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Summer Research Awards
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All students participating in the Chemistry Olympiad are eligible to apply for an interdisciplinary undergraduate research program for the summer after their junior or senior year in high school. The application forms will be sent to them together with their score in the local section examination.
Two high school students will be chosen for this summer research internship in the laboratory of a faculty member at Canisius College. These internships will span six weeks, and will pay $8.00/hour for 40 hours per week.
This early research experience will be very beneficial to all students who are considering careers in sciences. For those who are juniors, it will also be an excellent preparation for the laboratory part of the Chemistry Olympiad in the following year.
The proposed research deals with two exciting applications of a group of the inorganic compounds called heteropoly complexes. Since 1990 the work in the laboratory of Dr. Kozik discovered two potentially very important applications of this group of compounds. The first application is in the area of diagnostic medicine and the other is in the environmental field. Promising preliminary results in both projects exist and have been published by Dr. Kozik's group in "Inorganic Chemistry," a prestigious peer-reviewed research journal.
The proposed experiments involve numerous syntheses, classical and spectroscopic characterizations of newly-prepared contrast agents and catalysts and even some in vivo trials with mice. The syntheses and in vivo studies can be carried out by students with very limited research experience, while anyone who took a general chemistry course can be trained with relative ease to operate instruments required for spectroscopic characterizations. Therefore, even high school students can make significant contributions. Their work will be supervised by Dr. Kozik and by more senior undergraduates in his laboratory.