Passion and results earned a University of Lethbridge student a national honour from the Canadian Society for Chemistry.
Jackson Knott, a 5th year bachelor of science student’s unwavering appetite for chemistry can be felt as glides his way through the lab explaining the equipment and conducting experiments.
Each year one chemistry student from one university across Canada is chosen as the recipient of the Award for Undergraduate Research in Inorganic Chemistry (AURIC).
As the recent winner for 2015 and a first for the university, Knott said it was a huge honour and still a lot to absorb.
“Just being able to put this on my CV will be huge for applying for various scholarships and grad school applications.”
Knott has been working under research supervisor Dr. Paul Hayes for a number of years and Hayes said it was his enthusiasm coupled with results, which stood out earning him a nomination.
“I’ve given him progressively more challenging projects and he has excelled on projects that are medium to high level graduate students projects. He’s gotten very good results, accomplished a lot, he works hard and has a good attitude.”
Knott’s research has been largely focused on an area that Hayes refers to as the epitome of basic science.
“We’ve been trying to make new molecules that have new types of what we would call functionalities. Basically new arrangements of atoms,” said Hayes.
n particular Hayes added they are interested in rare earth elements, which include the lanthanides and group three in the periodic table and forming multiple bonds between them and main group elements. Something that is almost completely unheard of.
Knott said he designs organic frameworks called ligands that bind to the metals and then tries to make exotic functionalities out of that.
“Specifically, I look at trying to make a metal double bonded to a nitrogen. Then we use that as catalyst to see what kind of reactivity we can get from that.”
Another area of interest to Knott is CO2 capture, where he said CO2 can be captured and converted into other commercially viable small molecules.
His passion for science started in high school but it wasn’t until he got to university that he realized his love for chemistry.
“When I took Organic Chemistry I that’s when I knew that chemistry was the one. It was fun to go through and play with the different molecules and see what you could do.”
But science isn’t his only love. Growing up in the Crowsnest Pass, Knott said skiing and mountain biking quickly became favourite hobbies and combining the two would be his ultimate dream job.
“Being a professor at some place where there’s good skiing would be my absolute dream. You get to continue to develop new chemistry and skiing and mountain biking are my hobbies.”
As for right now, Knott is currently wrapping up his final semester of a bachelor of science, after taking a year off to work at a co-op placement at NOVA Chemicals and will start his master’s in May.
He is also set to give an invited presentation in June as part of the award, at the society’s annual conference in Halifax.
“Just having some recognition saying this work is good and outstanding quality that others have people have deemed it to be so, it really gives me more motivation to go forward,” said Knott.
