08/2013

Each year Sigma Aldrich highlights innovation at the graduate student level through the Graduate Student Innovation Awards (GSIA).

From across the United States students are chosen based on their research, with a particular emphasis on students contributions to the development of new reagents for general organic synthesis, creative use of current reagents in methodology or total synthesis projects, and the application of synthetic chemistry to develop novel tools for probing biological systems.

In 2013 awards were presented to eight outstanding candidates from across the United States, each receiving an engraved iPad and a financial prize.

Each recipient also travelled to Aldrich in Milwaukee to tour the distribution facility and present their science to an audience of Aldrich scientists.

Changming Qin, a graduate student from the Davies Lab at Emory University was a recipient this year for his work on the development of novel dirhodium catalysts and their application in developing new selective C–H functionalization reactions. His talk was entitled “Chiral Dirhodium Cyclopropane Carboxylate Catalysts: Design, Synthesis and Application in Asymmetric Transformations”.

Congratulations Changming!