Chemistry Faculty and Staff Updates

The Department of Chemistry welcomed two new faculty members, Colm Healy and Maduka Ogba.

Colm Healy

Colm Healy joins the faculty after serving as a visiting assistant professor for the past two years. As a chemist with interests at the interface of physical, inorganic and materials chemistry, Healy uses materials chemistry to tackle climate change, energy storage and conversion, and renewable fuels. In his Hybrid Materials Chemistry Lab (HMC@HMC), researchers examine organic-inorganic hybrid materials, which combine some of the properties of traditional organic plastics with traditional inorganic glasses. By understanding phase changes in these materials, they hope to begin manipulating the physical properties of their materials. By introducing catalytic and/or conductive behavior into their materials, they will develop new materials for use in batteries, energy storage and production of renewable fuels. Healy received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and was a postdoc at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand; at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan; and at the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland. Here’s a note from Colm:

Hello alumni!

I first came to Mudd two years ago, initially for a two-year visiting position. I think it’s fair to say I didn’t know what I was getting myself into at the time. I had never heard of Claremont, I had never experienced temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and I had only the barest idea of what a liberal arts education looked like. But over the past two years, I’ve fallen in love with this place and all its quirks, so I’m delighted to be staying here in a tenure-track role. After several years bouncing around the world on short-term post-doc and visiting contracts, it’s been a huge relief to start thinking about living here long-term. I’ve started to settle in and put down some roots. I’m still not used to the summer heat though! This semester has been a fun one for me, as I’ve been able to dedicate a lot of my time to working with research students, setting up my research space, and buying some new instruments (toys) to fill up my lab. The most eye-catching toy so far is my inert-atmosphere furnace, which can reach temperatures of 1,200 C (about 2,200 F)—if you want to do some extreme baking, please let me know! In the spring I’ll rotate back into the Core chemistry teaching team, and, after that, I’m looking forward to teaching courses involving physical chemistry, materials chemistry and my favorite course so far, science communication. In this course we cover things like the public understanding of science, and how to combat polarization and misinformation.

Tragic events both close to home and far across the world have made for some tough days recently, but the strength of the community here and the remarkable way in which people rally around one another and support each other has at least taken the sting out of some of the darker moments. I don’t know what the future will hold, for Mudd or for the wider world, but I find comfort in the exceptional kindness, compassion and talent of our students.

Maduka Ogba

Maduka Ogba utilizes computational chemistry methods and high-performance computing to study catalytic reactions. The goal of his research group is to gain a molecular-level understanding of how catalysts activate substrates to form products and then develop simple and practical predictive models. His work has led to insights in several different areas of scientific and societal interests, including: (1) how bacterial pathogens sense biological oxidants in animal hosts and (2) how to use inexpensive, earth-abundant, and environmentally sustainable salts to convert environmental pollutant molecules into useful drugs and functional materials. Ogba’s team emphasizes scientific communication to develop critical skills that are transferable to any industry. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from Oregon State University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Pomona College and has served as a faculty member at Chapman University. Here’s a note from Maduka:

I transitioned my research and teaching program from Chapman University to Harvey Mudd College in July 2024. I am grateful for how smoothly this transition has gone. In my first semester as an assistant professor at Harvey Mudd, I launched my research program with four exceptionally talented students: Nora Nickolov, Zaan Saeed, Max Schernikau, and Nata Velarde-Alvarez. Together, we utilize a combination of high-performance computing and data analytics to model chemical reactions involving carbon-containing (organic) and organometallic compounds. We are particularly interested in understanding how catalysts enhance reaction efficiency and in developing theoretical models to predict improved chemical systems. Each student is pursuing their own project, and, in just three months, I have witnessed significant growth among my students in the field of chemistry research; this has been incredibly rewarding.

In fall 2024, I participated in teaching our Core chemistry lecture and laboratory courses. Once again, the most fulfilling aspects of my job occur during moments in recitations when students grasp complex concepts, during office hours when a student experiences a breakthrough or during lab sessions when a student finally identifies the specific chemical reaction taking place after performing a titration multiple times. I hope to continue shaping students’ understanding of the molecular universe by encouraging them to engage with chemistry—the central science.

As an organic chemist by training, I am excited to teach the second semester of organic chemistry in spring 2025. In this course, we will explore the chemistry of molecules with extended pi systems, aromatic rings and carbonyl functional groups. The reactions involving these molecules are prevalent in various fields, including the production of polymer materials, biosynthetic and metabolic processes and drug discovery. It is my hope that students leave my class equipped with a new “language” that enables them to engage with the molecular universe in their everyday lives. I look forward to continuing this journey at Harvey Mudd.

Sandra E. Brown

I’ve continued to enjoy my time here at Mudd. I have especially enjoyed helping Core chemistry students adjust to college-level coursework and working with older students on more advanced topics, including machine learning and molecular simulation.

Lelia N. Hawkins

My dual role in Chemistry and the Hixon Center for Climate and the Environment keeps me busy, and connected! This spring I again taught alongside six other HMC faculty in the new required sophomore Core course, STEM & Society: Climate Change, which takes a hard look at the challenge of growing wildfires in the North American West and the connections to climate change. Learning alongside my co-instructors, all from different disciplines, has been a true delight.

The Hixon Center grew from two to four new faculty this year, which means we’ll have eight by the next newsletter (just kidding). The energy in Olin ripples across the campus as we make connections through each joint hire. Although I often still feel like a newcomer, seeing all of the new faculty on campus reminds me that time marches on.

