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Fine Chemicals Group

Postgraduates to vie for symposia prizes

For the past 16 years SCI’s Fine Chemicals Group has organised regional symposia on the theme of novel organic chemistry. These are aimed at graduate students in the final year of their doctoral studies. The SCI is now seeking nominations for the 17th annual meetings which will be held in April.

The symposia comprise eight to 12 talks, each of 20 minutes. The best lecture in each symposium, judged by content and presentation, will receive an SCI Fine Chemicals Group prize of £200 with a runner-up prize of £100.

In addition, the regional winners will receive free bursaries to attend the SCI’s ‘Synthesis from the Six Nations’ meeting on 25 April 2006. The past few years have seen a very high standard of presentations at all symposia, and these meetings provide an opportunity to celebrate the best innovative chemistry research being conducted in the UK.

The group is hoping to attract a broad spectrum of topics related to fine chemicals. Most organic chemistry research – synthesis, mechanism or analysis – falls into this remit and the group welcomes contributions from all these areas. We invite all UK university chemistry departments to nominate final-year PhD students from which successful candidates will give one of the lectures at the symposium closest to their institution. Travel expenses will be paid for all speakers. In addition to the lectures, there will be an informal ‘wine mixer’ at the end of each meeting.

As representatives from industry are invited, there will be ample opportunity for student participants to find out more about the fine chemical industry – including pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and other sectors. This will be particularly useful for second-year postgraduates considering their future careers.

The nomination form is available from the SCI web site www.soci.org/sci/events/listall.jsp. Nominees should provide details of speakers including postal and e-mail addresses along with an abstract from the planned presentation of up to 200 words, with structures as appropriate and a title. This should preferably be sent in rich text format as an e-mail attachment.

The group urges members of university chemistry departments and their students to attend the symposia and we look forward to the support of industry representatives. Nominations must be received by 17 February 2006.