Messina Receives $60K Dreyfus Award
11/13/2006 11:28:35 AM
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Wilmington, N.C. - Michael Messina, associate professor of chemistry at University of North Carolina Wilmington, has received the 2006 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in recognition of national excellence in both research and teaching at an undergraduate institution based on accomplishments in scholarly research with undergraduates and a compelling commitment to teaching.
The Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award provides a $60,000 unrestricted research grant to the faculty member's institution to be expended over a five-year period. Messina is one of only seven professors chosen nationally, and the only professor from North Carolina, to be honored in this category. Messina will use the award to fund undergraduate researchers studying the quantum dynamics of proton transfer and tunneling in enzyme active sites.
The award is given to talented young faculty with the expectation of continued leadership in chemistry and chemistry education and potential to produce a body of outstanding scholarship. A board of nationally distinguished faculty in the chemical sciences designates the award.
"I am somewhat embarrassed about receiving this award because I am in a department that is known on campus as being filled with good teachers who are concerned with undergraduate education first," Messina said. "In fact, each new faculty member learns from the existing faculty - first and foremost - that undergraduate education in chemistry is taken very seriously here."
In the past five years, Messina has mentored 14 directed independent study students, 13 honors students and two graduate students in research typically involving computational chemistry. Twenty UNCW undergraduate chemistry majors have been co-authors on 10 peer-reviewed journal articles describing their work, and 11 of his directees are now enrolled in graduate programs in science.
Messina's research involves quantum mechanical studies of proton transport in the active sites of enzymes. Enzymes are large molecules that make the chemical reactions in our body occur efficiently and quickly. A large percentage of these enzymes have one purpose, to move a Hydrogen atom from one molecule to another. The H atom is the simplest atom, but since it is so small, it exhibits the most complex quantum mechanical behavior. Messina's research proposes use of quantum control techniques to discover exactly how enzymes make H atoms move from site to site.
Messina was nominated by the chair of the department of chemistry and biochemistry Jimmy Reeves, who noted that in the 10 years that Messina has been with UNCW, he has combined award-winning teaching with theoretical physical chemistry research involving significant numbers of undergraduates in either Honors or Directed Individual Study.
"Although he teaches a course that is among the most difficult in the curriculum, he consistently receives the highest student evaluations in the department, and is one of the key instructors who have encouraged talented undergraduates to become chemistry majors," Reeves said.
Messina's teaching ability has been recognized by his peers and the university community, which awarded him the Distinguished Teaching Professorship Award in 2002 and the Chancellor's Teaching Excellence Award in 2003.
Messina joined the faculty at UNCW as an assistant professor in 1996 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2000. He earned his bachelor degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his doctoral degree in theoretical chemical physics in 1992 from the University of Pittsburgh. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from 1992 -1994 with the Chemical Dynamics Group, researching the use of path-integral techniques to describe reaction dynamics and joined the Wilson Group at the University of California at San Diego from 1994 -1996 as a researcher studying the use of quantum control of chemical reactions with laser light.
Contact: Jimmy Reeves
Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of North Carolina Wilmington
910.962.3450
reeves@uncw.edu
www.uncw.edu/chem/
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Michael Messina
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