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Professor and Chair of Chemistry George C. Shields attended the 44th Sanibel Symposium on Atomic, Molecular, Biophysical, and Condensed Matter Theory, March 1 - March 6, in St. Augustine, Fla.  He chaired the plenary session on Metals in Biology and conducted a workshop for graduate students and undergraduates on combined Quantum Mechanical/Molecular Mechanical (QM/MM) hybrid methods. 

In addition, three Hamilton College students presented their fundamental research focused on anti-cancer drug design, based on their previous summer work.  Frank Pickard '05 presented his poster, "The Enediyne Anticancer Antibiotics: A Study of the Bergman Cyclization Energy Barriers of Esperamicin A1 Using ONIOM DFT/MM Methods." Becky Shepherd '06 discussed her research, "Abstraction of Hydrogen after Bergman Cyclization of Benzannelated Enediynes with Ortho Substituents." Abby Markeson '04 presented her poster, "Anti-Breast Cancer Drug Design." 

In addition Meghan Dunn, George Washington University '06, who has worked in the Shields group the past two summers, presented her atmospheric chemistry work that was published in the March 3 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.  Her poster was titled "Thermodynamics of forming water clusters at various temperatures and pressures using G2, G3, CBS-QB3, & CBS-APNO model chemistries; Implications for Atmospheric Chemistry."

Each student gave a brief talk before an international audience of more than 100 scientists, and then discussed his or her work with interested scientists during the poster session. Pickard won the award for top undergraduate student poster at the conference.  All four of these students have spent multiple summers pursuing their research through the chemistry summer research program at Hamilton College.

The chemistry summer research program is an intensive 10-week program, which provides students with interdisciplinary, hands-on, research projects.  The Chemistry Department works with 25-40 Hamilton College undergraduates each summer; many of the students spend multiple summers working on research projects in biochemistry, chemistry, or chemical physics with chemistry faculty.  In May, the chemistry department moves into a new $60 million state-of-the-art science complex.  Approximately 80 students work on science research projects at Hamilton in the summer, and all Hamilton science majors complete senior thesis research projects prior to graduation.  Interested high school students should check the chemistry Web site for further details (http://www.chem.hamilton.edu).

Shields' teaching and research focus is computational physical chemistry and structural biochemistry. He also examines solvation effects to determine better methods for the incorporation of solvation into computational chemistry.  A major focus of his research is developing effective ways to design inhibitors against molecules that are active in cancer cells. He has research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Research Corporation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, ACS/PRF, Merck/AAAS, and New York State's Breast Cancer Research and Education program. His research efforts have led to more than 20 publications with undergraduate co-authors, and his undergraduates have made 47 presentations at national and international conferences.

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