2007 Award Winners

Congratulations to the four winners of the 2007 CNC-IUPAC Travel Awards:

Ulrich Fekl – Ulrich Fekl received his Ph. D. (summa cum laude) in 2000 from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) under the supervision of Professor Rudi van Eldik, for research on mechanisms of inorganic and organometallic reactions. Studies included conventional and high-pressure conditions. He then moved to the University of Washington in Seattle (USA) to work with Professor Karen Goldberg on novel platinum(IV) and platinum(II) systems for alkane C-H bond activation. He held a DAAD postdoctoral fellowship in 2000/2001. In 2003 he took up a faculty position at the University of Toronto. His current research interests include the synthesis of transition metal Lewis-acids to catalyze organic reactions, synthesis of cage-type architectures, as well as reactions at coordinated ligands. With grateful receipt of a CNC/IUPAC Travel Award for 2007, he will attend the 14th IUPAC Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis (OMCOS14) in Nara, Japan in August 2007.

Derek Gates - Derek Gates is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. He received his B.Sc. (Hon.) from Dalhousie in 1993 and his Ph. D. from the University of Toronto in 1997 under the direction of Prof. I. Manners. Gates then moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. M. Brookhart. He began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at UBC in 1999. His research interests span the areas of synthetic main group and macromolecular chemistry. A major theme involves establishing analogies between phosphorus and carbon in polymer science. For instance, his group has established the first addition polymerization reactions for P=C bonds and they have developed conjugated phosphorus analogues of poly(p-phenylenevinylene). This CNC/IUPAC Travel Award will support his participation in the 17th International Conference on Phosphorus Chemistry (ICPC) in Xiamen, China (April 15 – 21, 2007).

Mark MacLachlan - Mark MacLachlan was born in Faro, Yukon and received his B.Sc. (Hons. Chem.) from the University of British Columbia in 1995. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto working under the joint supervision of Ian Manners and Geoffrey Ozin in inorganic materials chemistry. After two years at M.I.T. as an NSERC post-doctoral fellow with Prof. Timothy Swager, Mark returned to UBC as an assistant professor in 2001. His research programme in inorganic supramolecular chemistry is focused on the development of shape-persistent macrocyclic ligands and their coordination chemistry, with the goal of assembling them into nanotubes and frameworks. Mark is grateful to receive the CNC/IUPAC travel award that will enable him to attend and present an invited lecture at the 12th IUPAC International Symposium on Macromolecular Complexes held in Fukuoka, Japan in August, 2007.

Andreea R. Schmitzer - Andreea R. Schmitzer obtained her PhD at Université Paul Sabatier in France under the supervision of Prof. Isabelle Rico-Lattes and was an Canadian National Cancer Institute post-doctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Joelle Pelletier at the Université de Montréal. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Université de Montréal. She is engaged in a multidisciplinary research effort to uncover new chemical and biochemical approaches for the design of functional molecular, supramolecular, and complex self-organized systems. Her endeavors span disciplines ranging from synthetic organic, bioorganic, and physical organic chemistry to nanotechnology, biophysics, enzymology, and molecular biology. The main driving-force for research on interlocked molecules in her group, is perhaps not the synthetic challenge but the interesting properties and potential applications of the molecules themselves. With the support of the CNC/IUPAC Travel Award, Dr.Schmitzer will attend the 41st IUPAC World Chemistry Congress in Turin (Italy) during August 5-11th 2007.