Faculty, postdocs, graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students interested in theoretical and computational chemistry and biology are invited to attend this year’s SYLICCO.09 event. This free one-day symposium will feature lectures by Ben Gherman (Cal State Sacramento), Jeff Neaton (LBL), Jed Pitera (IBM Almaden), Christopher Fennel (UCSF), and Michael Bartberger (Amgen), as well as a poster session for students and postdocs doing computational research. Schedule and location information can be found at: http://blueline.ucdavis.edu/sylicco09.html or http://ion.ucdavis.edu/sylicco09.html

Lunch and refreshments will be provided and awards for the best student/postdoc posters will be given.
Please RSVP to Prof. Tantillo (tantillo@chem.ucdavis.edu) or Prof. Allen (twallen@ucdavis.edu).

Support our talented undergraduate students and attend the Richard Larock undergraduate research symposium this Saturday, May 16 from 10-3:30pm (in Chem 166/176/172).

We have 22 talks from students doing research in inorganic, physical, organic, and biological chemistry. At 2:10pm Prof. Cynthia Burrows (U Utah) will deliver the keynote lecture ‘The Chemistry of Guanine Oxidation leading to DNA Mutations’. More details about the program can be found at http://chemgroups.ucdavis.edu/~osterloh/Larock/Program.htm

Let’s congratulate Xi Chen for winning the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. This is a great honor for her and for the Department. Also, a great big thanks to Susan Kauzlarich and the nomination committee for their work this year.

Congratulations to this year’s R. Bryan Miller Symposium award winners: Mike Lodewyk, Gregory Chin, and Nadine Hanhan. Mike Lodewyk (Tantillo group) won the 2009 R. Bryan Miller Graduate Fellowship for his research on the synthesis of farnesyldiphosphate analogs and theoretical studies on organic reactions of synthetic and biosynthetic relevance. Gregory Chin (Shaw group) won the 2009 R. Bryan Miller Undergraduate Award for his research on the synthesis of the natural product heliotropamide. Nadine Hanhan (Franz group) won the 2009 R. Bryan Miller Poster Award for her research on the asymmetric synthesis of functionalized oxindoles. Well done!

Congratulations to Prof. Annaliese Franz for receiving the first ever 3M Nontenured Faulty Grant here at UC Davis!! This highly competitive award sponsored by the 3M Company recognizes outstanding new faculty for the quality and pertinence of their research and is intended to help them achieve tenure, remain in their academic position and conduct research.

This year’s Richard Larock Undergraduate Research Conference will be held on Saturday, May 16 from 10am-4pm. We invite applications from all undergraduate students who are performing research in the UC Davis Chemistry Department. Please submit abstracts to fosterloh@ucdavis.edu by Friday, April 10. Cash Awards for Best Presentations: $250, 150, 100 for 1st-3rd place.

Keynote Lecture (2:30pm): Prof. Cynthia Burrows, (University of Utah): “The Chemistry of Guanine Oxidation Leading to DNA Mutations”

For detailed instructions and updated program information, click here.

Congratulations to Professors Franz and Mascal for receiving Chevron grants for their biofuel research! Mascal and Franz are both members of the Bioenergy Research Group (BERG) at UC Davis and part of a campus-wide initiative to advance the development of bioenergy.

Undergraduates, graduate students, and post-docs in the Department of Chemistry doing research in areas relating to the biomedical or pharmaceutical sciences, especially synthetic organic chemistry and related fields, are invited to submit abstracts for posters for presentation at a special session on the evening of Thursday, April 2 from 4:30pm-6:30pm. Posters will remain on display throughout the day of the Miller Symposium, Friday, April 3 from 8am-5:30pm.

Applications are also being accepted for the 2009 R. Bryan Miller Undergraduate Award, and the 2009 R. Bryan Miller Summer Graduate Fellowship.

The deadline for all poster abstracts and award applications is Friday, February 27, 2009.

Visit the Miller Symposium webpage and download the following PDF for more information:
2009 Miller Application Information

Edwin Friedrich, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, has written a timeline of the early history of the UC Davis Department of Chemistry up to 1944 that was selected for the College of L&S Centennial 100 Stories website. Here is a link to this historical timeline:
http://www.ls.ucdavis.edu/centennial/stories.aspx?storyId=38

In the near future Professor Friedrich also hope to expand the history to the post-World War II years from 1945 to about 1975.

Let’s congratulate Prof. Alex Navrotsky for winning the 2009 Roebling Medal to be given by the Geological Society of America Meeting in Fall 2009. This is the highest honor given by the Mineralogical Society of America.