Rate My Professor Gabrielle Rum

Gabrielle Rum serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Chemistry department at Nevada State University. Prior to her current role, she conducted research in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where she earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1999. Her dissertation, "Molecular similarity/toxicity model of benzene derivatives and a similarity analysis of environmentally impacted regions," developed Quantitative Structure Similarity Analysis (QSSA). This innovative approach employs molecular QSAR descriptors to numerically measure similarity among compounds, rigorously testing the QSAR postulate that structurally similar molecules exhibit comparable chemical and biological properties. Applied to toxicity data from 485 benzene derivatives, QSSA accounted for 60.8% of the variance, surpassing the best traditional QSAR model at 58.8%. Rum also established permutation testing as the superior method for validating correlative models. Extending QSSA to environmental applications, she analyzed demographic data from nine U.S. cities to generate similarity matrices, aiding assessments of environmental compliance in air and water quality, as well as waste management.

Rum's publications include the 2000 Journal of Chemical Education article, "Applications of a U.S. EPA-Approved Method for Fluoride Determination in an Environmental Chemistry Laboratory: Fluoride Detection in Drinking Water," co-authored with Wen-Yee Lee and Jorge Gardea-Torresdey. This paper describes an undergraduate lab using a fluoride electrode to measure concentrations in drinking water, educating students on fluoride's dual role in dental health and toxicity, while fostering awareness of fluoridation controversies and analytical techniques. Additional contributions encompass QSAR studies on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon carcinogenic activities and book chapters on general molecular similarity models, such as "Test of a General Model for Molecular Similarity Analysis" with colleagues William C. Herndon, Hung-Ta Chen, and Yumei Zhang. Her work provides valuable tools for drug discovery, mechanistic studies, and environmental science.