News Archive – The Woo Lab – University of Ottawa

Group News

July 2014 – Congratulations to postdoc Dr. Michael Fernandez Llamosa was awarded a fellowship to work in Melbourne Australia for applying cheminformatics to nanoparticles. Best of luck Michael!
Welcome to Dr. Zygmunt Fliask who is a visiting professor from University of Opole in Poland.
June 2014 – Congratulations to Sean and Phil for winning Honourable Mention Poster Prizes at the Transformational Technologies for Molecular Simulation (TTMS) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Congratulations to Phil for winning top poster prize at the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) Conference in Banff.
Bianca, Phil and Sean presented posters at the Transformational Technologies for Molecular Simulation (TTMS) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Mo, Phil and Sean presented posters at the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) Conference in Banff.
Bianca and Sean presented psoters at the Canadian Society of Chemistry (CSC) Conference in Vancouver.
May 2014 – Congratulations to Dr. Carlos Campana on the arrival of his second girl, Evelyn.
April 2014 – Ph.D student Peter Boyd presented Woo Lab work at the 247th American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting at Dallas Texas March 16th – 20th.
Congratulations to Ph.D student Evans Monyoncho who was awarded the NSERC PGS-D scholarship!
March 2014 – Our hypothetical database is now available at titan.chem.uottawa.ca/MOFfinger. MOFfinger is a new cheminformatic tool for Metal Organic Frameworks.
February 2014 – Congratulations to Ph.D student Peter Boyd who will be expecting a new baby boy.
Congratulations to Dr. Carlos Campana who will be expecting a new baby girl.
Master’s student Bianca Provost will be heading to the Monash University in Australia this month to work with Dr. Alan Chaffee with funding from the Carbon Management Canada (CMC) International subsidy.
Congratulations to Sean Collins for his transfer into the Ph.D program, Sean has earned an Entrance Scholarship and Dean’s Scholarship for his efforts.
Master’s student Jason Lo recently completed a half marathon called the Hypothermic in freezing temperatures.
Undergraduate student Mostagh Aljahawari has returned to the Woo lab under the Undergraduate Research OPportunity (UROP) program.
November 2013 – Woo lab welcomes back Dr. Carlos Campana
Woo lab work presented at the Inorganic Discussion Weekend (IDW) conference by Dr. Tom Daff and Bianca Provost. Congratulations to Phil De Luna for being awarded the Tito Scaiano Scholarship
Feb. 2013 – Congratulations to Tom Baker, Woo and the CCRI for the successful $11 million CFI Leading Edge fund application. This will really enhance the biocatalysis capabilities of the CCRI. It will also significantly enhance our high performance computing facilities.
Sept. 2012 – Congratulations to Woo for being named to NSERC’s Discovery Grants Evaluation Group.
Nov. 2011 – Woo starts term as Associate Director of the Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation.
Nov. 2011 – Our papers “Phosphonate monoesters as carboxylate-like linkers for metal organic frameworks” and ”Competition and cooperativity in CO₂ sorption by amine functionalized metal organic frameworks” with George Shimizu’s group have been accepted in JACS and ACIE, respectively.
Oct. 2011 – Our group’s pumpkin this year is a MOF pumpkin capturing CO₂!
Oct. 24 2011 – Congratulations to Carlos and Jessica on the arrival of their daughter Sofia.
Sept. 2011 – Congratulations to Arif who won best poster presentation prize at the Jacques Cartier Colloquium on 21st Century Catalysis Science and Applications .
August 2011 – Saeid finishes his sabbatical in the Woo lab and returns to Iran
August 2011 – Congratulations on Arif for successfully defending his Master’s thesis “First Principles and Genetic Algorithm Studies of Lanthanide Metal Oxides for Optimal Fuel Cell Electrolyte Design.”
August 2011 – Mike has his first paper accepted – “Molecular dynamics free energy calculations for CO₂ capture in structure I clathrate hydrates in the presence of SO₂, CH₄, N₂, and H₂S impurities”.
March 2011 – Congratulations to George Shimizu (University of Calgary) and Woo who were awarded $940000 (including industry cash) over three years from Carbon Management Canada for their proposal “Designing easy-release CO₂ capture at the Molecular Level”. The two groups will look to design new carbon dioxide capture materials for reducing green house gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.
Feb. 2011 – Congratulations to Chris Rowley who has accepted a Faculty position at Memorial University.
Nov. 2010 – Our work on the computer modeling of CO₂ capture in nanoporous materials, was published in the journal Science. The work with collaborators at the University of Calgary was also featured on CBC news. The work was also a ‘News of the Week’ feature on Chemical & Engineering News.
July 2010 – Congratulations to Arif who won the Best Student oral Presentation Prize at this year’s Fuel Cell colloquium on Computational Methods for Reactions and Interactions at Solid Surfaces.
June 2010 -Congratulations to Woo who was named associate editor the the Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical. Tom will handle the theoretical heterogeneous catalysis portfolio.
Nov. 2009 – Congratulations to Chris who was named the Chemistry Department’s TA of the year.
