2009 Award Winners

Congratulations to the five winners of the 2009 CNC-IUPAC Travel Awards:

Shawn Collins, Université de Montréal – Shawn K. Collins was born in 1974 and raised in Val d'Or, Québec. He obtained a B.Sc. (Honours) degree from Concordia University in 1996 while working with Professor Ozzie S. Tee. He completed his PhD in 2001 with Professor Alex G. Fallis at the University of Ottawa. After a NSERC postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Larry E. Overman (University of California, Irvine), he joined the faculty at the Université de Montréal in September 2003 as an Assistant Professor. Professor Collins' research group is interested in the development of new stereo- and enantioselective synthetic methods.  In particular, his group has developed new methods for the synthesis of planar chiral macrocycles and novel olefin metathesis catalysts for the formation of helicenes.  His group’s recent work will be presented at the 15th IUPAC Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis (OMCOS-15) in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) in July 2009.

Vy Dong, University of Toronto – Vy Dong obtained her Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology with David MacMillan and completed postdoctoral training at University of California at Berkeley with Robert Bergman and Kenneth Raymond.  She began her independent career at the University of Toronto in the summer of 2006.  The Dong Group focuses on developing new organometallic pathways to overcome key challenges in synthesis and catalysis, including carbon-hydrogen bond functionalization, carbon-dioxide activation, and olefin elaboration.   Professor Dong is grateful to CNC/IUPAC for a travel award to attend the 15th IUPAC International Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis (OMCOS 15) in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) in July 2009.

Torsten Hegmann, University of Manitoba - Torsten Hegmann, MCIC and MRSC, received his PhD in 2001 from the Martin-Luther University in Halle (Germany) under the supervision of Carsten Tschierske, for work on metal containing liquid crystals (or metallomesogens) and liquid crystal macrocycles. He then moved to Queen’s University in Kingston (ON) as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Robert P. Lemieux working on ferroelectric liquid crystal mixtures with a DAAD/NATO postdoctoral fellowship. In 2003 he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manitoba, where he is currently an Associate Professor focusing on the design and synthesis of different nanocomposites as well as on structure-property relationships in these materials. With the support of the 2009 CNC/IUPAC Travel Award, Hegmann will attend the 42nd IUPAC Congress “Chemistry Solutions” in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) in August 2009.

Laurel Schafer, University of British Columbia - Laurel Schafer received her PhD in 1999 from the University of Victoria under the supervision of Prof. David Berg. She then took an NSERC PDF to the University of California Berkeley to work with Prof. T. Don Tilley. In 2001 she was awarded an NSERC University Faculty Award and joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007.  Since beginning her independent career she has received the Boehringer Ingelheim Young Investigator Award for Organic Synthesis (2004), a Teaching Excellence Award (2004) and she is presently an A. P. Sloan Fellow (2007 - 2009). Her research focuses on the application of early transition metal amidate complexes as tunable and novel complexes for the catalytic synthesis of amines. With the assistance of the CNC/IUPAC Travel Award for 2009 she will attend the 15th IUPAC Symposium on Organometallic Chemistry Directed Towards Organic Synthesis in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) in July 2009.

Aaron Wheeler, University of Toronto – Aaron Wheeler joined the University of Toronto as a faculty member in July 2005, with a primary appointment in the Department of Chemistry and cross-appointments at the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research (BBDMR). During his short time in Toronto, Wheeler has been awarded the Canadian Society of Chemistry Fred Beamish Award in Analytical Chemistry, and the Canada Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry. Prior to coming to Toronto, Wheeler completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry working with Dick Zare at Stanford University, and then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, working with Robin Garrell (Chemistry and Biochemistry), CJ Kim (Mechanical Engineering), and Joe Loo (Biological Chemistry). Wheeler's research interests include microfluidics, proteomics, high-throughput screening, separations, mass spectrometry, and cell-based assays. Wheeler will use the CNC-IUPAC award to participate in the 42nd IUPAC World Chemistry Congress, which will be held in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) in August 2009.