Summary of the 2nd Penn State Bioinorganic Workshop
Following the success of the pilot workshop, we sought to expand the scope of the 2012 workshop to be comparable to that of the classic program at UGA. The second workshop was significantly longer (8.5 days) and had significantly more participants [123 total participants; 40 from Penn State University, 68 from other domestic institutions, 15 international visitors (2 from Canada, 2 from Mexico, 2 from the UK, 8 from Germany, 1 from New Zealand)]. Like the 2010 workshop, the 2nd Penn State Bioinorganic Workshop had three sections. The first part (4 days) consisted of 16 90-min lectures (4 lectures per day) presented by faculty experts on the following topics:
- Introduction to coordination chemistry (Neese) [slides]
- Introduction to quantum chemistry (Neese) [slides]
- EPR spectroscopy (Lakshmi) [slides]
- ENDOR/ESEEM spectroscopy (Stoll) [slides]
- Computation of spectroscopic parameters (Neese) [slides]
- Mössbauer spectroscopy (Münck) [slides]
- X-ray spectroscopy (DeBeer) [slides]
- MCD spectroscopy (Lehnert) [slides]
- Resonance Raman spectroscopy (Neese) [slides]
- Principles of molecular biology (Booker) [slides]
- Transient state methods (Bollinger) [slides]
- X-ray crystallography (Boal) [slides]
- Protein electrochemistry (Elliott) [slides]
- Mass spectrometry (Agar) [slides]
- Electron transfer in biology (Golbeck) [slides]
- Deuterium kinetic isotope effects (Bollinger and Hammes-Schiffer) [slides]
The second part (the center piece of the workshop) provided hands-on training in 16 different methods to small groups (6 or less “students” taught by 1-3 “teachers”). The various experimental topics were offered up to 12 times in 2-h blocks over the next 4 days. Student participants thus had the opportunity to learn up to 12 new methods. The teachers included 55 participants. In other words, nearly half the participants, 13 faculty, 13 postdocs, 27 graduate students, and even 2 undergraduate students, were “teachers”. For most experimental sections, the “teachers” doubled up and took turns, so that they were typically teaching half of the time. The division of labor afforded them the opportunity to become students and learn up to 6 other methods in their remaining time. The boundaries between the “teachers” and “students” were severely blurred, to the extent that even undergraduate students trained faculty! The following 16 sections were offered:
- Basic EPR (John Golbeck and Karim Walters, Bryan Ferlez, and Junlei Sun from his group
- Advanced EPR (KV Lakshmi and Ruchira Chatterjee and Sergey Milikisiyants from her group
- FQ method (Laura Dassama, Chen Wang, Andrew Layne, Ning Li, and Danvy Chung from the Bollinger/Krebs group)
- SF-abs spectroscopy (Bigna Wörsdörfer, Bennett Streit, Hanne Nørgaard, and Esta Tamanaha from the Bollinger/Krebs group)
- Anaerobic protein purification (Lauren Sites, Brad Landgraf, Arthur Arcinas, and Matt Radle from the Booker group)
- Resonance Raman spectroscopy (Elizabeth Onderko, Tim Yosca, Courtney Krest, and Julio Calixto from the Green group)
- Mössbauer spectroscopy (Carsten Krebs and Maria-Eirini Pandelia from the Bollinger/Krebs group)
- MCD spectroscopy (Nicolai Lehnert and Tim Berto from his group)
- X-ray spectroscopy (Serena DeBeer and Mario Delgado and Chris Pollock from her group)
- Introduction to the DFT package ORCA (Simone Kossman, Vera Krewald, Oliver Krahe, and Shengfa Ye from the Neese group)
- Cryoreduction (Candace Davison from the Breazeale Nuclear Reactor and Rebecca Keller and Gordon Zrelak from the Bollinger/Krebs group)
- ENDOR/ESEEM spectroscopy (Alexey Silakov from the Green group and Stefan Stoll)
- Protein electrochemistry (Sean Elliott and Daniel Bak, Evan Judd, and Benjamin Levin from his group)
- X-ray crystallography (Amie Boal and Tom Lawton from Amy Rosenzweig’s group)
- High-resolution mass spectrometry (Tatiana Larenov from the Penn State Huck Institutes and Jeff Agar with Jared Auclair and Ala Nassar from his group)
- QQQ mass spectrometry for analysis of small molecules (Tyler Grove from the Booker group and Wei-chen Chang from the Bollinger/Krebs group)
In this section of the workshop, a total of ~750 2-h person-units were administered to “students” by the 55 “teachers”. Originally, we had intended each participant to enroll in 9 different units, because (i) we did not want to overwhelm the participants, preferring to keep schedules flexible for the important informal networking that goes on in such settings and (ii) we sought flexibility with the daunting task of creating a master schedule that ensured that each participant could enroll in her/his 9 top choices without requiring the number of students in any given installment of any unit to exceed 6. We intended that participants could network amongst themselves during their “bye rounds” at the concurrent poster session: we had ~80 posters up during the entire meeting and, in addition, one afternoon was reserved for a formal 2-h poster session and a social event in a nearby park. However, most participants were so enthusiastic about the experimental program that they sought 10th, 11th, or even 12th units in their “open” slots!
The third part of the workshop consisted of 12 lectures presented by the attendees on their own research. The speakers were selected from submitted abstracts. The talks were organized in two half-day sessions chaired by program faculty.
For the duration of the workshop, participants met informally in the evenings. The “bioinorganic bar of the day” was announced each morning on the meeting bulletin board to ensure that the participants met predominantly in one place, thus facilitating informal networking. It was amazing to witness the energy and commitment of the future generation of bioinorganic chemists: they worked hard, they worked together, they partied hard, and they partied together! Overall, the workshop had an outstanding dynamic among all participants. Jeff Agar (Brandeis University), who had helped organize some of the UGA bioinorganic workshops in the late 1990s as a graduate student in Michael Johnson’s group and taught the mass spectrometry section at our event, judged the Penn State workshop to be a true continuation of the classic bioinorganic workshops at the University of Georgia!