Hee Yeon Cho awarded 2011 ACS Graduate Fellowship

Ms. Hee Yeon Cho has been awarded a 2011 Graduate Fellowship by the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. Hee Yeon's fellowship, sponsored by Roche, is one of only ten that the ACS awards annually nationwide "to outstanding third and fourth year graduate students in organic chemistry." In addition to supporting Hee Yeon's dissertation research, the fellowship will fund her participation in the 2011 National Organic Chemistry Symposium. Hee Yeon is a fourth-year graduate student with Professors Lawrence Scott and James Morken. Her research is focused on borylative multicomponent coupling reactions and on novel chemistry of aromatic hydrocarbons.

For more information about the award, see:
http://www.organicdivision.org/?nd=graduate_fellowship

For more information about this year's recipients, see:
http://www.organicdivision.org/?nd=2010_2011_fellowship_awardees

Jeong-Long Lin Summer Research Fellows Named

Summer 2010 Jeong-Long Lin Fellows – Agnieszka Bellatreche, Ian Roundtree, and Lunecee Eligene – outside the Merkert Chemistry Center.

The Chemistry Department named three Jeong-Long Lin Summer Research Fellows. For ten weeks last summer, Lin Fellows were engaged in research in faculty laboratories at the Merkert Chemistry Center, where they joined teams of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

Professor Mary Roberts welcomed two Lin Fellows into her laboratory. Agnieszka Bellatreche, from Salem State College, learned molecular biological techniques and applied these to constructing a variant of a phospholipase C enzyme to be used for fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and monitoring binding of the protein to vesicles. Lunecee Eligene, from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, synthesized 13C-labeled phospholipids (phosphatidylserine and phosphatidic acid) for use in NMR experiments aimed at characterizing membrane dynamics and how they are affected by peripheral proteins. Working in the laboratory of Professor James Morken, Ian Roundtree, a Boston College undergraduate, worked on developing a catalyst for the conversion of simple organic molecules to reactive organoboron reagents that are instrumental for the synthesis of complex molecules.

Established in 2008, the Jeong-Long Lin Summer Research Fellowship Program reaches out to undergraduate students who are finishing their sophomore and junior years and who are under-represented in professions related to the chemical sciences. Professor Jeong-Long Lin, a visionary physical chemist, served as chair of the Chemistry Department at Boston College during a pivotal period in the department’s history. His leadership emphasized the high standards of scholarship that have sustained the Department’s excellence and continue to inspire us into the future.

Graduate Fellows Named

The development and training of young scientists continues to be at the very heart of the Chemistry Department's teaching and research mission. We are grateful to two distinguished Boston College alumni - Dr. John LaMattina (BCC'71) and Ms. Rita Rodin Johnston (BC'90) – whose generous support continues to foster excellence in the next generation of chemical scientists.


Dr. John L. LaMattina (BCC'71) Fellows

David Moebius

Robert O'Brien

Ping Zhang

We are pleased to announce that David Moebius, Robert O'Brien and Ping Zhang were named as LaMattina Fellows during the past academic year. All are advanced graduate students in the department's organic chemistry division and are actively engaged in research that has resulted in publications. David Moebius, a member of Professor Jason Kingsbury's research group, was a co-author on the article, "Catalytic and Regioselective Ring Expansion of Arylcyclobutanones with Trimethylsilyldiazomethane. Ligand-Dependent Entry to -Ketosilane or Enolsilane Adducts," which appeared in Organic Letters (2010, Vol. 12. No. 16, 3598-3601). Robert O'Brien, a member of Professor Amir Hoveyda's research group, was a co-author on the article "H-Bonding as a Control Element in Stereoselective Ru-Catalyzed Olefin Metathesis," published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (2009, 131, 8378-8379). Ping Zhang, a member of Professor James Morken's research group, co-authored the article, "Pd-Catalyzed Enantioselective Allyl-Allyl Cross-Coupling" which appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (2010, 132 (31), pp 10686-10688).

Dr. Raymond L. Rodin Fellowships in Chemistry Announced

The Chemistry Department announced the appointment of three Rodin Graduate Fellowships in academic year 2009/10: Amanda Worthy (Professor Kian Tan's research group), Jennifer Quimby (Professor Lawrence Scott's research group), and Sa Zhou (Professor Dunwei Wang's research group). The development and training of young scientists is at the heart of the department’s teaching and research mission, and we are especially proud of the exceptional accomplishments of our women graduate students. We look forward to the positive impact that their experiences as Rodin Fellows will bring to their professional careers. The department is grateful to the generous support of Ms. Rita Rodin Johnston (BC’90) who made this gift in the memory of her late father and distinguished chemist, Dr. Raymond L. Rodin.

Brian Lawrence Gray Prize awarded at Chemistry Student Awards Ceremony

The inaugural Brian Lawrence Gray Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar in Chemistry was established in 2010 in memory of the late Brian Lawrence Gray by his parents, Melvin and Marie Gray of Garden City, New York. Brian, who received his B.S. in Chemistry from Boston College in 2001, was an exceptionally gifted young scientist and scholar. In the laboratories of Professor Amir Hoveyda, Brian co-authored scientific papers and was a co-inventor on the discovery of an important catalyst for olefin metathesis that is now used worldwide by chemists in industry as well as academia. It is income from that patent that funds the prize bearing his name.

Chemistry Department Chair Professor Amir Hoveyda, Kate O'Dea, Brian Lawrence Gray Prize recipient Dennis Cheng, and Marie and Melvin Gray.

After graduation, Brian spent two years as a British Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where he carried out research in the laboratories of Professor Steven Ley. Brian then returned to Massachusetts and enrolled at Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and a member of Professor Stuart Schreiber's research team. Brian had completed the writing of his doctoral thesis at the time of his passing.

Sharing his warm memories of Brian, Department Chair Professor Amir H. Hoveyda presented the inaugural Brian Lawrence Gray Prize to Ka Dennis Cheng at the Chemistry Student Awards Ceremony on 7 May. Dennis, a Chemistry major who will enter his junior year this fall, plans to continue his research in Professor Kian Tan's laboratory. Dennis aspires to pursue a doctoral degree in organic chemistry when he graduates from BC. He hopes to use his knowledge of chemistry to improve people's lives through drug discovery or to make the Earth a better place for future generations through green chemistry. Brian's parents, Melvin and Marie Gray, and his friend Kate O'Dea, a BC alumnus, were on hand to honor Brian and to congratulate Dennis.

For a full list of awards from the May 2010 Chemistry Student Awards Ceremony, please go to:   >>