The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Justin Mobley and Dr. Jesse Thompson as Adjunct Faculty at the level of Assistant Professor. 

Dr. Justin Mobley is a native of Kentucky who earned a B.S. in Chemistry at Western Kentucky University.  He graduated from the WKU Honors College, completing a capstone project entitled “Synthetic study of para-substituted 5,6-fused ring pyridazines.”  Dr. Mobley completed his Ph.D. at UKy in 2016 under the guidance of Prof. Mark Crocker at the Center for Applied Energy Research (UK-CAER), where he studied oxidative catalytic lignin depolymerization. He went on to a Post-Doc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under Prof. John Ralph where he studied lignin utilization as well as biomass characterization using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy.  In October of 2017, Dr. Mobley joined the Dept. of Chemistry at UK where he is currently the Director of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center.  While he works on a variety of collaborative projects with numerous researchers on diverse topics including NMR spectroscopy, oxidation catalysis, and high-throughput NMR methods for biomass characterization, his primary work has been on characterization of lignin depolymerization products and new methods for cost effective lignin depolymerization.  

Dr. Jesse Thompson received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Western Michigan University in 2011.  He joined the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research (UK-CAER) in 2012 as a Postdoctoral Scholar and is now a Research Program Manager.  Dr. Thompson’s current research includes investigating the formation and accumulation of secondary environmental contaminants from CO₂ capture systems, conducting kinetic studies of amine CO₂ capture solvent to predict degradation, and investigating aerosol formation mechanisms in amine carbon capture systems. Dr. Thompson’s research also includes developing wastewater treatment strategies for disinfectant by-products using electrochemical treatments, and utilizing waste CO₂ through catalyzed electrochemical reduction to produce valuable chemicals, including formic acid.