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The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. has awarded Joseph Sherma, Larkin Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, a $20,000 Senior Scientist Mentor grant. This is the third Senior Scientist Mentor grant Sherma has received from the Dreyfus Foundation.
Sherma received the award in part due to his “distinguished research and pedagogical career accomplishments and commitment to advising and mentoring undergraduate student participants.”
“[Dreyfus Foundation grants] are very important in allowing me to continue involving students in my productive interdisciplinary analytical chemistry-biology research program with Bernard Fried, Kreider Professor Emeritus of Biology,” says Sherma. “With this grant paying student summer wages, I can apply for additional students funded by the regular College EXCEL Scholars program. The papers we publish with our students are very important when they apply to medical or graduate school or for a job upon graduation.”
Over the next two years, Sherma will use the money to conduct various collaborative research projects with Fried and several students. This summer, Marquis Scholar James Vasta ’10 (Ambler, Pa.) and biochemistry major Daniel Massa ’08 (Carlisle, Pa.) will work with Sherma and Fried on separate but related projects in the field of metabolic profiling. Massa conducted research with Sherma and Fried last summer through Sherma’s second Dreyfus Foundation Senior Scientist Mentor grant.
Vasta and Massa will study the feces of mice experimentally infected with the intestinal flatworm Echinostoma caproni. They will use high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) to determine the differences in the amounts of these compounds present in infected mice versus uninfected mice. The HPTLC method produces a thinner layer of compounds for qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Previously, Sherma and Fried worked withbiochemistry graduate Sharon Bandstra ’06 through the EXCEL program on similar research. Bandstra found that the feces of mice infected with the same parasitic flatworm have significantly less triglycerols than uninfected mice, which may be a suitable marker for diagnosing infection.
Sherma and Fried also have been working with Marquis Scholar Karen Murray ’08(Kingstowne, Va.), who is pursuing B.S. degrees in neuroscience and biochemistry, on independent study and EXCEL projects. Murray has been studying phospholipids and sphingolipids in the same host-parasite system and has so far found that they do not seem to be markers of infection.
Together, Sherma and Fried have produced 101 publications in various chemical and biological journals, and have 91 undergraduates as coauthors.
Sherma has spent much of his career advancing the fields of pesticide analysis and chromatography. In addition to Dreyfus Senior Scientist Mentor grants in 2001 and 2004, he is a past recipient of the Foundation’s Teaching and Research Fellowship (1989-90) and the Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Undergraduate Scholarship for Excellence in Chemistry (1994). He also received the American Chemical Society Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution sponsored by Research Corporation in 1995. He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of over 60 books.
He is a past recipient of Lafayette’s Delta Upsilon Distinguished Mentoring and Teaching Award, Van Artsdalen Prize, Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award, and Jones Award for Superior Teaching. He also was honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award by Upsala College and an E. Emmet Reid Award for Excellence in Teaching Chemistry by the American Chemical Society.
Currently, he is collaborating with Teresa Kowalska, professor of chemistry at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, on a book on chiral (enantiomer) separations and analyses by thin layer chromatography slated for publication this year. His most recent book is one he coauthored with Kowalska on preparative layer chromatography, which was published last year.
The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc., was established in 1946 by chemist, inventor and businessman Camille Dreyfus as a memorial to his brother Henry, also a chemist and his partner in developing the first commercially successful system of cellulose acetate fiber production. In creating the Foundation, Camille Dreyfus directed that its purpose be “to advance the science of chemistry, chemical engineering and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances around the world.” Chartered as a not-for-profit corporation by the State of New York with offices in New York City, the Foundation makes awards to academic and other eligible institutions through several awards programs.
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