Program: PhD in Chemistry

Research Adviser: Melanie Pilkington

Program Entry Date: Fall 2015

I am Parisa Abbasi, and this is my Brock Grad Story. I am in my fourth (and hopefully the last) year of my PhD in Chemistry Department. I am working on single molecule magnets, which have a variety of applications from making higher capacity computer hard disk drives and USBs in much smaller sizes to MRI reagents. In this project, I use state-of-the-art methods to create and study crystalline materials with different magnetic dynamics in order to produce compounds with enhanced magnetic properties. I first create my crystals in the lab, (which might take from hours to months) and then use different methods like X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the compounds, and finally study the magnetic behavior of them. My results are published in high impact peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Journal of American Chemistry Society, JACS). I have also presented my results at different conferences all over the Ontario and I was a platform speaker at Inorganic Discussion Weekend (IDW) 2018 held at University of Waterloo.
I am a teaching assistant at Brock, helping students in first-year undergraduate chemistry labs. I am also a holder of the prestigious Ontario Trillium Scholarship (OTS), which has financially supported me during my PhD.
There are plenty of workspaces available at Brock for chemistry students and the well-equipped labs and my supportive supervisor has allowed me to access these, and I am grateful for them!