The ACS National Meetings are a unique experience. These biannual conferences bring together a massive gathering of chemists from all over the world to discuss their research and highlight the chemical experience.
The Chemical Society of Washington wants to empower you to share in that experience. To do that, CSW offers a competitive student travel award to help members participate.
CSW students have had some amazing experiences taking advantage of these travel awards. Wola Osunsade used her award to travel to San Francisco for the 2014 Fall Meeting. Fighting through nervousness (and getting a little bit lost), she made it to the Moscone Center and immersed herself in the experience.
“Attending the ACS meeting allowed me to feel connected to chemistry, and other chemists in a way that I had never felt before. I felt tremendously relieved to be around so many people I felt connected to through our shared love. I was reminded why I had chosen chemistry as a major, and reassured in that choice. Perhaps most unexpectedly, I began to see ACS – and consequently CSW and the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, who helped fund my attendance at the meeting – as more than a faceless corporate entity, but rather as my professional organization. It is one I anticipate becoming more involved in as my scientific career develops.”
Madeleine Bee also took advantage of the student travel award. Madeleine leveraged her time in San Francisco to study the most important solution chemistry has ever invented: wine.
“I’m hoping to go on to pursue a Ph.D. in Food Science, and what better to study than wine? (Is this not every college students dream?) One feature of this year’s conference in particular was the Advances in Wine Research symposium. Applying analytical chemistry techniques to wine and grape analysis and working in flavor chemistry is definitely not for most college students (sorry guys), but it is for me! I learned so much about the field and was really able to narrow my interests and how my experiences in chemistry research connect to the food science world.”
Journeying to a big city in the U.S. for the first time was a big highlight of Tao Ye’s trip to Denver for the most recent National Meeting. For him, it was the aura, the sheer feeling of excitement that stood out. Standing below the big blue bear peering into the Denver Convention Center was a defining moment:
“There seemed to be a smell, an odor of science and chemistry as I entered the conference hall facing an infinite of young graduate students, researchers, and scientists. Their presence created a remarkable degree of excitement and a dense academic environment in the Convention Center.”
Their experiences can be your experiences! CSW is now accepting applications for the next National Meeting in Boston. The Boston meeting will be held August 16-20, 2015. The topic for the meeting is “Innovation from Discovery to Application.” The award is open to students who are graduate and undergraduate students in the jurisdiction of the Chemical Society of Washington.
For more information, and for details on how to apply, check out the application process here. Take advantage of this opportunity to experience a National Meeting!
For more information on the Student Travel Award, please look here. Read more stories about the student experience at ACS National Meetings and using the CSW Student Travel Award.
Contact [email protected] with additional questions.
