Finishing It Up!

    The end is near, and this past week made it clear. The biggest thing I had going on was I had to present my senior chemistry capstone on Friday afternoon. For this, I gave a 50-minute presentation on the research I did at the University of Michigan last summer, and also had to write it up as a thesis as well. Basically, this was the last thing I had to do related to chemistry to get my degree, so I’m glad that’s done.
    The DUCURS conference was a huge success this year! There were more poster presentations than ever this year (60!), and those who came to check it out were curious and had lots of good questions.
    This coming Friday will be the annual street painting event that kicks off Drake Relays! Earlier this week, I met up with some others from the chem club to synthesize (haha) a design for this year’s theme, “Defining Blue”. The theme is always abstract and open ended, so we decided to go a little geeky on this and interpreted it literally (blue light has a wavelength of 475 nm). Check out the design below. Weather pending, the square should be painted this Friday.
    On a less fun note, because of the shortened semester and due to relays next week, this week will not be fun at all. I have three tests, and a huge paper due next weekend. On the bright side, there shouldn’t be much happening school wise during relays, so that’s a plus. Hard to believe that classes will be finished in less than a month!

With my Metallacrown poster at DUCURS

The 2013 Chemistry Club Street Painting Design!

DUCURS

    This Thursday, the 10th annual Drake University Conference on Undergraduate Research in the Sciences (DUCURS) will take place on campus. It’s an opportunity for students who have conducted research at Drake (or through an internship) to present and share their findings. Departments from biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science and policy, psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, computer science, biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology, and pharmaceutical sciences will all share their findings.
    It’s a full day event that includes oral and poster presentations and a lunchin including a keynote speaker. This will be the first year I’ll be presenting at DUCURS. I have a poster display summarizing the chemistry research I did last summer at the University of Michigan. The title of my poster is: “Synthesis of Chiral Zinc Metallacrowns for Application in Second Harmonic Generation”. I’ll be sure to share my reaction and some pictures from the event. To learn more about DUCURS, click HERE.