MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOLECULAR SCIENCE INSTITUTE AT UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

The Environmental Molecular Science Institute (EMSI) program, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, represents a highly effective means of fostering interdisciplinary research in environmental chemistry. The EMSI at University of Notre Dame brings together geochemists, chemists, biologists, environmental engineers, and physicists to study the effects of nano- to micro-scale particles on the fate and mobility of heavy metals and radionuclides in the environment. As an example of one of our multidisciplinary research thrusts, in this talk I will discuss the range of ongoing research at the EMSI at University of Notre Dame aimed at elucidating the mechanisms of metal adsorption onto bacterial cell walls. Making progress in this field has involved bulk adsorption experiments, molecular dynamics modeling, calorimetry measurements, molecular microbiological approaches, and x-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments. Each type of experiment reveals different, but limited information about the adsorptive reactivity of the bacterial cell wall, and a major challenge has been the integration of this myriad of information into a coherent unified model. A number of general approaches in our research are likely common to many multidisciplinary research projects, and this talk will discuss several ideological and logistic features of the EMSI at University of Notre Dame that promote collaboration between disciplines.