2006 Award Winners

Congratulations to the four winners of the 2006 CNC-IUPAC Travel Awards:

Garry Hanan – Garry Hanan received his B. Sc. from the University of Winnipeg in 1989 and worked under the supervision of Steve Loeb on ditopic receptors for metal ions. After a year as an exchange student at Auckland University, New Zealand, he returned to work with Steve Loeb at the University of Windsor on Pt complexes of sulfur-containing macrocycles. Hanan then moved to Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France and completed his PhD in supramolecular chemistry under the supervision of Jean-Marie Lehn in 1995. After a postdoctoral appointment as an Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow with Manfred T. Reetz in Mülheim, Germany, he worked with Vincenzo Balzani (Bologna) and Sebastiano Campagna (Messina) as a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow. Hanan joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo in 1998 and moved to the Université de Montréal in 2002, where he is currently an associate professor. His research program at U. de M. focuses on various aspects of metallosupramolecular chemistry with the ultimate goal of producing artificial photosynthetic devices. He will use his CNC/IUPAC travel award to attend the 37th International Conference of Coordination Chemistry in Cape Town, South Africa in August 2006.

Matthew Moffitt - Matt Moffitt obtained his PhD at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Adi Eisenberg and was an NSERC post-doctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Mitch Winnik at the University of Toronto. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Victoria. His research in physical polymer chemistry and materials science targets the application of spontaneous structure-forming processes in polymer systems (e.g. phase separation, dewetting, micellization) for the self-assembly of hierarchical polymer/inorganic nanocomposites. His interest in the self-assembly of hybrid building blocks of polymers and inorganic nanoparticles (quantum dots, metal nanoparticles) is fueled by the potential for bottom-up design of new nonlinear optical materials, photonic bandgap crystals, and light-emitting elements for photonic circuits. With the support of a CNC/IUPAC Travel Award, Dr. Moffitt will attend the World Polymer Congress—Macro 2006, 41st International Symposium on Macromolecules in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in July 2006.

Joelle Pelletier - Enzyme modification is a promising field, with many industries rapidly increasing their activities in this sector. Our multidisciplinary research program in Bio-Organic Chemistry is centered on enzyme engineering. Our goal is to develop a deeper understanding of enzyme structure-function relationships, thereby providing us with better tools to modify enzymes for synthetic purposes. Many of our research efforts are devoted to the area of ligand selectivity. To this end, we apply combinatorial mutagenesis to the active site of enzymes, combined with kinetic and biophysical characterization and molecular modelling, as a general approach to enzyme modification. The First International IUPAC Conference on Green-Sustainable Chemistry, to be held in Dresden (September 10 to 15, 2006) is the first IUPAC Series Conference dedicated to Green Chemistry. It deals with all aspects of environmentally benign and sustainable chemistry, including ‘Benign Synthesis Routes’ such as industrially-relevant enzymatic catalysis.

Alison Thompson - Born in Nottingham, England, Alison Thompson obtained her B.Sc. (Hons. Class I) from the University of Leicester in 1993. In 1996 she was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield for research on the development of catalytic asymmetric aziridination and epoxidation reactions with Professor Varinder Aggarwal. She then moved to Strasbourg, France and worked with Professeur Arlette Solladié Cavallo for a year as a postdoctoral fellow with a Royal Society/NATO award. In 1997 she joined the University of British Columbia, Canada to work with Professor David Dolphin on the investigation of self-assembly processes involving pyrrolic molecules, first as a post-doctoral fellow and than as a research assistant. In 2001 she moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia to take up a faculty position at Dalhousie University with an NSERC University Faculty Award. Her current research interests include the synthesis and applications of dipyrromethene complexes, the development of new methodology for the efficient synthesis of functionalized pyrroles, and the design and synthesis of prodigiosins for the evaluation against breast cancer. With grateful receipt of a CNC/IUPAC Travel Award for 2006, Alison will attend the 16th International Conference on Organic Synthesis (ICOS 16), 11-15 June 2006, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.

IUPAC Poster Prize Winners: 2006 Canadian Chemistry Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, May 27-31, 2006

Ognjen Panic, University of Waterloo, The Potential of Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography for Environmental Field Analysis

Ibraheem Gaabass, Acadia University, A Study of the Lability of Metal-Humate Complexes Using Diffusion Gradients in Thin Films