Alfred R. Bader Award for Student Innovation

Mer­ck, the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, rec­og­nized four grad­u­ate stu­dents for their research and inno­va­tions in syn­thet­ic organ­ic chem­istry as part of the Alfred R. Bad­er Stu­dent Chem­istry Sym­po­sium in Darm­stadt, Ger­many, on Sep­tem­ber 27. Stu­dents pre­sent­ed their research to an audi­ence of Mer­ck staff and guests and a pan­el of judges select­ed Tim Gatzen­meier from the Max-Planck-Insti­tut für Kohlen­forschung, Mul­heim, Ger­many, for the $3,000 grand prize based on his research in asym­met­ric enan­tios­e­lec­tive organocatalysis.

“As a long­stand­ing leader and col­lab­o­ra­tor in the chem­istry space, Mer­ck always looks for­ward to learn­ing from and acknowl­edg­ing the research of these young sci­en­tists. What is espe­cial­ly excit­ing is wit­ness­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive prob­lem solv­ing and curios­i­ty in action that are dri­ving dis­cov­er­ies around the world.”
Udit Batra, mem­ber of the Mer­ck Exec­u­tive Board CEO, Life Science

Win­ners of $1,000 prizes were:

• Gabriel Lovinger; Boston Col­lege, USA, Con­junc­tive Cross-Cou­pling: Devel­op­ment and Explo­ration of New Reactions
• Jacob Lud­wig; Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, USA, Cat­alyt­ic Car­bonyl Olefin Metathesis
• Hiro­ki Sato; Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, USA, Devel­op­ment of new cycload­di­tion reac­tions of diols and their appli­ca­tions: bridge between syn­thet­ic chem­istry and mate­r­i­al science

This year’s final­ists pre­sent­ed projects about syn­thet­ic method­olo­gies and reac­tions for organ­ic syn­the­sis, a field ulti­mate­ly focused on the cre­ation of syn­thet­ic mol­e­cules for new drugs, per­for­mance mate­ri­als and agri­cul­tur­al products.
The Alfred R. Bad­er Award for Stu­dent Inno­va­tion com­pe­ti­tion was open to advanced grad­u­ate stu­dents in syn­thet­ic organ­ic chem­istry from around the world and rec­og­nizes young chemists whose work is expect­ed to accel­er­ate progress in chem­istry. The con­test theme this year was the devel­op­ment of instru­men­ta­tion broad­ly applic­a­ble to syn­thet­ic organ­ic chem­istry and the reac­tive use of cur­rent reagents, cat­a­lysts and lig­ands in method­ol­o­gy or total syn­the­sis projects. The award is named for Sig­ma-Aldrich co-founder Alfred R. Bader.