Emmanuel Bulted, slight in build, a full head of curly dark brown hair, sits across a table in Reeves Library’s AfterWords Café talking with a reporter. He leans forward slightly, moved by a quiet eagerness to answer the question “What made you decide to take on SOAR (Student Opportunities for Academic Research) after your freshman year? Most Moravian students hold off until the summer after their sophomore or junior year.”

“I felt ready for it,” says the chemistry major. “Dr. Steve asked me if I wanted to do research. I wasn’t scared of it. If I have an opportunity, I want to do it.

“If you don’t try to do things while you can, you might miss out on an important experience,” he adds.

Working under the direction of Stephen Dunham, associate professor of chemistry, to make compounds that are toxic to cancer cells, Bulted synthesized four new compounds, binding acetate groups and butyrate groups to a rhodium core in four different combinations. The purified rhodium compounds were then handed off to another researcher to test their toxicity to cancer cells.

Bulted found the SOAR experience invaluable. “You meet with your professor along the way to learn necessary skills and review what you’re doing, but then you just go do it. You have independence in the lab,” he says. “It’s an unusual opportunity for an undergrad.”

That relationship with professors is the reason Bulted chose to come to Moravian University. “Moravian is different from other schools because you get to really interact with professors. At other schools, especially big research universities, you may not see the professor at all. In laboratory research, they just give you a task to do. Here, you talk with your professors, you decide what you want to do, and they listen to your input—the conversation is not one-way.”

And Bulted’s professors are thrilled to work with him. “I can’t emphasize enough the positive attitude that Emmanuel brings to his daily interactions with people and in the laboratory,” says Dunham. “There are always going to be experiments that don’t work and equipment that malfunctions or needs repair; Emmanuel always took these events in stride and kept his eye fixed on how to solve the problem at hand and move forward on the project.”

In his sophomore year, Bulted dove into organic chemistry taught by Godfred Fianu, assistant professor of chemistry. It’s a course dreaded by most students but which Bulted describes as “fun,” and it led Bulted to another valuable opportunity.

Fianu nominated Bulted to participate in the Lehigh Valley section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) annual scholarship for organic chemistry, recently renamed the Ned Heindel Organic Chemistry Scholarship in honor of Ned Heindel, a Lehigh University chemistry professor, who passed away last year. The scholarship requires students take the ACS Organic Chemistry Examination and write an essay on a topic in organic chemistry. An award of $1,000 goes to the student with the highest exam score, and $100 is awarded for the best essay. Bulted scored highest on the exam and wrote the best essay.

It wasn’t Bulted’s first academic scholarship. As a senior at Liberty High School in Bethlehem, he received the Ralph López Scholarship for the Highest Academic Rank, Latino, in the Bethlehem Area School District Distinguished Diversity Awards 2022.

“What about chemistry captures your interest?” the reporter asks Bulted. After a minute’s thought, he answers, “As a child, I was crazy about Transformers, and that kind of translated into things I like now. I like putting things together to make something different or breaking things apart.”

“Which fits with synthesizing new rhodium compounds,” the reporter says. “And have you continued with research?”

“This semester [Spring 2024], I’m taking three lab courses: Organic Chemistry II, Physics II, and Quantitative Analysis. I would have done research also, but I couldn’t fit it in.”