Postdoctoral chemist wins dissertation prize
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Michelle Chrétien’s doctoral dissertation was recently awarded a prize by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Photo by andrew dobrowolskyj
Michelle Chrétien, an NSERC postdoctoral fellow in a group supervised by Ann English, has won an IUPAC Award, a major prize in its field.
IUPAC stands for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Their Prizes for Young Chemists are given for the best PhD theses in the chemical sciences, as described in 1,000-word essays.
Chrétien wrote her thesis on “Photochemical, Photophysical, and Photobiological Studies of Zeolite Guest-Host Complexes.” She did her PhD at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Professor J.C. (Tito) Scaiano.
“My research is primarily focused on the chemistry of nitric oxide (NO) and other NOx species that influence key biological functions, including vasodilation, neuronal signaling, and immune response,” she told us by email.
“In the lab, we are working to understand how NO exerts its influence by chemically modifying proteins such as hemoglobin and GAP-DH, and peptide hormones such as oxytocin, which can profoundly affect their biological actions.
“We are particularly interested in metalloprotein-catalyzed processes that promote NO-transfer between biomolecules. We hope that these studies will improve our understanding of the molecular basis for cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration."
Chrétien works in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Centre for Biological Applications of Mass Spectrometry here at Concordia. While she is not formally teaching in the classroom, she trains graduate students and supervises undergraduate summer students in the lab.
Like the other four other IUPAC winners, who were from Italy, the U.K. and the U.S.A., she will get $1,000 US cash and a trip to the IUPAC Congress in August 2007 in Torino, Italy, where the awards will be presented.
Each prizewinner has been invited to present an academic poster at the IUPAC Congress and submit a short critical review on aspects of their research topics to be published in Pure and Applied Chemistry.
There were 49 applicants from 19 countries. Fiorenzo Vetrone, who completed his PhD with John Capobianco, was a runner-up. Vetrone and a colleague appeared on the front page of the Journal’s last issue, May 4.