-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Hicks
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. City University of New York, 2000
Department Chemistry and Physics
Kean University
1000 Morris Ave
Union, NJ 07083
Office:
Science Building C-224
Laboratory:
C-235
Tel (Office): 908-737-3675
Tel
(Lab): 908-737-3685 (do not leave voicemail here)
E-Mail: hicks@kean.edu or
charliehicks@yahoo.com
for
emails with attachments larger than ~ 1 Mb
Office Hours: Tu & Th 12:00-2:00, W 8:00-9:00, or by appointment
Current Student Research
Projects
My
Bio
CAMS (Thinking about
becoming a teacher? Looking for work on campus? You might be
interested in CAMS)
My
Weblog (I am building an
instrument and this is an up close look at how it is going)
My Publications
My Interests
I have
an interest in the applications of vibrational
spectroscopy to kinetics, especially Step-Scan FTIR. I also maintain an
interest in understanding the binding of ligands and the use of
molecular evolution to induce ligands to undergo self-organization.
Research Projects
If you are interested in
doing research a project can be done for
credit and/or a summer stipend. For more details
email me or come by and see me.
You can read about the current projects at the link above (they all involve synthetic arginine receptors).
Infra-red spectroscopy involves the absorption of infrared light by molecules.
When light of this energy is absorbed it causes the molecules to vibrate more energetically.
A graph that shows the amounts of different frequencies of light that a molecule absorbs is called
its spectrum and it can be used like a fingerprint to identify its chemical
structure.
Step-Scan Fourier Transform Infra-Red Spectroscopy (FTIR) is a technique for
collecting many spectra very fast (<100 ns). This series of spectra can be
thought of like a set of snapshots of a chemical process. They can then be analyzed to determine what intermediates are formed as the
reactants are converted into products.
Step-Scan FTIR
I am currently working on
modifying a conventional FTIR to collect step-scan spectra. You can check out my
weblog if you are interested in the minute
details of my progress. If you find that interesting you might also want to check out Chris Manning's site
to find out more about modifying instruments to collect Step-Scan spectra.
Step-Scan FTIR has great potential as a method to study membrane-bound proteins since the proteins do not have to be water soluble as
in NMR methods, and do not have to be crystallized, as in X-Ray
Crystal Structure determination. Additionally, the step-scan
technique is capable of collecting data very rapidly- faster than 100 ns. FTIR techniques have been applied
to whole cells and organelles and show promise as a way to image and
detect cancerous tissue. If you want to learn more about that then check out
Max
Diem's research.
|