Call for Applications for 2021 Undergraduate Student Research Awards
Submissions due Monday April 19, 2021
The Mid-Hudson Section of the American Chemical Society invites applications for the 2021 Mid-Hudson valley ACS Undergraduate Student Research Awards from student researchers who plan to present their work at the 2021 symposium. Outstanding submissions will be selected to each receive a monetary award. This is a separate application and is not required of all students presenting posters only those students who wish to be considered for this very prestigious award need apply.
Rationale The Mid-Hudson Section wishes to reward undergraduate students who choose to write a short summary about their research and scholarship activities. The paper is to be written for a general scientific audience who is not familiar with the specifics of the research but who does have a chemical background.
Criteria Research work should be completed by a student currently enrolled (2020-2021 academic year) as an undergraduate at one of the colleges in the Mid-Hudson ACS area. Students must also present their work at the virtual 2021 Mid-Hudson ACS Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium organized by Mount Saint Mary College on April 27, 2021.
Application Format and Procedure: All papers submitted must be primarily chemistry, not biology or physics. Format: The paper must be written in Microsoft Word with a font type of New Times Roman and a font size 12. Margins should be set to the Narrow setting under page layout/margins in Word. The description part of the paper may not be longer than two pages; however, the Acknowledgments and References may cause the paper to run longer. Any papers longer than the requested two written pages will not be considered.
When compiling the report it is very important to consider that your paper will be critiqued by people who have no background in your specific area of research although they will be professional chemists. Therefore, you need to explain your research to them in terms they can understand without the specific background you have been immersed in while doing the research. This is the most important aspect of the paper for many of the reviewers. If the reviewers do not understand the research paper, they will generally give it a poor review regardless of the validity of the actual research. The paper should be written in normal scientific format and divided into appropriate sections and must have the following order:
1) Title with authors: The title of the paper should be at the top with the authors underneath. The student submitting the paper for the award must be clearly indicated by bolding and underlining that author. 2) Introduction: Keep in mind that the judges for the paper come from a wide variety of chemical backgrounds and will almost assuredly not be familiar with your research or your area of specialization. You need to clearly outline what you are doing and why it is being done. 3) Experimental: Just a brief review of your experimental design and data is needed. 4) Results and Discussion: This is your chance to WOW the judges with your fabulous work. Remember the judges will not be familiar with your work so you must educate them. Now, after years of learning and studying, is your chance to educate us the reviewers. Make sure you include all chemical structures, equations and reactions. Remember, although you have spent many hours intimately involved in this research and thus all the reactions and chemicals are as familiar to you as your best buddies, they will be new to the judges. The better the judges understand exactly what you are doing and what you have accomplished the better your chances at winning the award. Do not be shy about drawing chemical structures and writing out the reactions as these are some of the best ways to help other chemists understand exactly what your research is about. 5) Conclusion: This needs to be consistent with the introduction and should obviously quickly summarize what your research has accomplished and if applicable where it will be going in the near future. 6) Acknowledgments and References: This part of the paper may exceed the two-page limit and should be as extensive and comprehensive as needed. 7) In Summary: Again, it is important to remember the judges are not experts in your area of research so your job is to educate them on your research and impress upon them how exciting and interesting the work you have been doing actually is. This does not mean you have to be overly technical in your writing as it need to be understood by a more general audience. You should include all the relevant chemistry being careful to include all important chemical structures and reactions but make sure the paper is readable and flows well. The judges, who are chemists, volunteer their time to judge this competition and will not spend excessive amounts of time trying to decipher cryptic or non-coherent writing. As a parting note, remember the judges must be able to understand exactly what you have accomplished so a poorly organized and poorly worded paper will not impress the judges. Good luck on your submission and the judges are looking forward to learning about your research.
Submission procedure: Applications should be sent by e-mail as an attached Word Document to Dr. Timothy MacMahon e-mail: aa2mk@aol.com by Monday April 19, 2021. Please indicate in the subject line of the e-mail that you are submitting an application for the URS Student Research Award so it does not accidently get deleted. A confirmation that the submission has been received will be sent back to all who enter a paper.
2020 Undergraduate Student Research Paper Award Recipients
The Mid-Hudson Section of the American Chemical Society is pleased to present the following Mid-Hudson ACS Undergraduate Research Paper Awards to local student researchers who submitted research papers on their current work. A panel of judges from the Section determined these to be of the highest caliber. The student's name, college and paper title are listed below.
Henry Liu, Vassar College Synthesis, Characterization and in vitro Anticancer Screening of (O-isopropyldithiocarbonato-S)-triphenylphosphine-gold(I)
Thomas Alvermann, United States Military Academy at West Point Conductive Noble Metal/Silk Fibroin Films for Bioelectronics Applications
Ryan Kreiser, United States Military Academy at West Point Development of preventative Measures to Counteract the Cytotoxicity of Protein Misfolded Oligomers
Payton Boylston, United States Military Academy at West Point Rheology of CHOCOLATE
Eunice Koh, United States Military Academy at West Point Synthesis and Characterization of Conductive Nonporous Silica
Recipients of 2019 Undergraduate Research Paper Awards
Undergraduate Research Awards were presented to student researchers during the 2019 Undergraduate Research Symposium
Mark H. Jaskot (United States Military Academy at West Point): 3D Layer-by-Layer Electrostatic Assembly of Graphene-Noble Metal Thin Films for Energy Storage and Conversion Applications
Grant R. Hall (United States Military Academy at West Point): Viability of a Rhodamine-B Derivative as a "Turn-on" Chemosensor for GX Agents
Ross Poulin (United States Military Academy at West Point): Chemical Crosslinking Graphene Oxide with Deoxyribonucleic Acid and Protein Reaction Centers to Create Aerogels for Use in Biosensors
2018 Undergraduate Student Research Awards Paper Submissions
The Mid-Hudson Section of the American Chemical Society presented four 2018 Mid-Hudson valley ACS Undergraduate Research Awards to local student researchers who presented their work at the 2018 undergraduate poster symposium. The Mid-Hudson Section rewarded undergraduate students who wrote a short summary about their research and scholarship activities. The following students received a monetary award and were recognized at the symposium for their outstanding submissions:
Aakriti Ramayani "Efficient Synthesis of Iodo-Alcohols"
Aron Sulovari "Synthesis, Characterization and Computational Analysis of Ruthenium-p-cymene Metal Complexes with Hispolon Derivatives"
Kelly Wen "Structural Characterization and Investigation of Antioxidant Properties of Emodin and Osthole, Constituents found in Goji Berries and C. Monnieri and used in Traditional Chinese Medicine"
Madeleine D. Breshears "Synthesis of carbon nanotube-DNA hybrid molecules and characterization of DNA-drug interactions using Raman spectroscopy"
