Undergraduate Research in Chemistry

Overview

We offer in-house research opportunities in physical and analytical chemistry. The local research institution, University of Southern Mississippi, reserves three summer research appointments with William Carey students in all areas of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Faculty Research Interests

Dr. Michael McNatt, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics, finished his Doctoral thesis from the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC) in 2007.  His doctoral research was in the field of computational chemistry, particularly focusing on molecular dynamics simulations of pressure shocks through high energy materials such as nitromethane.  Dr. McNatt continues computational research with Professor John Adams and colleagues at UMC in order to publish peer reviewed articles on a yearly basis.  In addition, Dr. McNatt has interests in experimental chemistry and plans to pursue experimental research in environmental analytical chemistry.

Dr. Mark Steele, Professor and Chair of Chemistry, has 16 peer-reviewed papers  and 35 published student-authored abstracts in the fields of inorganic, analytical and organic Chemistry and has had approximately $420,000 of competitively-funded grants and research contracts from the National Science Foundation and USDA-ARS before coming to William Carey. Dr. Steele has two active research agreements with scientists at the Mid-South USDA-ARS Research Center, (1) one project examines the mineral composition and metal accumulation in tissues of blueberry plants and their nutritive effect on plant growth and (2) another project focuses on the thermodynamic conversion efficiency of harvest components and crop biomass.as a means of  comparing traditional uses of crops with biofuel production capacity.