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Canadian Wins IUPAC PhD Prize

Michelle Nena Chrétien was recently awarded one of the five 2006 IUPAC Prizes for Young Chemists. The awards are given for the best PhD theses in the chemical sciences as described in 1000 word essays. Chrétien completed her PhD at the University of Ottawa under the direction of Professor Tito Scaiano and is currently an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in Professor Ann English’s lab at Concordia University. Her winning essay was entitled “Photochemical, Photophysical and Photobiological Studies of Zeolite Guest-Host Complexes”.

The winners each receive a cash prize of USD 1000 and a free trip to the IUPAC Congress, 5-11 August 2007, in Torino, Italy. Prizewinners are also invited to present a poster at the IUPAC Congress describing their award winning work and to submit a short critical review on aspects of their research topics to be published in Pure and Applied Chemistry. The awards will be presented to the winners during the Opening Ceremony of the Congress.

The 2006 competition had 49 applications from 19 countries. In view of the large number of outstanding applications, the awards committee also gave two Honourable Mentions, one of which was received by Fiorenzo Vetrone from Concordia University. His PhD thesis work entitled “Luminescence Spectroscopy of Er³⁺ Doped Inorganic Nanocrystals: An Investigation into their Upconversion Properties” was carried out under the direction of Professor John A. Capobianco.