Veronika Szalai

Veronika Szalai is a Project Leader in the Energy Research Group.  She received an A.B. in Chemistry from Bryn Mawr College, and a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Yale University.  Her thesis work centered on biophysical measurements of water oxidation chemistry in natural photosynthesis.  After completing postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Veronika spent several years on the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.  During that time, she and her group elucidated the biophysical chemistry of copper in Alzheimer’s disease fibrils, investigated the effects of DNA condensation on DNA oxidation processes, and developed methods to create quadruplex-based DNA materials.  Veronika joined the CNST in 2010, and is leading projects focused on the fabrication of biomimetic nanostructures and on fundamental measurements of nanobiomaterials for artificial photosynthesis applications. 

Selected Programs/Projects

• Metrologies for Nanobiomaterials in Artificial Photosynthesis

Selected Publications

• Fluorescence of Unmodified Oligonucleotides: A Tool to Probe G-Quadruplex DNA Structure, M. A. Mendez and V. A. Szalai, Biopolymers 91, 841-850 (2009). 
• The Amyloid-ß Peptide of Alzheimer's Disease Binds CuI in a Linear bis-His Coordination Environment: Insight into a Possible Neuroprotective Mechanism for the Amyloid-ß peptide, J. Shearer and V. A. Szalai, Journal of the American Chemical Society 130, 17826–17835 (2008).
  
• The Copper(II) Binding Site in Monomeric and Fibrillar Forms of the Amyoid-ß Peptide of Alzheimer’s disease, J. W. Karr and V. A. Szalai, Biochemistry 47, 5006-5016 (2008).
  
• End-Stacking of Copper Cationic Porphyrins on Parallel-Stranded Guanine Quadruplexes, S. E. Evans, M. A. Mendez, K. B. Turner, L. R. Keating, R. T. Grimes, S. Melchoir, and V. A. Szalai, Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry 12, 1235-1249 (2007). 
• Characterization of the Interaction between Manganese and Tyrosine Z in Acetate-Inhibited Photosystem II, V. A. Szalai, H. Kühne, K. V. Lakshmi, and G. W. Brudvig, Biochemistry 37, 13594-13603 (1998). 
• Reversible Binding of Nitric Oxide to Tyrosyl Radicals in Photosystem II.  Nitric Oxide Quenches Formation of the S3 EPR signal Species in Acetate-Inhibited Photosystem II, V. A. Szalai and G. W. Brudvig, Biochemistry 35, 15080-15087 (1996).