B.S. City College of New York (1975) Ph.D. University of Chicago (1980)

I manage an NMR facility under the Shared Equipment Authority, the campus-wide organization responsible for the operation and maintenance of much of Rice's research instrumentation. The NMR facility had a major upgrade of its 200 and 500 MHz spectrometers in 2010-2011. It also has a 400 MHz spectrometer.

I collaborate with various research groups at Rice (and other academic institutions) extensively using NMR for structural characterization of liquids and solids, explore the utility of new developments in NMR for such research, and do a little research on my own. Collaborations in the last several years have involved work with scientists in Houston (University of St. Thomas, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Houston), Beaumont (Lamar University), and Dallas (Baylor College of Dentistry).

In the last decade, research collaborations involving NMR have spanned several major areas. A variety of organic and organometallic compounds have been studied by solution state NMR. For example, we have performed a detailed analysis of a key intermediate toward a light-driven motorized nanocar, used isotopic labels to determine biosynthetic pathways in antibiotics, and studied isotope effects and relaxation phenomena, including cross-correlated relaxation, in simple organofluorine compounds. Solid state NMR has been extensively used to provide structural information on a wide range of materials such as fullerenes, nanotubes, graphite oxide, coals, minerals, cements, and composites.

In addition to being a Lecturer of Chemistry, I am a Senior Research Scientist in the Shared Equipment Authority and have an affiliation with the Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

Juan Peng, Wei Gao, Bipin Kumar Gupta, Zheng Liu, Rebeca Romero-Aburto, Liehui Ge, Li Song, Lawrence B. Alemany, Xiaobo Zhan, Guanhui Gao, Sajna Antony Vithayathil, Benny Abraham Kaipparettu, Angel A. Marti, Takuya Hayashi, Jun-Jie Zhu, Pulickel M. Ajayan Graphene Quantum Dots Derived from Carbon Fibers. Nano Lett., 12 2012: 844-849 Ayrat Dimiev, Dmitry V. Kosynkin, Lawrence B. Alemany, Pavel Chaguine, James M. Tour Pristine Graphite Oxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 134 2012: 2815-2822 Pinn-Tsong Chiang, Johannes Mielke, Jazmin Godoy, Jason M. Guerrero, Lawrence B. Alemany, Carlos J. Villagomez, Alex Saywell, Leonhard Grill, James M. Tour Toward a Light-Driven Motorized Nanocar: Synthesis and Initial Imaging of Single Molecules. ACS Nano, 6 2012: 592-597 Wei Gao, Mainak Majumder, Lawrence B. Alemany, Tharangattu N. Narayanan, Miguel A. Ibarra, Bhabendra K. Pradhan, Pulickel M. Ajayan Engineered Graphite Oxide Materials for Application in Water Purification. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 3 2011: 1821-1826 Yanqui Sun, Arnab Mukherjee, Oleksandr Kuznetsov, Ryan Thaner, Lawrence B. Alemany, W. E. Billups Functionalization by Reductive Alkylation and Mapping of a Subbituminous Coal by Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy. Energy & Fuels, 25 2011: 1571-1577 Chih-Chau Hwang, Zhong Jin, Wei Lu, Zhengzong Sun, Lawrence B. Alemany, Jay R. Lomeda, James M. Tour In situ Synthesis of Polymer-Modified Mesoporous Carbon CMK-3 Composites for CO2 Sequestration. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 3 2011: 4782-4786 Yanqui Sun, Oleksandr Kuznetsov, Lawrence B. Alemany, W. E. Billups Reductive Alkylation of Anthracite: Edge Functionalization. Energy & Fuels, 25 2011: 3997-4005 Yanqui Sun, Lawrence B. Alemany, W. E. Billups, Jianxin Lu, Boris I. Yakobson Structural Dislocations in Anthracite. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2 2011: 2521-2524 Daniela C. Marcano, Dmitry V. Kosynkin, Jacob M. Berlin, Alexander Sinitskii, Zhengzong Sun, Alexander Slesarev, Lawrence B. Alemany, Wei Lu, James M. Tour Improved Synthesis of Graphene Oxide. ACS Nano, 4 2010: 4806-4814 Lawrence B. Alemany, Thomas B. Malloy Jr., Megan M. Nunes Simple organofluorine compounds giving field-dependent 13C and 19F NMR spectra with complex patterns: higher order effects and cross-correlated relaxation. Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry, 48 2010: 882-891 Ram P. Garg, Lawrence B. Alemany, Sean Moran, Ronald J. Parry Identification, Characterization, and Bioconversion of a New Intermediate in Valanimycin Biosynthesis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 131 2009: 9608-9609 Wei Gao, Lawrence B. Alemany, Lijie Ci, Pulickel M. Ajayan New insights into the structure and reduction of graphite oxide. Nature Chemistry, 1 2009: 403-408 Cristina Hofmann, John H. Thurston, Keith B. Hartman, Lawrence B. Alemany, Kenton H. Whitmire New polyoxomolybdenum coordination compounds: Synthesis and characterization of mixed-valent Mo6O13(Hsal)2(sal)2(acac)2 and homovalent Mo4O10(acac)4 (Hsal- = 2-HO-C6H4CO2-, sal2- = 2-O-C6H4CO22-). Inorganica Chimica Acta, 362 2009: 1665-1671 Arnab Mukherjee, Lawrence B. Alemany, Ryan Thaner, Wenh H. Guo, W. E. Billups Soluble activated charcoal. Carbon, 47 2009: 3145-3150 Liling Zeng, Lawrence B. Alemany, Christopher L. Edwards, Andrew R. Barron Demonstration of Covalent Sidewall Functionalization of Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes by NMR Spectroscopy: Side Chain Length Dependence on the Observation of the Sidewall sp3 Carbons. Nano Research, 1 2008: 72-88 Arnab Mukherjee, Lawrence B. Alemany, Jayanta Chattopadhyay, Soma Chakraborty, Wenhua Guo, Sandy M. Yates, W. E. Billups Dodecylated Large Fullerenes: An Unusual Class of Solids. Chemistry of Materials, 20 2008: 5513-5521 Ram P. Garg, Xuelei L. Qian, Lawrence B. Alemany, Sean Moran, Ronald J. Parry Investigations of valanimycin biosynthesis: Elucidation of the role of seryl-tRNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 2008: 6543-6547 Takashi Sasaki, Andrew J. Osgood, Lawrence B. Alemany, Kevin F. Kelly, James M. Tour Synthesis of a Nanocar with an Angled Chassis. Toward Circling Movement. Organic Letters, 10 2008: 229-232