Sep. 2009 – Tom returns from giving a plenary lecture at NANOCHINA 2009 conference in Beijing.
July 2009 – Tom begins term as Assistant Chair of the Chemistry Department.
July 2009 – Peter Boyd makes a triumphant return from a semester in Scotland as part of the Department’s exchange program.
May 2009 – Congratulations to Andrew who won top prize ($200) for the for the Physical-Theoretical-Computational division in the undergraduate poster competition at this year’s CSC meeting in Hamilton.
April 2009 – Congratulations to Chris Rowley for being awarded a prestigious NSERC Post-doctoral fellowship, Peter Boyd, Andrew Sirjoosingh for being awarded NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarships, and Nick Trefiak for being awarded an NSERC PGS scholarship. Also, Peter Dornan was awarded the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (that’s $50K/yr!)
March 2009 – Tom returns from giving the ACEnet Computational Chemistry Institute’s Lecture series tour.
Jan 2009 – Congratulations to Anguang Hu, started his new job as a senior research scientist at Defense Canada R&D.
Dec 2008 – The Woo lab claims 1st and 2nd prize in the CCRI’s logo design contest.
June 2008 – Check out our p oster that Tianyi drew for the Chemistry BBQ. The handsome fellow in the middle is a WOOkiee
June 2008 – Tom returns from the HPCS scientific computing conference in Quebec City where he gave an invited talk
June 2008 – Woo has joined the editorial board of the Journal of Molecular Catalysis A
May 2008 – Tom returns from Winnipeg where he gave the Plenary Lecture at the 22nd Annual Western Canadian Undergraduate Conference
May 2008 – Congratulations to Chris who won the top oral presentation prize at this year’s Ottawa-Carleton Chemistry Institute’s graduate research day
May 2008 – Congratulations to Nick and Stephanie Mosey who are expecting their first child in the fall
May 2008 – Tom returns from Winnipeg where he gave the Plenary Lecture at the 22nd Annual Western Canadian Undergraduate Conference.
Oct. 2007 – Congratulations to Chris who won one of the 4 top oral presentation prizes at this year’s IDW conference in Toronto. He also won a poster prize.
Sept. 2007 – Woo has joined the editorial advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry. Woo has been asked to serve as a topical program advisor for the “Physical, Theoretical, and Computational” area for the 2010 Pacifichem Congress.
Aug. 2007 – Congratulations to Nick Mosey who has accepted a Faculty position in the Chemistry Department at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario.
July 2007 – Congratulations to David Gerbasi who has accepted a faculty position at the Canadian Coast Guard College in Sydney, NS.
July 2007 – Thanks to a shared grant headed by Professor David Bryce, we have added seven 8 CPU nodes to our group’s computer cluster
June 2007 – Congratulations to Nick who was awarded this year’s Howard Alper postdoctoral prize from NSERC and NSERC’s Doctoral prize. The Howard Alper Postdoctoral Prize is awarded to the top Canadian postdoctoral student in the natural sciences or engineering. NSERC Doctoral Prizes are awarded to up to four students completing their doctoral degrees at Canadian universities. Two awards are available in each of two categories: natural sciences, and engineering and computer sciences. more from NSERC
June 2007 – Congratulations to Chris whose oral presentation won first prize in the Physical/Theoretical division at the CSC national meeting in Winnipeg.
May 2007 – Congratulations to Chris who won first prize in the poster competition at the Ottawa-Carleton Chemistry Institute research day.
May 2007 – Congratulations to Peter Dornan who was awarded the Hypercube Scholars award from our department for the best Honour’s thesis with a computational chemistry component in it.
January 2007 – Congratulations to Peter who is doing his undergraduate thesis in the group for winning the pot in our first group POKER game! With the $15 he won he can now afford to buy the all beef hot dogs for the rest of the semester.
Oct. 31, 2006. – The Woo group tied for first place in this year’s departmental Pumpkin Carving Contest.
August 2006. The Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation (CCRI) has been short listed for the Canada Foundation for Innovation $45million International Joint Venture Grant. We are now one of only three groups in the running for this huge award.
June 2006 We have power!. With renovations complete, our group’s new 168 CPU AMD Opteron cluster with Infiniband hi-speed interconnects is now operational. With lots of hard work from Chris, we have installed a diskless bootup of Fedora Core 5 on all of the compute nodes. The system is working beautifully.
June 2006 Congratulations to Nick and Duangporn who successfully defended their Ph.D. and M.Sc. theses, respectively. Nick is off to Princeton to work with Emily Carter and Duangporn is off to do a Ph.D. work at Purdue University.
March 2006. Congratulations to Nick for being awarded an NSERC PDF scholarship and both Chris and James being awarded NSERC PGS-Doctoral scholarships!
February 2006. What are the odds? Nick Mosey and David Gerbasi found out that they will be related by marriage after a wedding this summer. They are second cousins-in law or something like that!!!
January 2006. Congratulations to Zongxian who has started a Full Professorship position at the Department of Physics at Henan Normal University in China.
