Lou Messerle received a three-year grant, totaling $491,703, from the Department of Energy’s Office

 of Science in their highly-competitive Heavy Element Chemistry Program.  This grant will support two graduate students, an undergraduate student, and a postdoctoral researcher.  The research project’s goals are to prepare, characterize, and study small-molecule reactivity of the first molecular compounds containing reactant-accessible thorium-thorium and uranium-uranium covalent bonds and to develop low-valent dithorium and diuranium chemistry with bespoke ligands.  His research group will collaborate with Prof. Amanda Haes at the University of Iowa and Prof. Michael Neidig at the University of Rochester on spectroscopy and with Prof. David Dixon at the University of Alabama on theory. 

The Messerle research group will later collaborate with Prof. Scott Daly at the University of Iowa on extensions to neptunium chemistry.