Patrick Cappillino, a graduate student at Boston University, and Shuyu Wang, a graduating senior at Harvard University, were recognized for their presentations at the 10th Young Scientists Conference on Chemistry, which was held at the University of Rostock, Germany, March 27-29, 2008.

Cappillino, who anticipates receiving his Ph.D. at the end of the year, received the third place award for his oral presentation, “Iron Compounds with fac-N2O1, cis-N2O2, and N2O3 Donor Ligands as Models of the Structure and Reactivity of Mononuclear Non-heme Iron Oxygenase Active Sites,” in which he described his doctoral research in the laboratory of Professor John Caradonna. Wang, who was one of ten students to be honored for the exceptional quality of their poster presentations, described her work with Professor Gregory Verdine, “Capturing AlkA in Action: X-ray Crystallography of a DNA Repair Glycosylase with Unusually Broad Substrate Specificity.”

The conference, which was organized by the Jungchemikerforum (JCF) of the German Chemical Society (GDCh), was attended by almost 400 students from 20 nations, including the group of three undergraduates and nine graduate students from NESACS, who traveled in the exchange program of the Education Committee and the Younger Chemists Committee. A total of 27 oral and 216 poster presentations were made.

In addition to Cappillino and Wang, the NESACS delegation included Gulbenk Anarat (graduate student, Boston University), Koyel Bhattacharyya (undergraduate, MIT), Carl Christianson (graduate student, Boston College), Brett Fors (graduate student, MIT), Wendy Iskenderian (graduate student, MIT), Raymond Moellering (graduate student, Harvard University), Adam Schell (undergraduate, Boston University), Jolene Schuster (graduate student, Dartmouth College), Lynell Skewis (graduate student, Boston University), and Ka-Lo Yeh (graduate student, MIT). Accompanying the students were Mike Strem (Strem Chemicals), Ruth Tanner (University of Massachusetts Lowell), Bob Lichter (Merrimack Consultants), Laila Dafik (Tufts University), and Morton Hoffman (Boston University).

This year’s trip to Germany marks the fifth occasion of a visit by a delegation from NESACS; previous exchanges took place in 2002 (Cologne and Aachen), 2003 (Munich and Dresden), 2005 (Berlin), and 2006 (Konstanz). In 2001, 2004, and 2007, delegations of German graduate students visited Boston. The next Frühjahrssymposium will be held in Essen at the end of March 2009.