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The Eighth Annual National MERCURY Conference on Computational Chemistry, devoted solely to undergraduates who are working on research projects in computational chemistry, was held at Hamilton from August 2 - 4. Hamilton, National Science Foundation and SGI provided support for the conference.

Michael “Doc” Woods, professor of music, wrote a guest editorial for the Utica Observer-Dispatch (8/2/09) titled “Paying the price of being talented – and black.” The piece discussed the recent controversial arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates and described Woods’ experience of racial profiling when he was followed by a police car after stopping to ask for directions to a symphony office.

Michael Bethoney ’11 is a self-proclaimed “political junkie loser,” but he characterizes himself as such jocularly. He is among dozens of other interns working in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s Commonwealth Corps Department, and they all share the same love for campaigns, grassroots organizing and other political programs. Bethoney obtained the position at the Massachusetts State House through Hamilton alumnus Mark Lilienthal ’97, who is Governor Patrick’s Director of Constituent Services.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Debra Boutin recently published a research article "The Determining Number of a Cartesian Product" in the Journal of Graph Theory. This work continues Boutin's studies finding a smallest set of nodes that captures all the symmetries in a network. In this recent work she closely bounds the size of such a set in a large class of networks created by taking products of smaller networks.

Laura DeFrank ’10 never thought she'd take a science course after high school. In fact, most of her college search centered on schools that would exempt her from that requirement. As a sophomore at Hamilton, she took Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale’s Principles of Archaeology class, only intending to count it toward her anthropology major. But she enjoyed the class more than she expected, and her attitude toward science courses changed. “I guess I just never found the right one until now,” she said.

In the current economic climate, obtaining a degree in economics could actually be very profitable as a new economist could make an astounding breakthrough in financial theory. Daniel Bunger ’11 is one of these students whose studies could catapult him into a successful career. This summer, he is researching co-operative banks with the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics Derek Jones.

Last May, TIME’s senior correspondent for the Middle East described Edward S. Walker, Jr., ’62 as “among the finest American diplomats to have served in the State Department” in a piece titled “Wise Men To Obama: ‘We Stand With You.’”

Hamilton College Opportunity Programs students got a taste of volunteer work when they participated in a statewide Opportunity Programs United Service Week in July.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Myriam Cotten and her research team spent two weeks in July at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla., to study membrane-active peptides. Her team comprised of Matt Baxter ’11, Olivia Lin ’12, Courtney Carroll ’11, Billy Wieczorek ’11, Jason McGavin ’12 and Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry U.S. Sudheendra, used several state-of-the-art Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instruments to obtain atomic-level information on peptide-lipid samples.

Although she was standing only two feet away in the operating room, Caitlin Williams ’11 was unable to see to the bottom of the large hole carved in the patient's brain. Using a technique called frontal craniotomy, the surgeon was removing a three-inch section that contained a massive tumor. The procedure made an impression on Williams, who is interning this summer for the Neurological Institute of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. “It truly affirmed my love of medicine and my passion to be a doctor,” she said.