January 2006. Congratulations to Duanporn who was awarded a Christian Sivertz Scholarship ($1500) from the University of Western Ontario Chemistry Department awarded to the top students in physical chemistry based on their first year of graduate work.
August 2005. Congratulations to Chris Rowley for being awarded an HPCVL graduate scholarship!
July 2005. Chris Rowley was awarded a $3000 “Strategic Areas of Development” Graduate award from the University of Ottawa. Congrats!!!
July 2005. Thanks to three graduate students and a U-Haul, the Woo group has successfully moved from the University of Western Ontario to the University of Ottawa, Department of Chemistry and Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation. The road stories will be posted shortly…
May 2005. The Woo group will be relocating to Canada’s capital Ottawa in July 2005. We will be joining the University of Ottawa, Department of Chemistry and Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation. Any interested graduate students should now apply to the University of Ottawa graduate program.
March 2005 Congratulations to Chris Rowley on being awarded an NSERC PGS Master’s scholarship.
February 2005 After three years of service, Woo is pleased to announce that Mel Usselman is taking over as the department’s Chair of Graduate Admissions.
Congratulations to Anguang on his new job as senior scientist at Atomistix. Anguang will be heading their new North American Branch based in Montreal. BIG bucks for Anguang and lunch on him for us!
Jan 2005 Our paper “Molecular Mechanism for the Functionality of Lubricant Additives” by Mosey, Mueser, Woo has been accepted for publication in Science.
October 2004 Congratulations to Anguang and his family who just became permanent resident’s of Canada.
August 2004 Selay started medical school at the University of Ottawa and Chris Granger started dental school here at UWO. Congratulations to both.
Congratulations to Kari Ann for successfully defending her 4th year thesis project and on her new house and new job at the school of Medicine and dentistry at UWO. Kari Ann will also be getting married in October 2005.
July 2004 Congratulations to Tom Woo who was one of ten PI’s on the successful multi-institutional SHARCnet 2 CFI grant. SHARCnet 2 was fully funded at over $49 million dollars ($20 million matching funds from the Ontario Innovation Trust). click here for the official press release (PDF)
June 2004 Nick Mosey won 1st place Oral presentation and 1st place Poster presentation prizes for the Physical and Theoretical Division, 87th Canadian Society for Chemistry National Conference and Exhibition. London, Ontario, May 29-June 1, 2004.
May 2004. Congratulations to Anna on her new job. She is now an engineer trainee at a big Swedish Utility group. They had 3000 applicants for 6 positions!
Best wishes to the newly weds Nick and Stephanie Mosey who were married on May 22. They’ll be honeymooning in Mexico – Tequila shooters at the next group meeting.
Congratulations to Chris Rowely on being awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship
April 2004 – Congratulations to Chris Granger on his NSERC USRA award.
March 2004 – Congratulations to Nick Mosey who was awarded the Robert and Ruth Lumsden Graduate Fellowship
Great News! Nick Mosey was awarded a Canada Graduate Scholarship (Ph.D.) – that’s $35K per year and lunch for the group
August 2003 – Congratulations to Kari Ann on her engagement. Yes, she got the big question and ring popped on her
March 2003 – Congratulations to Steve on his new job with the Government of Canada in Ottawa.
December 2002 – We have added another 40 Pentium 4 2.5 GHz nodes with switched gigabit ethernet to our computing facility, ROCIT. Gordon is now feeling very well endowed.
Congratulations to Gordon, our former systems administrator, for getting a full time position with teletech. Gordon is still working part-time in the group.
Congratulations to Zongxian for being awarded a SHARCnet PDF fellowship.
October 2002 – Congratulations to Nick Mosey and Stephanie on their Engagement. Yes, Nick popped the big one.
Congratulations to Nick Mosey for being awarded the Christian Sivertz Scholarship in Physical Chemistry.
March 2002 – Congratulations to Nick Mosey for being awarded a NSERC PGSA award.
September 2001 – We have made a web poster about ROCIT, our groups high performance computing facility. Click here to see it.
ADF QM/MM has now been parallelized and the handling of the non-bonded interactions has been made more efficient. Treating of macromolecular systems is now possible. This latest version of the ADF QM/MM will be released in the next commercial release of ADF (expected in the fall of 2001).
September 2001 – We have created a new website for the UWO “ChemClub” at http://chemclub.chem.uwo.ca
August 2001 – ROCIT, our group’s computing cluster has been upgraded to 71 machines. Click here to go to the ROCIT website.
April 2001 – Congratulations to Nick Mosey and Joey Raheb for their efforts at this year’s international Mathematical Contest in Modeling. Their team (of three) were ‘Meritorious Winners’, which means of the 496 international teams that participated, their contribution ranked in the top 14%
March 27, 2001 – Congratulations to Joey Raheb for being awarded a 2nd place oral presentation prize (physical/theoretical division) at the 29th Southwestern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference, March 24, 2001, University of Toronto at Scarborough. His winning talk was titled “Construction and Design of a Small Parallel Computing Cluster for Quantum Chemistry”.