{"id":15012,"date":"2025-08-30T15:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T22:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/?p=15012"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:02:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:02:51","slug":"ogba-research-group-showcases-computational-innovation-at-mercury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/2025\/08\/30\/ogba-research-group-showcases-computational-innovation-at-mercury\/","title":{"rendered":"Ogba Research Group Showcases Computational Innovation at MERCURY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This past summer, four students from the Ogba Research Group at Harvey Mudd College traveled to the 2025 MERCURY Conference, a premier national venue for undergraduate computational chemistry, to present their latest findings. These students demonstrated how high-performance computing and data science can unlock solutions to some of chemistry\u2019s most complex challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aresema Ata \u201928 and Max Schernikau \u201927 presented cutting-edge work on sustainable catalysis, with Aresema exploring the \u201cThermal stability of carbones in the presence of carbon dioxide\u201d and Max detailing the \u201cReductive functionalization of carbon dioxide catalyzed by a carbodicarbene.\u201d Their combined efforts shed light on how novel carbon-based catalysts can be used to transform greenhouse gases into useful chemical feedstocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nora Nickolov \u201928 showcased their research on \u201cStructure-activity relationships of dioxido molybdenum(VI) complexes for deoxydehydration reactions,\u201d offering critical insights into designing earth-abundant catalysts for converting biomass into renewable fuels. Meanwhile, Zaan Saeed \u201928 highlighted the group\u2019s expansion into artificial intelligence with his poster, \u201cPredicting peptide cyclization yields using a machine learning framework,\u201d demonstrating how modern algorithms can accelerate the discovery of new therapeutic drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strong showing by the Ogba group at MERCURY underscores Harvey Mudd\u2019s leadership in the computational sciences, where students are not just learning theory but actively defining the future of chemical research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photos, from left, Aresema Ata \u201928, Nora Nickolov \u201928, and Professor Maduka Ogba with Mary Van Vleet \u201912.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past summer, four students from the Ogba Research Group at Harvey Mudd College traveled to the 2025 MERCURY Conference, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":15013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,6,217],"class_list":["post-15012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-chemistry","category-unlisted"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15018,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012\/revisions\/15018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}