Student & Faculty Highlights

Ranjan Banerjee (advisor Dr. S. Bruce King) presented a poster titled "New Synthetic Approaches Towards The Natural Hydroxamic Acid Cobactin Core," at the 41st National Organic Symposium, June 7-11, 2009 in Boulder, CO. This conference is the national meeting of the organic chemistry division of the American Chemical Society.

Smitha Raghunathan, a Biomedical Engineering graduate student in the VT-WFU School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, has won the Dr. Margaret H. Hines Award for Best Oral Presentation at the 5th Annual Injury Biomechanics Symposium at The Ohio State University. The conference was held in Columbus Ohio on May 18th and 19th. Winners were selected by a combined evaluation by Symposium audience and Symposium Technical Committee. Criteria for this award included relevance of the work, importance of the work, quality of the technical effort, and contribution to the study by the student; a written paper and oral presentation were required. Smitha works in the VT-WFU Center for Injury Biomechanics, and Dr. Jessica Sparks serves as her major advisor.

John Graef, a doctoral student in the Neuroscience graduate program (advisor: Dr. Dwayne Godwin), has been selected to attend the 59th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Students in Lindau, Germany. Since 1951, Nobel Laureates in chemistry, physics, and physiology/medicine convene annually in Lindau, Germany, to have open and informal meetings with students and young researchers. The meeting will be held from June 28-July 3, 2009, and will feature lectures by the Laureates as well as small group discussions between the Laureates and the students. John was nominated by President Hatch after an internal competition and then selected by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) for sponsorship. Only 60 students across the country were chosen to participate last year and a similar number are expected for 2009. Wake Forest is fortunate to have graduate students of such caliber.