The graduate program in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Delaware has strengthened dramatically over the past decade. Of course, to a substantial degree, this success depends on the major progress of the whole Department as outlined in the Letter from the Associate Chair. The efforts of the entire Department - students, faculty, and staff - in recruiting the best and the brightest candidates into our graduate program have been nothing short of phenomenal. This year, the graduate student visitation weekend included an extended poster session that overlapped with a dinner and a mixer. This not only offered the visitors an opportunity to interact with us, but also allowed all of us to check out the most recent research developments of the entire Department. We had 18 students participate in our recruitment weekend and 11 of those students accepted our offer of admission and are joining us this fall; two more have already started, as of spring semester 2008. Whatever we were doing, I think we should continue the efforts and most of the formats that we used this year.
The new graduate class will be 27 people strong with 26 Ph.D. candidates and 1 M.S. student. Two of the Ph.D. students are enrolled in the CBI program, two more will be supported by IGERT and one student will be supported by a Center for Critical Zone Research (CCZR) fellowship. I sincerely hope that this class will be successful in the years to come and that we will continue to recruit the best candidates for our program. Our current enrollment now stands at 151 graduate students. The Department awarded 5 M.A., 3 M.S., and 22 Ph.D. degrees in the past academic year.
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The 42nd annual Glenn S. Skinner Memorial Award was presented to Paul Tobash on May 16, 2008 at the Departmental Colloquium by Prof. Andrew Teplyakov. Mr. Tobash’s research advisor is Professor Svilen Bobev. |
The Glenn S. Skinner Award is presented for distinction in scholarship, research, and service by a graduate student to the Department. It is the premier award for Ph.D. students in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and it includes a $2,500 award. Paul Tobash (Prof. Bobev) was the recipient of this year’s Skinner Award, based on his exemplary departmental citizenship and on the excellent work he is doing with his research project, which focuses on synthetically very challenging intermetallic compounds of the rare-earth metals with silicon, germanium and tin, aimed at the discovery of novel materials with interesting magnetic and electronic properties.
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The 26th annual Elizabeth Dyer Excellence in Teaching Awards were presented to two outstanding Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate student teaching assistants, Luke Ceo and Heather Schmidt. (From left, Heather Schmidt, Luke Ceo and Andrew Teplyakov.) |
The 26th annual Elizabeth Dyer Excellence in Teaching Awards, which acknowledge graduate students who have excelled as teaching assistants, were presented to two outstanding Chemistry and Biochemistry graduate student teaching assistants at the departmental graduate recruitment seminar on March 7, 2008. Each student received $250 as part of the Dyer Award. The graduate students honored were Luke Ceo and Heather Schmidt. Luke received his bachelor’s degree from Skidmore College and is currently working on his doctorate in the laboratory of Professor John Koh. Luke served as a TA in CHEM-321 (Organic Chemistry) during the fall of 2006 and in CHEM-322 (Organic Chemistry) in the spring of 2007. Heather received her bachelor’s degree from Loyola College and is currently working on her doctorate in the laboratory of Professor Douglas Doren. Heather served as a TA in CHEM-111H (Honors General Chemistry) during the fall of 2006 and in CHEM-103 (General Chemistry) during the spring of 2007. The Dyer Award honors the memory of Professor Elizabeth Dyer, a member of the Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty from 1933-1971. This award has been given to outstanding teaching assistants since 1981.
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The annual Joel L. Silver Award Symposium encourages the development of graduate students’ ability to communicate the results of scientific research in an oral presentation. Each participant presents the results of research conducted in the Department for 15 minutes, followed by a 5 minute question and answer session. All of the talks at this year’s symposium were of a very high scientific level, and the jury faced a very difficult task in choosing the awardees. Danny Ramadan (Prof. Thorpe) won 1st place for his presentation “New (Old) Ways of Inhibiting Oxidative Protein Folding”, including a cash award of $300. Xiaochun Zhang (Prof. Teplyakov) earned 2nd place ($100) with her presentation “Designing Novel Biomolecule/Semiconductor Interfaces”, and Matthew Dreyfus (Prof. Johnston) received 3rd place ($50) for his presentation “Field Measurements of Ambient Organic Aerosols with the Photoionization Aerosol Mass Spectrometer”. The other presenters, all impressive, were Ritesh Sheth (Prof. Taber), Paul Tobash (Prof. Bobev), Ronak Rughani (Prof. Schneider), Damien Urena (Prof. Chen), Wei Wei Tian (Prof. Taber), Wesley Monillas (Prof. Theopold), and David Gerstenhaber (Prof. Taber).
I wish to extend the warmest appreciation from the Department to the distinguished members of the Silver Symposium jury: Dr. David Heaps (AstraZeneca), Dr. David Christianson (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Michael Prushan (LaSalle University), Dr. Ryan Mehl (Franklin and Marshall) and Dr. Christiana Honsberg (Electrical and Computer Engineering, UD).
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Inaugural Trofimenko Memorial Prize winner Matthew Kieber-Emmons (left), with Chairman Klaus Theopold. |
The inaugural recipient of the Trofimenko Memorial Prize was Matthew Kieber-Emmons (Prof. Riordan) for excellence in creative inorganic synthesis. A cash award of $500 was presented to Matt at the Inorganic Colloquium on April 16, 2008. This award honors the memory of Dr. Jerry Trofimenko.
Anne Marie (Zimmerman) Shough (Prof. Doren) has been named the recipient of the 2008 Theodore Wolf Prize for best dissertation in the Physical and Life Sciences (Chemistry, Physics, Biological Sciences, Geology, Marine Studies, Climatology, and Agricultural Sciences). Her dissertation is entitled “Quantum Chemistry Studies of Catalytic and Photocatalytic Materials: Transition Metal Substitution, Active Sites, Thermodynamics, and Reaction Mechanisms.
The University of Delaware awards a limited number of graduate student fellowship awards that include stipend support. The Department continues to be well-represented among the recipients of these prestigious awards, which are awarded in a highly competitive University-wide selection process. Paul Tobash (Prof. Bobev) was supported as a University Graduate Fellow this past year, and Juan Carlos Rodriguez-Reyes (Prof. Teplyakov) was named a University Graduate Fellow for the coming year. Kudos to these students for the well-deserved recognition of their outstanding efforts!
I would like to close by thanking Susan Cheadle and Jen Durkin for their continuous and superb assistance to me as the Director of Graduate Studies. I want to thank Professor Riordan for giving me this opportunity to put my two pennies in recruiting and developing the graduate program in our Department, when he appointed me to this position nearly three years ago. Of course, I want to thank both Professor Riordan (then Chair) and Professor Theopold (our current Chair) for their complete support of our efforts and for giving me substantial leeway in trying new approaches for recruiting. Finally, I wish to thank all the members of the Teaching Assistantship and Fellowship Committee and of the Graduate Curriculum Committee, who have been instrumental in our success over the years of my service as the Chair of both committees. All of the faculty and students who have dedicated their time and effort to make our graduate program better, to recruit the best students at truly national and international levels, and to continue the development of these students to receive their graduate degrees, I have been very much honored and privileged to work with all of you. As has become a tradition in our department, I planned a three year tenure in this position and I feel that it is a good time to bring more and better ideas into the way our program is developing. I am certain that this task will be advanced further by the new Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Bahnson, whose term will start in the fall 2008 but whose duties will start earlier, with welcoming our first-year graduate students in August. I wish him all the best in the role. In the meantime, I am returning to the exciting life of a regular faculty member and am looking forward to my fall sabbatical.
Andrew Teplyakov
