This weekend, four students will accompany George Shields, Winslow Professor of Chemistry, to the 44th annual Sanibel Symposium held by the University of Florida's Quantum Theory Project. The symposium, which annually attracts over 250 chemists and physicists from over 30 nations, is being held this year in St. Augustine, Fl., from Feb. 28 – March 5. The students, Gabrielle Markeson '04, Frank Pickard '05, Becky Shepherd '06, and Meghan Dunn (a George Washington University student who does summer research at Hamilton) will present posters on their research with Professor Shields at the conference.
Shepherd '06 is presenting a poster titled "Abstraction of Hydrogen after Bergman Cyclization of Benzannelated Enediynes with Ortho Substituents," discussing her research on a group of natural anti-cancer antibiotics called enediynes which cleave DNA. Pickard '05 is also presenting a poster on enediynes, called "The Enediyne Anticancer Antibiotics: A Study of the Bergman Cyclization Energy Barriers of Esperamicin A1 Using ONIOM DTF/MM Methods." Markeson '04 is presenting a poster titled "Anti-Breast Cancer Drug Design", discussing her research into selective estrogen receptor molecules (SERMs), which can serve as antagonists in some tissues and agonists in others. Meghan Dunn, a junior at George Washington, will present a poster on her research with Professor Shields into the thermodynamics of water clusters in the atmosphere, and how they affect atmospheric chemistry and global warming.
--Caroline O'Shea '07
