Asia Riel receives a STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship. The Fellowship, offered by the Embassy of France in the United States, allows doctoral students from the U.S. to conduct research overseas. She will work collaboratively with the research group led by Marc Fourmigué to study halogen and chalcogen bonding.

Casey Massena wins an ACS travel scholarship for the best graduate presentation at the Montana Local Section ACS Fall Social.

James May and Casey Massena facilitate hands-on chemistry activities for children at EmPower Place's grand opening. EmPower Place is a family learning center embedded in the Missoula Food Bank, collaboratively operated by the food bank, spectrUM, and the Missoula Public Library. Intended to serve as a vibrant community gathering place for children and families, the space includes spectrUM science exhibits, library books for children and parents, hands-on activities led by role models with UM’s We Are Montana in the Classroom initiative, and Story Time with the Missoula Public Library. Admission to EmPower Place and its programming is free and open to all.

Vinicius Rodrigues do Nascimento presents some research on halogen-bond hard-soft-acid-base complementarity at the 46th World Chemistry Congress in São Paulo, Brazil.

After five years, the Berryman Research Group is alive and well!

Asia wins a STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Embassy of France in the United States. It will allow her to conduct research in France and will initiate a collaboration with Prof. Marc Fourmigué. Chateaubriand fellows are selected through a merit-based competition involving expert evaluators in both countries. On top of that, Asia also receives a grant from the Rennes Métropole, which funds foreign Ph.D. students to conduct research in Rennes.

Eric John officially joins the Berryman Research Group.

University of Montana chemistry Assistant Professor Orion Berryman created the region’s only small-molecule X-ray facility at UM in 2014, when he purchased a single-crystal X-ray diffractometer valued at $515,000 using a grant from the National Science Foundation and support from UM’s Office of Sponsored Projects, the Center for Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy. The state-of-the-art instrument measures tiny crystal samples to determine composition at atomic resolution. This information tells scientists what the crystals are made of and how the atoms are arranged.The device elevated UM’s science game, but Berryman needed one more thing: someone to operate the diffractometer. UM graduate student Dan Decato was quick to volunteer for the job of crystallographer. Since landing the job, Decato has employed X-ray crystallography to identify the shape and connectivity of molecules ranging from bizarre macrocyclic compounds only bacteria in the Berkeley Pit could have made to tracing the nitrogen backbones of potential explosives. To date he has solved over 250 structures.

Nicholas Wageling wins best presentation in the STEM category at the UM Graduate Conference. He presents his work on biomimicking organocatalysts. Asia Riel gives a talk on her work with hydrogen-bond-rigidified halogen bonding anion receptors.

Asia Riel visits Corvallis Middle School and leads 6th graders through hands-on X-ray crystallography activities.

In another outreach event organized by We Are Montana in the Classrooms, she, Nick Wageling, and Casey Massena facilitate a lab tour that included active learning exercises.

Asia Riel and Morly Jessop's manuscript on the comparative strengths of halogen and hydrogen bonding to hard and soft Lewis bases has been published in Acta Crystallographica Section B.

Casey Massena is awarded a Bertha Morton scholarship.



Casey Massena talks with 6th graders at Edna Thomas Middle School (Corvallis, MT) about opportunities in science. He facilitates a learning exercise teaching the ways simple atomic building blocks organize themselves into increasingly complex forms of matter.

Daniel Decato's book chapter, "Simultaneous halogen and hydrogen bonding to carbonyl and thiocarbonyl functionality," will be included in Aspects of Multi-Component Crystals: Synthesis, Concepts and Function (Tiekink, E. R. T., Eds; De Gruyter Publishing).

Jiyu Sun officially joins the Berryman Research Group.