User:Cdt the chemist/sandbox

Sandra J. Rosenthal is the Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics, Pharmacology and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Vanderbilt University and she is also the director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Dr. Rosenthal has published more than 165 peer-reviewed journal articles and she has edited two volumes on NanoBiotechnology. She is the recipient of numerous awards, notably: a Distinguished Faculty Award (2004), and two awards for excellence in undgraduate teaching: the Madison Sarrat Prize and the Jeffery Nordhaus Award; she received the SEC Faculty Achievement Award (2014); a National Science Foundation Career Award (1999); the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award (2006); she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011); and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Valparaiso University (2015), where she had earned her B.S. in 1987. The Distinguished Alumni Award honors alumni who have enhanced the prestige of Valparaiso University by virtue of their character, integrity and nationally-recognized personal accomplishments. In 2018 she received the Georgia Section's American Chemical Society's Herty Medal for outstanding Southeastern U.S. chemist.

Dr. Rosenthal's research interests include the synthesis, characterization and application of semiconductor nanostructures in solid state lighting and neuroscience. She holds seven patents, including ones for ultra small CdSe nanocrystals that emit light covering the visible spectrum (broad spectrum white light, which has implications for energy efficient solid state lighting).

In another ground-breaking set of experiments, Dr. Rosenthal and her colleague, Dr. Randy Blakely demonstrated that highly fluorescent, highly photostable core/shell nanocrystals could be utilized to track the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine, which are out of balance in mental illness. This series of experiments began to elucidate molecular mechanisms of these diseases.