2008-2010      Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. University of Cincinnati, Faculty of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio.

2002-2007       PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Art and Science, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Thesis title: Solid-State NMR Spectroscopic Studies on Phospholamban and Saposin C Proteins in Phospholipid Membranes.

1997-2000       MSc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan.

1991-1996       Bachelor of Science. Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan.

Research Interests:

My main goals of conducting research is to provide my students with superior undergraduate experiences, excellence in research and scholarship, and to enhance “student engagement in community service,” particularly in the first and second‐year courses. I am committed to research at Ohio University Zanesville, have mentored OUZ undergrads on research projects, presented and published in conferences and peer- reviewed journals, and other scientists cite my work. I am also committed to teamwork and collaborate with colleagues at the OU Zanesville and OU Athens in research projects.

      All my publications were in peer-reviewed journals well known to chemists such as Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of Laboratory Chemical Education, the Chemical Educator, PLoS One, and Green and Sustainable Chemistry, Cancer Cell, Natural Sciences and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. As explained on the website of each of these journals, decisions about whether submissions should be published are based on evaluations of a manuscript’s usefulness to readers and acceptable standards of quality. A manuscript may be publishable in these journals if its content is rigorous and creative and represents sound scholarship. It must also have a high probability of providing the audience with new, improved, or enhanced insights or tools for scientific research or education. The work should, therefore, have a high impact on the chemistry or science education profession or influence the scope of the audience of the specific research topic published. My articles received citations from other chemists and researchers in the field. According to Google Scholar, my articles were cited in other peer-reviewed journals by authors more than 500 times with over a 100-time citation per year in between 2014 and 2017. According to Research Gate website, my RG score = 27.34 which is higher than 82.5% of the nationwide science researchers and my articles were cited hundreds of times (~636) by other scientists in their articles all around the world. My articles and their citations can be downloaded from my Google Scholar or Research Gate web pages that I created to keep all my research items available to be downloaded, viewed and cited. My contact information is available to colleagues and I receive and answer questions from other scientists  periodically.

Current Research

• Water Quality and Nitrate levels
• Solid-State NMR and Membrane proteins
• Organic Synthesis
• Biomedical Bioanalysis.
• Environment and pollution.

External Awards          

• Ghaffari S and Abu-Baker S, “Update the Chemistry lab at Ohio University Zanesville with an FT-IR spectrometer” (2015). This proposal was funded by Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Award. I used the whole fund ($6000) to purchase an FT-IR instrument that I used to teach my CHEM 3080 and 3085 organic labs the principle of infra-red spectroscopy as a tool to identify unknown organic compounds. The proposal competed with other applicants.

Internal awards

• Abu-Baker, S, Affordable Water Quality Chemical Methods for Research and Education Purposes of the Freshmen Students at Ohio University Zanesville. This proposal was funded by the OU 1804 grant. The granted total of $6000 was used in 2015 and 2016 to fund the instrumentation needed to conduct undergrads research. The committee commended the strong assessment and dissemination plans in the proposal, the focus on first-year student engagement, and the possibility for collaboration; they also recognized the pedagogical value of combining chemistry in the abstract with the “sense of place” and environmental concerns specific to southeast Ohio. The proposal competed with other applicants.

• Member of the American chemical society since 2006-present

Publications

Research Articles

1. Abu-Baker S., Russell C., and Doudna J. (2018) Investigating the Levels of Ammonia and Nitrates in Dillon Lake and Their Effects on the Environment, American Journal of Environmental Engineering 8 (1), pp 1-3
2. Holstein A. Ghaffari S, Thamburaj R. and Abu-Baker S (2017) Balancing Redox Chemical Equations: A Discovery Procedure Employing Oxidation Reduction Titration. Journal of Laboratory Chemical Education. 5(1) pp 6-8.
3. Abu-Baker S, S Ghaffari S, Egdell L, Haser K (2016) Fly Ash for Removal of Contaminates from Coal Mine Drainage. Natural Science 8 (09), pp 397-402
4. Abu-Baker S, Frazier C, Frazier N, Ghaffari.S (2016) Engaging Freshman Undergraduate Students in Faculty Environmental Science Research: Testing the Local Surface Waters for Nitrate, Phosphate, and Ammonium Ions Using Two Affordable Methods as an Example. Green and Sustainable Chemistry 6 (03), pp 143-149
5. Thamburaj R and Abu-Baker S (2015) A Known to Unknown Approach to Balancing Chemical Equations. The Chemical Educator 20, pg 268-270
6. AL-Saghir M, Abu-Baker S, Pusok R. (2014) Effective Method to Resolve the Chromosome Numbers in Pistacia Species (Anacardiaceae). American Journal of Plant Sciences, 5 (20) pp 2913-2916.
7. Valencia T, Kim J.Y, Abu-Baker S, Diaz-Meco M.T., and Moscat J (2014) Metabolic Reprogramming of Stromal Fibroblasts through p62-mTORC1 Signaling Promotes Inflammation and Tumorigenesis. Cancer Cell. (26) pp121–135.
8. Abu-Baker S, Garber P, Hina B, Reed T, Shahrokh G, Al-Saghir M, Lorigan G (2013). Microwave Assisted Peptide Synthesis as a New Gold Standard in Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis: Phospholamban as an Example Journal of Synthesis Theory and Applications, 3(1) pp 1-4
9. Chu Z, Abu-Baker S, Palascak MB, Ahmad SA, Franco RS, Qi Xi (2013) Targeting and Cytotoxicity of SapC-DOPS Nanovesicles in Pancreatic Cancer. PLoS ONE. 8(10) pp 1-10.
10. AL-Saghir M and Abu-Baker S, Review of Microbiology: A Systems Approach (2014) Journal of Microbiology & Experimentation. 1(5) pp 1-2