16th Biennial Balthazor-Senter Symposium on Frontiers in Organic Chemistry
Saturday, October 22, 2022
This biennial fall symposium celebrates research at the frontiers of organic chemistry in the general areas of synthesis, bioorganic and materials chemistry. This unique symposium is organized by a committee of graduate students representing each organic chemistry research group. The five speakers are chosen by the organic chemistry graduate students at large and the student representatives on the committee serve as their hosts for the weekend. The symposium concludes with a round-table discussion in which the speakers are asked to respond to questions from the audience concerning non-technical aspects of academic chemistry careers.
The symposium began in 1990 and has been sponsored since 2000 by the R. W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute (now Janssen Pharmaceuticals). The 2014 symposium was sponsored jointly by Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Medivation, Inc. In 2015 and 2016, alumni Peter Senter (PhD, ’81) and Terry Balthazor (PhD, ’75) each established endowments to support the 2016 symposium as well as future symposia, and in 2022 Dr. Balthazor made an additional gift between 2021 and 2022, Dr. Balthazor and Dr. Senter each made additional gifts to ensure the continuation of a biennial symposium in perpetuity. The symposium was re-named - Balthazor-Senter Symposium on Frontiers in Organic Chemistry – to recognize their generous support.