A team led by Jyotish Kumar (right), a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UTEP, and overseen by Mahesh Narayan, Ph.D. (second from left), a professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the same department, found that caffeic-acid based Carbon Quantum Dots (CACQDs), which can be derived from spent coffee grounds, have the potential to protect brain cells from the damage caused by several neurodegenerative diseases. The team includes Afroz Karim (left), a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry; and Ummy Habiba Sweety (second from right), a doctoral student in the Environmental Science and Engineering program.