The Marvel and Voorhees Postdoc Travel Awards are given each year to postdoctoral scholars in Organic Chemistry labs to present their research at the ACS National Meeting or another professional meeting of their choosing, such as a Gordon Research Conference. Awardees will also present their talks to the department at a symposium around the time of the ACS National Meeting. The awards are established to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of C. S. Marvel and Vanderveer Voorhees.
In 1930, Carl "Speed" Marvel became Professor of Organic Chemistry at Illinois,, and in 1953 he became Research Professor. Professor Marvel's work at Illinois was truly outstanding. He published more than 400 papers and played a large role in establishing the field of organic polymers.
Dr. Vanderveer Voorhees was a graduate student with Professor Roger Adams and was the coauthor on the seminal paper describing catalytic hydrogenation with platinum oxide, which is known as Adams' catalyst (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1922, 44, 1397).
Previous Marvel Postdoc Travel Award recipients
2023-24
Arun Maji
“Selective Tuning of Sterol Extraction Kinetics Yields Renal Sparing Antifungal” (Unifying Ecology Across Scales GRC, Burke)
Jacob Lessard
“Tuning Reactivity in Frontal Polymerization” (ACS National Meeting, Moore)
2022-23
Xiaolin Liu
“Inherently Charged Conjugated Ladder-Type Molecules: Extended Polaron Delocalization and High Conductance” (ACS National Meeting, Moore)
Ben Suslick
“Rapid Synthesis of Linear Oligo Dicyclopentadiene Characterized by Advanced Mass-Analysis” (ACS National Meeting, Moore)
2021-22
Diego Alzate-Sanchez
"Anisotropic Foams Via Frontal Polymerization" (ACS National Meeting, Moore)
Anuj Yadav
"Development of an Activity-based NIR Bioluminescent Probe for Discovery of Diet-Induced Modulation of the Tumor Microenvironment via Nitric Oxide" (ACS National Meeting, Chan)
2020-21
Maryam Ghavami
"Synthesis of Complex Compounds through Application of Complexity-to-Diversity (CtD) Strategy to Steviol" (Innovations in Drug Discovery GRC, Hergenrother)
Ashley Kretsch
"A Dual-pronged Approach towards Characterization of Novel Lasso Peptides and Variant Library Construction" (no meeting due to pandemic, Mitchell)
2019-20
Yun Liu
"From Polymer Mechanochemistry to Force-Enhanced Chemistry" (ACS National Meeting, Moore)
Anastassia Matviitsuk
"Enantio- and Diastereoselective, Lewis Base-Catalyzed, Cascade Sulfenoacetalization of Alkenyl Aldehydes" (ACS National Meeting, Denmark)
Stephen Motika
"Novel Gram-Negative Antibiotics that Target the FMN Riboswitch" (ACS National Meeting, Hergenrother)
2018-19
Erica Parker
"Novel FabI Inhibitors Active Against Gram-Negative Pathogens" (ACS National Meeting, Hergenrother)
Conghui Tang
"Palladium-Catalyzed Dearomative syn-1,4-Oxyamination and Carboamination" (ACS National Meeting, Sarlah)
2017-18
Joe Clark
"Manganese-Catalyzed Benzylic C(sp3)-H Amination for Late-Stage Functionalization" (Natural Products and Bioactive Compounds GRC, White)
Nilkamal Mahanta
"Substrate Specificity and Mechanism of a Radical SAM Methyltransferase" (ACS National Meeting, Mitchell)
2016-17
Scott Barraza
"Synthesis and Functionalization of Novel Silicon-Containing Heterocycles for Drug Discovery" (ACS National Meeting, Denmark)
Andrew Riley
"Expanding the Spectrum of Deoxynybomycin Antibiotics" (High-throughput Screening and Chemical Biology GRC, Hergenrother)
2015-16
Jola Pospech
"Dearomative Functionalization with Arenophiles" (ACS National Meeting, Sarlah)
2014-15
Stanley Eey Tze Chiang
"Catalytic, Stereospecific Syn-Dichlorination of Alkenes" (ACS National Meeting, Denmark)
Jennifer Howell
"Generation of Molecular Complexity via General Allylic C—H Alkylation with Tertiary Nucleophiles" (Organic Reactions & Processes GRC, White)
Olivia Lee
"Poly(phthalaldehyde) and Poly(vinyl carbonate sulfone)s as UV and Thermally Degradable Packaging for Transient Electronics" (Polymers GRC, Moore)
Previous Voorhees Postdoc Travel Award recipients
2024-25
To be announced