Each year during the Department of Chemistry's May Convocation ceremony, several awards are presented to graduating undergraduate and graduate students. All of the awards were established by a gift to the department, and some are in memory of an individual. All of the awards include a $1,000 monetary gift to the recipients and recognize specific student achievements, including scholarship, research, teaching and more. This year, six undergraduate students and two graduate students were honored during the May 12, 2024, Convocation ceremony.
Undergraduate awards
John C. Bailar Award for excellence in undergraduate research
Zachary Burke was a double major in chemistry and astrophysics, whose undergraduate research in chemistry Prof. Mikael Backlund's lab was on a quantum-inspired approach to super-resolution microscopy based on image inversion interferometry. Burke will be a coauthor of a forthcoming manuscript, and he was accepted at all of the graduate schools to which he applied. In the fall, he will attend MIT for his PhD studies in chemistry.
Reynold C. Fuson Award for excellence in undergraduate research
Zikang Xu did his undergraduate research in the lab of Prof. Greg Girolami on the synthesis of new polymer-transition metal hybrids as catalysts for hydrosilylation reactions. Prof. Girolami praises Xu for, among other things, coming up with new ideas when the initial plan for his project did not succeed. Xu is continuing his research in the Girolami lab as he plans to continue his education in a graduate school program.
Carl S. Marvel Award for excellence in undergraduate research
Zipeng Shen worked on two projects as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Prof. Walter Klemperer. His first project was on the isolation of salts of carbocations and Keggen anions, which he then characterized by X-ray crystallography. His second project was computational and experimental analysis of phase transitions in hydrated crystalline Keggin polyoxometalate salts. In the fall, Zipeng will attend MIT to earn a PhD degree in chemistry.
Dr. Eugene Kent Borchart Memorial Award in Chemistry for an outstanding graduating senior in chemistry
Ananya Singh was nominated by Prof. Jordan Axelson for being an outstanding student with a GPA above 3.9. She was an attentive, upbeat, and selfless student instructor in CHEM 232 Elementary Organic Chemistry, according to Dr. Axelson, and she served as a teaching assistant for freshman chemistry majors in CHEM 150 First Semester Success in Chemistry. She will be attending medical school in the fall.
Worth H. Rodebush Award for academic merit
Joel Ryan was nominated by Prof. Jordan Axelson. Ryan is a double major in Chemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology with a GPA of 3.98. He served as a student instructor in CHEM 232 Elementary Organic Chemistry with Dr. Axelson as well as a teaching assistant in both CHEM 101 Introductory Chemistry and CHEM 104 General Chemistry II Laboratory. He submitted a senior thesis for his research in MCB, and he will be attending medical school in the fall.
John David Barnwell Memorial Award
This award is presented to a student who exemplifies academic achievement along with a high personal standard of ethics and scholarship, a passion for teaching, and fluency in the arts. Ethan Ramirez was nominated by Dr. Elise McCarren and Prof. Jeff Moore. With a GPA over 3.9, Ramirez was integral to teaching in three different chemistry courses, and played the viola in the University of Illinois Symphony Orchestra. In his teaching contribution to CHEM 332 Elementary Organic Chemistry II with Prof. Moore, Ramirez was integral to implementing a nontraditional approach that used project-based assignments, encouraging peer collaboration and application of organic chemistry to real-world problems, rather than exams. Dr. McCarren said that with his thoughtful advice and suggestions, Ramirez was an asset to the entire Merit TA team for CHEM 332 and also for the two other courses he taught as a Merit TA, CHEM 101 and CHEM 104. In the fall, Ramirez will continue his education at the University of Illinois as he worked toward his Masters of Science in the Teaching of Chemistry degree.
Graduate Student Awards
American Chemical Society Presidential P3 Medal for Graduate Research Excellence
In her PhD studies in Prof. Lisa Olshansky's lab, Dr. Saman Fatima developed conformationally switchable artificial metalloenzymes and characterized them using a wide range of techniques. She collaborated with staff in the Materials Research Laboratory, with members of Satish Nair’s laboratory in Biochemistry, and with members of the Bridwell-Rabb lab at University of Michigan. She has also collaborated with the Thielges lab at Indiana University and with the Sutton lab at Beckman Institute on the Illinois campus. In her postdoctoral research, Dr. Fatima will continue to pursue her interest in protein design, now incorporating computational approaches into her methodology toolbox.
American Chemical Society Presidential P3 Medal for Graduate Research Excellence
In his PhD research, Dr. Zane Thornburg led efforts in Prof. Zan Luthey-Schulten's lab to develop a 4D, space plus time, whole-cell model of a minimal bacterial cell. His wide-ranging collaborations included scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute for Synthetic Biology in California, Harvard Medical School, UC San Diego, University of Groningen in the Netherlands, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and NVIDIA Corporation. Dr. Thornburg is currently a Cancer Center at Illinois–Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow, where he is working to image and model cancer cells.