14th Excellence in Polymer Graduate Research Symposium 

New Orleans, LA  March 18-22, 2018

see previous years

The fourteen symposium on "Excellence in Polymer Graduate Research" took place at the national ACS meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 18-22, 2018.  The purpose of this symposium was to provide recognition to outstanding graduate students in polymer science and engineering, to foster networking and exposure, and to help develop the careers of future leaders in our field.  We publicized this symposium via the POLY list server, POLY web page, and direct email messages to over 100 departments that are active in polymer research.  We requested that each department nominate one outstanding graduate student to speak on his or her original research in this special symposium.  Each student filled out an application form and had a nominating letter from the research advisor and a letter from the department head.
 
This year we had 39 students in the symposium, with 28 oral presentations and 11 posters.  The oral presentations were well done, and the poster session was also successful with a lot of traffic and good discussions in front of the posters.  For both oral and poster sessions, the scientific quality of the papers was generally high. 

Prof. Peter Dorhout, 2018 ACS President, visited the symposium at around noon on Monday to give an encouraging talk to the students.  He was introduced by Dr. Diana Gerbi, the 2018 POLY Chair. A group photo was taken with the students, Prof. Dorhout and Dr. Gerbi.  As part of the recognition, each student received a certificate plus a cash award.  In addition, Wiley (Journal of Polymer Science) presented book awards (worth $250 each) to four students (Yuwei Gu, Ru Xie, Victoria Kensy, and Julia Pribyl) in recognition of outstanding papers.

This symposium was sponsored by the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division (POLY), and cosponsored by Presidential Event (PRES), Younger Chemists Committee (YCC), Division of Professional Relations (PROF), and Society Committee on Education (SOCED).  The symposium had the generous support of POLY, Industrial Advisory Board of the Polymer Division (IAB), Tosoh, and Wiley.  The detailed symposium program is attached below.
 
Symposium Organizing Committee:
H. N. Cheng, USDA
Christopher Ellison, University of Minnesota
Christine Landry-Coltrain, Eastman Kodak Company
Timothy E. Long, Virginia Tech