Several chemistry students attended the 257th National American Chemical Society Meeting March 31-April 4 in Orlando, Florida.

All eight of our students who attended also presented:

• Michael Bakker
• Jaclyn Becker
• Ben Boyd
• Molly Duszynski
• Allison Freese
• Koby Ljunggren
• Alec Neeson
• Megan Prado

DNA and outstanding posters

Ljunggren won an award. He was recognized with the Outstanding Student Poster Award in the Division of Physical Chemistry.

His research is about damaged DNA. He looks at the structural dynamics and how the damage affects the sequences. The next step is to model the DNA in three dimensions.

Dr. Gary Meints, chemistry associate professor, is his adviser.

Ljunggren was glad the conference was more than an opportunity to present.

“As an undergraduate, this conference was incredibly important to me because it allowed me to present my work to a broad audience,” he said. “It’s also an excellent opportunity to explore different facets of chemistry as I think about graduate school and my future career.”

Versatility of science

Another student, Bakker, presented on improvements to biodiesel. He wants to expose it to extremely high temperatures and form gasoline. Though his research is theoretical, the results show significance in relation to empirical investigations.

Bakker also enjoyed the variety of chemists at the conference.

“It was riveting to interact with experts of the field, many of which before were simply names on a paper or citations in a journal,” Bakker said.

Dr. Matthew Siebert, chemistry associate professor, is his adviser.