Dr. Ilsa Cooke
The UBC Astrochem Lab attended the American Chemical Society Spring 2025 Meeting in San Diego this March. Ilsa co-organized A Symposium to Honor Eric Herbst’s Contributions to Our Understanding of the Molecular Universe, facilitating discussions of exciting current and future directions in astrochemistry with researchers from across the globe. Carina, Elsa, Reace, and Tom additionally presented their research at the PHYS Poster Session. Congrats to all for a successful and insightful meeting!
Reace recently took a trip to the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia to attend an Observer Training Workshop. He is now a certified remote observer for the Green Bank Telescope, used in the GOTHAM collaboration. Happy molecule hunting!
GOTHAM has recently detected all three isomers of cyanopyrene in the Taurus molecular cloud (TMC-1) using data collected with the 100-m Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Cyanopyrene is currently the largest molecule ever identified by radio astronomy in the ISM.
Read more about the detection of 1-cyanopyrene in Science, and 2- and 4-cyanopyrene in Nature Astronomy. Press releases and media highlights can also be found on our Publications page.
Congratulations to Carina and Reace for passing their comprehensive exams and officially being admitted to candidacy! Photo evidence of studying hard in the wild is attached.
Sam will be rejoining the group as a PhD student in the fall, joint supervised by Dr. Takamasa Momose and Dr. Ilsa Cooke. Sam will be studying astrochemically relevant molecules in para-hydrogen matrices. Welcome back Sam!
Congratulations to Carina for winning the 1st place poster award at the RTG-DynCAM Convention this year!
DynCAM is a collaboration between research groups at the University of Freiburg and at UBC. The goal of the collaboration is to investigate and control the electron and nuclear dynamics of systems prepared in well-defined quantum states, particularly at cold temperatures and on ultrashort timescales, through complementary experimental and theoretical projects.
Carina attended the 3rd annual convention in Freiburg, Germany this July/August and presented her poster, Studying the behaviour of OH radicals on interstellar ice surfaces.
Our recent paper, On the Origin of Infrared Bands Attributed to Tryptophan in Spitzer Observations of IC 348, has been highlighted by the American Astronomical Society. We assess the recent detection of tryptophan in the IC 348 star cluster using new laboratory experiments and JWST spectral data. Read more about the findings here!
Reace attended the QuantumGrain Workshop at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona this June. The workshop brings together observational astrochemists, computational chemists, experimentalists and astrochemical modelers to discuss recent advancements in various areas of astrochemistry. Reace presented his and Tom’s poster, Coupling theory and experimental data to revisit old reactions and their implications for the modelling of TMC-1.
The Cooke lab is presenting a guest seminar by Dr. K. Douglas from the University of Leeds, on April 5th at 4:30pm in CHEM D213. The seminar is titled: Low temperature chemistry of NH and NH2 relevant to the interstellar medium.
Abstract:
Understanding low temperature gas-phase reactions is vital to understanding a range of environments, ranging from planetary atmospheres to the interstellar medium. However, measuring low temperature rate coefficients in conventional reaction cells is problematic. We employ a Laval nozzle gas expansion technique in order to measure reaction rates at low temperatures. I will present recent result on our experimental and theoretical investigations into the reactions of NH and NH2 with formaldehyde, CH2O, acetaldehyde, CH3CHO, and NO. Reactions with NO display a negative temperature dependence, while the reactions with CH2O and CH3CHO display U-shaped temperature dependence, with the observed rapid increase in rate at low temperature due to quantum mechanical tunnelling through the reaction barrier. The astrochemical implications of the new rate coefficients and branching ratios are also discussed.
Congratulations to Arieh for receiving the UBC Science Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Award for this upcoming summer. Provided by the Faculty of Science, the SURE Award funds B. Sc. students on the Vancouver campus to work on a full-time research project during the summer session.
Arieh will be contributing to the development of lab instrumentation that will be used to study the interaction of cosmic rays with interstellar dust and ice, which can provide insight into the chemistry of star-forming regions.