The Organic Chemistry area offers several award opportunities for its students. These include the Fuson Travel Award, Seemon Pines Award, Pines Travel Award, Pines Fellowship, Beak Literature Seminar Award, and the Vanderveer Voorhees Award.

Fuson Travel Award

Up to six Fuson Travel Awards are given annually to students in Organic area labs to present their research at the ACS National Meeting or other professional meetings, such as a Gordon Research Conference. The awards are made to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of R. C. Fuson, who was a distinguished faculty member at the University of Illinois for 35 years. The Fuson endowment also funds the annual R. C. Fuson lectureship series.

Seemon Pines Award

The Seemon Pines Award is sponsored by the late Dr. Seemon Pines, Ph.D. alumnus of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois with Prof. Nelson Leonard, who went on to an illustrious career at Merck, retiring as Vice President of Pharmaceutical Process R&D. The Seemon Pines award is awarded each year for the most outstanding research presentation at the annual Beak-Pines Organic Area Allerton Conference.

Pines Travel Award

Each year several students receive a travel grant to present their Ph.D. research in the form of a seminar at the institution from which they received their undergraduate degree in chemistry. This award is made possible by the generous donation of the late Dr. Seemon Pines.

Pines Fellowship

Dr. Seemon Pines also endowed a graduate fellowship. stipulating that this fellowship should recognize outstanding research accomplishment. The recipients are advanced Ph.D. students in Organic area laboratories who have an outstanding record of research productivity as demonstrated in publications and presentations.

Beak Literature Seminar Award

The Beak Literature Seminar Award is given each semester to the students who presented the best CHEM 535 and 575 literature seminars, as judged by the students enrolled in each course. The award is sponsored by the late Prof. Peter Beak, who was on the faculty at the University of Illinois for 60 years, and his wife Sandra Beak. The award was initiated in the Spring 2021 semester.

Vanderveer Voorhees Award

The Vanderveer Voorhees award is presented each year to the fourth-year graduate students with the most creative Original Research Proposals (ORPs). Dr. Voorhees was a graduate student with Prof. 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).