Students to Present Research and Receive Honorable Mention at ACS National Meeting The Stern College for Women Chemistry Club, a student affiliate chapter of the American Chemical Society (ACS), has been awarded a grant to subsidize student travel to the spring ACS national meeting in San Francisco, California this April, where the chapter will also receive an honorable mention award for their activities and membership. This is the ninth consecutive year the Stern College chapter has been awarded this grant.

Jordana Gross and Michelle Shakid, co-presidents of the Stern College for Women Chemistry Club

The club’s co-presidents, Jordana Gross and Michelle Shakib, worked with Dr. Donald Estes, senior laboratory instructional specialist in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at Stern College, to complete the proposal for the grant. Estes noted that the “grant will help defray the travel costs of students attending the April event who are slated to do presentations and who will accept the ACS honorable mention award on behalf of the club.”

Miriam Saffern will present her poster detailing her work on C. difficile.

This year, the two winners of the College’s annual poster competition, Lior Levy and Miriam Saffern, will attend and present at the meeting. Levy’s poster is  “Male Sex Hormones Regulate Human Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase System Through the Modulation of Cationic Amino Acid Transporter-1.” Saffern’s research is titled “Role of IL-17a in fecal microbiota transplant mediated clearance of C. Difficile infection.” Co-president Shakib is very excited about the honor being bestowed upon by the ACS, as well as the Chemistry Club’s work on their 2016-2017 theme of Fun with Food, which offers educational programming for public school students. “Society today puts more emphasis on being health conscious than ever before,” she said, “so our goal is to conduct an interactive chemistry lesson with the students of at the Henrietta Szold School on the Lower East Side. We will plan a number of entertaining, interactive activities, like creating their own healthier alternative for ice cream, exemplifying the relevance of chemistry to food used on the human body.” The hope is to educate and excite students about chemistry using food, as well as teaching them the hazardous and beneficial components of their everyday diet.”