Lorena Tribe

Dr. Lorena Tribe is an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks. Tribe's area of research is theoretical chemistry and surface chemistry. Currently she is investigating interactions of small molecules with surfaces with her undergraduate students. Some projects are the interactions of small organic/biological molecules with clays for drug delivery systems, interaction of arsenic with environmental interfaces, fate of hydraulic fracturing fluid additives in the environment, and interactions of methane and carbon dioxide with shale components for enhanced gas recovery. She also is working with groups of students to develop undergraduate laboratory experiments. In addition to these topics, Tribe welcomes students who bring ideas to the group, such as origin of life theories in the past, and crosslinking of biopolymers for drug delivery currently. The methods used range from developing in-house programs on local computers to using front end software packages remotely on Penn State's super computers. Professor Tribe is committed to producing quality research with her students that will be presented at national and international conferences, and will be published in peer-reviewed journals. She was also recently featured in the Winter 2013-2014 issue of the college's RESEARCH at Penn State Berks magazine.