John Breen '81
Professor
Education:
Ph.D. - The Pennsylvania State University
Brief Biography:
I received my undergraduate degree from Providence College in Chemistry and math, my PhD from Penn State (w/ A.W. Castleman Jr.) and I had postdoctoral appointments at CALTECH (W/ A.H. Zewail) and Columbia (w/ G. W. Flynn). Before coming to Providence College in 2002 I was on the chemistry faculty at IUPUI for 10 years.
Since 2006 I have served as the chair of the Safety Committee for the Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center.
Married to Nancy E. Breen (Professor of Chemistry at RWU) and parent of Chris, Faith, and Joe.
Area(s) of Expertise:
Analytical and Physical Chemistry
Teaching Philosophy:
I believe chemistry is best learned with your pencil, paper, and calculator working on problems posed in the classroom, in HW assignments, or coming from experiments in the teaching laboratory.
I very much enjoy working with students, helping them with their experiments, in the teaching laboratory, especially the upper level analytical and physical labs, as well as in my research lab.
Selected Publications:
Abbott, B. Lee, J. Mohn, E. Barden, M. Overly, K. Breen, J. (2018) Probing the Extended Lipid Anchorage with Cytochrome c and Liposomes Containing Diacylphosphatidylglycerol Lipids. Biochimica Biophysicva Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes.(1860), 1187-1192.
Ullman, A. Liu, Y. Huynh, M. Bediako, D. Wang, H. Anderson, B. Powers, D. Breen, J. Abruna, H. Nocera, D. (2014) Water Oxidation Catalysis by Co(II) Impurities in Co(III)4O4 Cubanes. The Journal of the American Chemical Society.(136), 17681-17688.
Mohn, E. Lee, J. Beaver, C. Tobbe, G. McCarthy, S. O'Neil, E. Smith, B. Breen, J. (2014) Interactions of Cytochrome c with N-Acylated Phosphatidylethanolamine Lipids. The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.
Symes, M. Lutterman, D. Teets, T. Anderson, B. Breen, J. Nocera, D. (2013) Photo-active Cobalt Cubane Model of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst. ChemSusChem.(6), 65-69.