My research collaboration supporting air pollution measurements in Joshua Tree National Park took off, with our final set of calibrations completed this summer. In partnership with UC Riverside, our team is collecting higher resolution observations than have ever been available for such a remote site. We hope to secure NSF funding for another five years of work in this and our other 11 sites across the U.S., termed ASCENT.

My family is doing well and still enjoying living in Claremont. My husband continues to work as a fire captain in Orange County, a fun area of overlap with the new Core course, and my son (turning 11!) still has his hopes set on HMC for college.

Hal Van Ryswyk

If you’re into statistics, here’s a good one regarding HMC Chemistry: our median years of service for chemistry faculty just fell from 20 years to two years. Alongside that, the climate and chemistry major has launched. It’s exciting and invigorating to work with new colleagues.  

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve taught Chem 114 Advanced Analytical Chemistry (or what the non-Mudd world would call Instrumental Methods), but the count is somewhere north of 20 times. One of the many joys of the course is the final paper where students construct an imaginary world in which they petition their supervisor at some company or NGO for permission to purchase an instrument that will advance their mission. This year did not disappoint. I read fascinating papers on characterizing rosins for use with double basses, detecting foreign substances on baseballs, and groundwater analysis to predict earthquakes. 

The nanomaterials course that I teach occasionally was reborn this fall as a two-credit hybrid lecture/lab. We had great fun, making self-assembling monolayers on gold with micro contact printed features, silver nanoparticles in spherical, star, truncated prism and wire flavors, Zn_2xCu_(1-x)In_(1-x)S₂ and CsPbX₃ quantum dots, monolayers of graphene, and my favorite, inverse opals.

Two years ago, I spent a sabbatical at ETH developing a quantum dot-based photovoltaic system that would be amenable to the time limitations of research at a predominantly undergraduate institution.  We needed a system with “safe harbors” such that you could work for two to four hours and then safely store the fruits of your labor for the next quanta of research time. I got to the point where I could regularly create solar cells that were 8.5% efficient. I worked hard to crack 9%, and just barely made it by the end of the year. (Point of reference: our best cells created at Mudd prior to that time were hit-and-miss in the low 4% range.) Fast-forward to this summer when three summer research students, two of whom were brand new to my lab, walked in and within two weeks they were making 10.2% efficient cells. Wow! That’s the joy of working at Mudd!  It’s a blast to have a working system and all the tools required to characterize our work.

I will be on leave this coming fall, working in the Photophysics and OptoElectronics Group at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands.  Given that materials science is such an interdisciplinary field, this will complete my disciplinary rotation. Here in the U.S., I’m a materials chemist. When I was in residence at ETH Zürich, my title was Visiting Professor of Mechanical and Process Engineering. At Groningen, I will be a physicist.

In preparation for our time in the Netherlands, Charlotte and I are learning Dutch. That language is somewhere between English and German, so we would like to think that we can achieve A2 level proficiency by the end of our time there. Dat zou leuk zijn…

Please drop me a line and let me know what’s new with you. Never hesitate to reach out, or, if you’re in Southern California (or Europe this coming fall), stop by and say hello.

David A. Vosburg

I was surprised and delighted this year to hear that I was succeeding Mits Kubota and Jerry Van Hecke as the Donald A. Strauss Professor of Chemistry at HMC. Another surprise was having 22 students in my advanced organic synthesis course from four campuses! That’s a much larger group than I’d ever had before, and I hadn’t taught the course since 2015. I was very impressed with the students’ growth over the semester and with the quality of their final synthesis proposals. Also related to teaching was my selection as an Inklings Project Fellow in teaching both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis in my first-year writing course. Sometime in the future I’d love to teach a 100% Tolkien writing course—reach out and ask me what specific readings I have in mind for it!

My research group published our third paper with Dr. Greg Beutner at Bristol Myers Squibb this year. This one was on a greener synthesis of ketones using a peptide coupling reagent! It involved both startling experimental results and computational predictions. This project was the subject of one of the three(!) talks I gave at the 2024 fall ACS meeting. The other two were on birthing research projects in our organic chem teaching lab and on green chemistry. If you didn’t know, HMC is a proud signer of the Green Chemistry Commitment with Beyond Benign.

Another highlight of the year was being a Newbigin Interfaith Fellow with several fabulous faculty colleagues around the country. We discussed how to be authentic practitioners of faith on our campuses and also gracious dialogue partners with others of different faiths or no faith at all.

On the family front, our son Nate is now a sophomore at Williams, studying computer science and math (and also auditing organic chemistry). Isabella and Diego are sophomores at Upland High, again performing in the school choir’s fabulous Elizabethan dinner. My wife, Kate, can sometimes be seen riding a motorcycle to campus. I’m including a recent family photo below.

Kim Young

We had many successful events in 2024, one being a visit from the Stauffer Foundation. We hosted several events for our majors. At the awards celebration, we handed out department jackets to our juniors and coffee mugs to our newly declared sophomores. We also hosted a holiday mixer where students broke into teams and build whatever they could with a provided bag of items. The creativity was amazing as always.

On a personal note, my grandchildren continue to be the sparkle in my life. They so adorable and such fun. I look forward to every single moment of “Grammie” time. My daughters are doing well.

View the complete list of chemistry faculty and staff.