Principal Investigator
Dr. Leah B. Casabianca received her B.S. in Chemistry from Rice University. She did a Ph. D. in Physical Chemistry with Prof. Angel C. de Dios at Georgetown University. She then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago with Prof. Yoshitaka Ishii working on solid-state NMR of materials, and one at the Weizmann Institute of Science with Prof. Lucio Frydman working on DNP of rare nuclei. She joined the faculty at Clemson in 2014 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.
Graduate Students
Anup Adhikari joined the lab in the fall of 2023. He completed his undergraduate study at Prithvi Narayan Campus and his masters in Central Department of Chemistry at Tribhuvan University in Nepal.
Rajan Rai joined the lab in the fall of 2023 after completing his M.S. in Chemistry from Tribhuvan University in Nepal. He is interested in several NMR techniques to study the interaction between biomolecules and plastic nanoparticles.
Undergraduate Students
Several undergraduate students are currently working on exciting projects in the lab, but for privacy reasons they do not want their names or pictures on the website.
Lab Alumni
Saduni Arachchi received her Ph.D. in 2023. The title of her thesis is: "Understanding the Interaction of Environmental Contaminants with Polystyrene Nanoparticles and DNA Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Density Functional Theory." Before joining the lab in 2020, Saduni completed her undergraduate work at the Institute of Chemistry and her masters in Industrial Analytical Chemistry at the University of Sri Jayawardenepura in Sri Lanka.
Tobias Jütten joined the lab in July 2021 as part of his MSci in Chemistry programme from the University of Glasgow, UK. He is visiting the lab for his programme's exchange year to work in the area of computational chemistry. He is working on molecular dynamics simulations of polystyrene nanoparticles as well as
ab initio chemical shift calculations.
Nia Grant joined the lab in Fall 2021. She is a senior Chemistry major working on a project that examines the interaction between sunscreen and nucleotide bases via NMR.
Charlotte Sanders is a freshman chemistry and classics major at the University of Florida. Charlotte joined the lab as an REU student in Summer 2021.
Hui Xu received her Ph.D. in 2021. Her thesis was entitled: "The Development and Applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in Surface Interaction of Nanoparticles." Before joining the lab, she earned her B. S. from Shandong University in China.
Haley Yetter did an honors thesis in the lab in 2019-2020.
Dani Lustig from the University of Puget Sound joined the lab as an REU student in Summer 2019.
Alexandra Busto, Rebecca Fantone, Mary Lentz, and
Emma Mulry worked in the lab in 2018-2019.
Yunzhi Zhang graduated with her Ph.D. in 2019. Her thesis was entitled "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Applications in Nanoparticles: Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and Nanoparticle Surface Interaction." Before joining the lab, she obtained her B. S. in engineering from the China University of Geosciences.
Sydney Wimberley from the University of Connecticut and
Melissa King from the University of Tampa joined the lab as REU students in Summer 2018.
Alexander Morris worked with us as a senior biology major with a minor in chemistry.
Austin Parsons is a junior biochemistry major at Abilene Christian University. Austin worked in the lab as an REU student in Summer 2017.
Sambath Vong worked with us on Density Functional Theory calculations of the stability of new water-oxidation catalysts during his senior year as a chemistry major at Clemson.
Monica Spritzky is a chemistry major and honors student who joined the lab in summer 2015 as a EUREKA! student.
Paul Greenstein, a chemistry major from Emory University, joined the lab as a volunteer for the summer of 2016.
Emily Olack joined the lab as a 2016 EUREKA! participant. She is majoring in Microbiology with a concentration in Biomedicine, but plans to minor in Chemistry.
Khushi Patel obtained her B. S. in chemistry with a minor and licensure in secondary education from Millsaps College. She earned her M. S. degree in inorganic/materials chemistry from Tennessee State University under the direction of Dr. Joshua Moore.
Phillip Baker was a EUREKA! student in the lab in Summer 2015.
Erina Hoshi worked with us as a senior undergraduate. She is currently a graduate student in the chemistry department at Clemson.
Sukhvinder Banga, a chemical engineering major, did research with us his junior year.
Arohi Parlikar, a freshman genetics major, worked on peptide synthesis with us during Summer 2015.
