Chemistry professor receives grant for summer research

Arnett was awarded an $8,000 research fellowship from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund for an eight-week research project during June and July. He will be working with Dr. Carey Johnson, professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas, to investigate the characteristics of fluorescence from individual protein molecules. Using single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, Johnson’s research group is studying calmoduline, a calcium-signaling protein.

The fellowship program seeks to offer research experiences for faculty from smaller undergraduate chemistry departments while providing additional resources to projects that are currently supported by larger Petroleum Research Fund grants. One of the program’s goals is to foster continued research collaboration between the parties.

A member of Northwestern’s faculty since 1999, Arnett previously did post-doctoral research on fluorescent microscopy of cellular dynamics at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Arnett, who has had articles published in a number of professional chemistry journals, earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Pennsylvania’s Eastern University.