Dean Gus Hart of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences has reappointed David Dearden as chair of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. He will serve in the position for another three years.
Dearden has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed articles. He has received the Alcuin Fellowship twice, and is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. Currently, Dearden’s research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on finding ways to measure the sizes of molecules using state-of-the-art, extremely sensitive chemical analysis tools.
The instrument that his research group uses is called a Fourier transform mass spectrometer, which weighs molecules with accuracies of about one part per million and can distinguish between molecules with similar weights better than any other available technique. Dearden’s methods add a new ability to also measure molecular size with the same instrument. Finding more accurate ways to measure the weight and size of molecules will help scientists to understand how molecules can be assembled to construct molecule-sized machines with potential applications in computing, medicine, and manufacturing.