Two sophomore chemistry majors, Joseph Persichetti and James Catalano, have had their posters accepted for presentation at the 248th American Chemical Society conference this August.

“These presentations are the first by Wagner students in more than 5 years,” said Dr. Nicholas Richardson, chairman of the Physical Sciences Department. “ACS is the biggest chemistry conference in the world, with over 7,000 presentations and 15,000 attendees. The Physical Sciences Department is exceptionally proud of these students’ achievements.”

Persichetti’s poster is titled, “Study of Modes of Action for a Class of Palladium Antimicrobial Agents Using Computational Modeling of Sequential Aquations.”

Catalano’s poster is titled, “Syntheses, Purification and Study of Thermodynamic and Antimicrobial Properties of Cyclopalladated Complexes Bearing Fatty Acid Auxiliaries.”

Both Persichetti and Catalano conducted their research under the supervision of Dr. Valeria Stepanova and Dr. Joseph West with financial support from Wagner College. Lynn Tay, Joseph Cuomo and Saad Idrees also contributed to this research.

In addition to the successful acceptance of our students’ posters, Dr. West will present a talk titled, “Computational Analysis: An Accessible Tool for Undergraduate Research and Teaching at Liberal Arts Colleges,” that describes his achievements in the introduction of computational methods into research and teaching curricula at Wagner College.