People
Current group members
Gary Meints, Ph.D.
B.A. Physics, Philosophy, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, 1992
Ph.D. Physical chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 2000 Advisor: Prof. Gary Drobny
Ruth L. Kirchstein NIH Post-doctoral Research Fellow , University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2001-2004
Advisor: Prof. Eric Oldfield
Biography. Pronouns he/him. I grew up in Lincoln, NE and have moved around a bit as part of my academic career, going to college in MN, technician positions in NE and WI, graduate school in WA, post-doc in IL, then my current position here in Springfield, MO. I am a husband of 25+ years and a father of one precocious teenage boy. My hobbies include gardening with native species, genealogy, TTRPG, horror movies and books, Halloween, traveling, and thinking too much.
Collin Johnson
Collin started in the group in the summer of 2020. He has been integral in helping to set up this website. His current projects include solving assignments in a DNA containing abasic sites and measuring linewidths to determine free energies of activation. Every third Blood Moon, Collin can shape change into a goose neck gourd.
Here is a promotional video for the department of chemistry, featuring our group, created by Locke & Stache
Clarissa Krimmel
Clarissa joined the group in the fall of 2022 after having survived pchem with Meints and deciding she was ready for more. To pay the bills, Clarissa waits tables on the ISS.
Theodora Osborne
Theodora joined the group in the fall of 2022 as a high school senior, and is now a second-year student at Evangel, studying biochemistry and humanitarian aid. After completing her degree, she would like to pursue her MD and PhD as an MSTP student. Her clinical interest is (currently) genetically linked autoimmune diseases, and her research interests are nucleic acids, medicinal chemistry, and autoimmune disorders. Theodora is involved in altogether too many activities, ranging from student government to STEM-related societies to volunteering, but her main passion is medical humanitarian aid, which she hopes to integrate deeply into her life through both research application and clinic. Theodora is in no way related to Dora the Explorer.
Hunter Kimberlin-Poore
Hunter joined the group in January 2024 as a junior at Missouri State in chemistry & biochemistry. He plans to graduate in May of 2025 and purse a Ph.D. after that. Hunter comes from a long line of scholars, distance runners, and sorcerors.
Andrew Murrray
Andrew's portrait here
Andrew joined the group in January of 2024 at the same time as Hunter. And apparently they knew each other at Central High School. Andrew plans to graduate in December of 2024 and will be applying to medical school where he will work on inventing the world's first fully articulated toenail clipping robotic arm.