Research Summary

The Billiot's have several areas of ongoing research. The two main areas of research are investigating the factors involved in chiral separation and examination of the distribution, fate, and effect of environmental pollutants in the local environment.
The primary focus of the chiral separations research is to investigate and elucidate the factors responsible for chiral recognition with media specifically designed for use as chiral pseudostationary phases in capillary electrophoresis. In particular, the research focuses on a series of novel "branched" amino acid-based polymeric surfactants (molecular micelles). To expedite the discovery process, molecular modeling is used to develop quantitative structure-property relationships that can then be used to evaluate the effectiveness of new materials, other amino acid based molecular micelles, as chiral selectors for capillary electrophoresis and to gain a better understanding of where and how chiral discrimination takes place on these systems.
The other area of research focuses on an examination of the distribution, fate and effect of environmental pollutants (with a focus on endocrine disruptors) in the environment. Ongoing projects include: screening for endocrine disruptors in the local environment (various aquatic species, as well as sediment and water samples), development of improved analytical techniques for the detection of environmental endocrine disruptors, and examining the distribution of organic versus inorganic metals in the local environmental.