weeks, the "1st" lab will be targeted (SES 2455) July 28, 2015: Luoth Chou just came back from the International Geobiology Course. It was a great experience. Thank you to all class organizers and participants. She brought back some really nice photos.
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