Ontario undergrads studying chemistry will converge at York University on Saturday, March 18 when the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science hosts the 45th Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference.
Undergraduate students at this conference will have an opportunity to present and discuss their investigations, interact with professors and peers, and gain some insight into the research side of academics.
This year, organizers are expecting approximately 300 fourth-year research project students to attend from across Ontario.
The conference is a long-running annual event for chemistry students in Southern Ontario (this year, it has expanded to include most of Ontario) who are doing their fourth-year honours research projects.
Students will be considered for prizes for best talk in each of the divisions: Analytical, Biological, Organic/Materials, Inorganic/Materials, Computational and Other, and the top three in each division will win prizes with estimated values of: $300 for first place; $150 for second place; and $50 for third place.
This year’s keynote speaker will be Voislav Blagojevic, a York chemistry graduate who started his own successful company, Vida Inc., in the automotive sector. His company is developing new catalytic converter technology that improves fuel efficiency in cars. He will talk about how he used his education in chemistry to start a business.
This year’s conference is organized by: Nicole Chevannes-McGregor, administrative assistant for York’s ORU-Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry; Ruqaiya Qureshi, York Chemistry Club; and Derek Wilson, professor and director of the ORU-Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry.
The event is sponsored by Sciex, the Canadian Institute for Chemistry, The Canadian Journal for Chemistry, the Canadian Association for Theoretical Chemistry, York University, and the Mass Spectrometry Enabled Science & Engineering (MS-ESE) CREATE program.
For more information, visit souscc45.ca.