Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Mietek Jaroniec, Ph.D., a Kent State University professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, is once again on Clarivate's list of Highly Cited Researchers in the world.

Kent State University has recently received a flurry of grants totaling more than $3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which will support research and innovation in a wide range of fields within the College of Arts and Sciences. 

There are just a handful of chemists worldwide with h-indices above 200. The h-indices of chemists awarded the Nobel Prize during the last five years range from about 30 to 160. Mietek Jaroniec, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has an h-index of 125, which places him among the top chemists worldwide.

“The pessimistic estimate is that by 2050, antibiotics could be obsolete,'' said Songping Huang, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. Huang and his Kent State team, including Min-Ho Kim, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, are working on closing that chasm with the development of new antimicrobials. 

In 1901, the 16 Major League Baseball teams produced 455 home runs. Players were discouraged from attempting it. Nearly 120 years later, players couldn’t seem to help themselves, and MLB smashed all previous records. More homers might mean more exciting games, but some people question why the spike happened. A Kent State University chemist thinks he has some clues about this unusual surge in home runs.