Profile

Naresh Sunkara has been appointed to serve on the Graduate Education Advisory Board (GEAB) of the American Chemical Society (ACS). This three-year appointment will begin at the Spring 2007 ACS National Meeting in Chicago, IL. He will work on a committee consisting of 9 senior ACS members and a postdoctoral appointee at each ACS national meeting. The American Chemical Society founded in 1876 is a self-governed individual membership organization that consists of more than 158,000 members at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry. ACS is the largest scientific society in the world.

The Younger Chemists Committee (YCC) of the American Chemical Society (ACS) received 30 applications nationwide to select a graduate student leader to serve on this distinguished and influential committee of the ACS. The YCC program recognizes emerging leaders in the profession who are especially interested in shaping the future of chemistry graduate education.

The GEAB advises the ACS Office of Graduate Education (OGE) on all matters relevant to graduate education within the chemical sciences. Issues that the GEAB has identified as particularly important for the OGE to address include, but are not limited to, student-professor relationships, advisor-advisee responsibilities, the digital divide, degree requirements, and relations between businesses and graduate programs. For more information about ACS education-related activities and other issues relevant to younger chemists, please visit www.acs.org/education and www.acs.org/ycc.

Naresh Sunkara is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, working in the research laboratory of Dr. Katherine Seley(Radtke). His work encompasses the synthesis and methodological development of anti-cancer and anti-viral drugs. Naresh is presently the President of the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and had previously served as the Vice president of the GSA and chaired the Graduate Research Conference (GRC) in 2006.