September 16, 2013 - King’s College was recently awarded a grant of almost $88,000 from the National Science Foundation to purchase a differential scanning calorimeter which will be used for both undergraduate chemistry classes and for cooperative faculty/student research in interdisciplinary subject areas.

The calorimeter will by used by faculty members in the chemistry department and will support collaborative research in polymer science, biochemistry, and catalyst science.

“Funding of this proposal will significantly impact the level and capability of both faculty research and science education at King’s by opening doors to studies that were never able to be conducted at the College previously,” according to the grant application prepared by Dr.  Isaac VonRue, assistant professor of chemistry and principal investigator for the project.

“Polymeric materials are such a vital part of modern technology that some have asserted that we are currently living in the Polymer Age,” VonRue wrote in the grant application.  “As new and unique polymers are developed, it is of great importance to perform thermal analysis on them to determine the usable temperature range for the newly synthesized polymer.”

According to grant information provided by Dr. Julie Belanger and Dr. Ron Supkowski, co-principal investigators for the grant, the calorimeter will also enable research in the synthesis and characterization of novel lipids and liposomes as well as silica used as a support for a wide variety of chemical catalysts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950.