Graduate Awards & Honors

Two awards are given out to graduate students annually for recognition in research and teaching.  The Jay and Carol Taylor Graduate Scholarship is given to two students who have made excellent progress in their research.  The winners are invited to give a 10 minute presentation of their research during the Chemistry and Biochemistry Honors Week celebration.

The winners of this year's Jay and Carol Taylor Graduate Scholarship are Stacy Grant and Mark Morris.

Stacy is a fourth year doctoral student working towards completion of her dissertation, titled, "Polymer Templating Synthesis, Adsorption and Structural Properties of Alumina-Based Ordered Mesoporous Materials."  Her research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of a series of alumina and alumina based oxides with tailorable structural properties.

 
Mark Morris and Stacy Grant received this year's Jay and Carol Taylor Graduate Scholarship for their research.  From L to R: Mark Morris, Mrs. Carol Taylor and daughter, and Stacy Grant.

Stacy has had several publications from her research, and has received an NSF grant as a principal investigator - the NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute Grant - which allowed her the opportunity to travel to Japan for 12 weeks in Summer 2009.  Specifically, she furthered her dissertation research while working at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba.  In addition, she has received several grants and awards, as well as a fellowship which covers her tuition, stipend and will provide her with a job upon completion of her PhD.

Mark Morris is also a fourth year doctoral student; he has been working with the investigation of RNA structure and how it relates to function.  His research focuses on the discovery and determination of the role of the G-quadruplex structure, and its effect on the translation of messenger RNA (mRNA).  As a result of his research, Mark has had two first-author papers published in Biochemistry and the Journal of the American Chemical Society, as well as one paper submitted to the latter journal this year.  Mark's 2009 article in Biochemistry was featured in the Faculty of 1000 Biology, an independent group of scientists who review and highlight significant papers in the field.

The Bush Prize for Graduate Teaching is awarded to a graduate student who has had outstanding feedback from their teaching assignments within the past academic year.  The winner of this year's Bush Prize for Graduate Teaching is Gretchen Laubacher.  Gretchen, an M.S. student, received rave reviews from students in her General Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry laboratories.  Described as "helpful, understanding and kind," students in her labs felt she was a terrific Teaching Assistant.

Honorable Mentions for the Bush Prize are Eric Soehnlen and Stephan Woods.

Gretchen Laubacher won this year's Bush Prize for Graduate Teaching.  Here, she stands next to her advisor and chair of the department, Dr. Michael Tubergen.

The Debbie Fu-Tai Tuan Graduate Scholarship is awarded to an outstanding graduate student enrolled for the study of physical chemistry.  This year, the scholarship was presented to Michal Marszewski, a doctoral student who joined the program in Spring 2011.  Michal is working with Dr. Mietek Jaroniec on ordered mesoporous materials.  Originally from Poland, he majored in chemistry and computer science at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw.  Here, he finished a master's thesis on the development of an algorithm for the evaluation of porosity on the basis of adsorption data.

 
This year's Debbie Fu-Tai Tuan Graduate Scholarship was awarded to Michal Marszewski.  Here, he is pictured with Dr. Debbie Fu-Tai Tuan.