Vaughan Symposium

Once every year, the Department of Chemistry's graduate student council hosts the Vaughan Symposium, a department wide event in which over a hundred chemistry graduate students present posters of their research. The poster presentations are a way for students to get their projects seen by other students and professors with the hope that possible collaborations could arise. Additionally, the DOW Chemical Company sponsored the symposium and awarded over twenty $400 travel grants to the students with the best posters and presentations. Each poster was graded by two other graduate students and at least one faculty. One graduate student from each cluster (Materials, Organic, Inorganic, Analytical, Physical, and ChemBio) also gave a thirty minute talk on their research. There were several judges for the talks, and the highest graded talk won a $800 travel grant. The 2nd and 3rd placed talks each won a $400 travel grant. In total, DOW supplied over $10,000 to students this year.

Dr. Jerzy Klosin

Dr. Andrei Tokmakoff

The symposium also invited two well known chemists to give presentations on their research. The first keynote presentation early in the morning was given by Jerzy Klosin, a Dow Core R&D Fellow. Dr. Klosin discussed his research in the discovery and development of molecular catalysts for olefin polymerization with tunable reactivity toward alpha-olefins. The second, afternoon keynote speaker was Dr. Andrei Tokmakoff from the University of Chicago, whose talk was titled: Tautomerism in DNA and mechanisms of lethal mutagenesis: A study using 2D IR spectroscopy.

Dr. Victor C. Vaughan

The Vaughan Symposium is named in honor of Victor Clarence Vaughan (1851-1929), one of the first students to graduate from the University of Michigan with a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Vaughan graduated in 1876, and his dissertation is entitled "Quantitative Separation of Arsenic From Each of The Metals Precipitated by Hydrogen-Sulphide in Acid Solution." Dr. Vaughan also earned an M.D. from Michigan in 1878 and later served as dean of the Medical School from 1891-1921. He taught physiological and pathological chemistry, hygiene, bacteriology, and therapeutics at Michigan, among other subjects, and served as the president of the American Medical Association from 1914 to 1915.




Everyone in both the Ault and Pratt labs presented posters at the symposium. While no one won a travel award, everyone did a spectacular job and created much interest among the department in the research projects of the two labs. 

Daniel Gardner (L) and Dr. Andy Ault (R)

Amy Bondy (R) and Dr. Andy Ault (L)

Matt Gunsch (L) and Dr. Kerri Pratt (R)

Rosina Ho Wu (L), Jillian Cellini (C) and Eric Boone (R)