Graduate students Hsu-Chun Tsai and Yujun Tao were awarded this year's Reid and Van Dyke Award for Excellence in Research. Both Hsu and Yujun are forth year Ph.D. candidates.

The Reid award comes from a chemistry fellowship fund established by the late Dr. Thomas Reid, a Rutgers undergraduate alumnus, who went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and a very successful career as an organic chemist at the 3M Corporation, where he developed the material that is the basis of the ScotchgardTM treatment used in many products.

The Van Dyke Award recognizes full-time graduate students that show excellence in their Ph.D. research. Francis C. Van Dyke was appointed Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Queens (later Rutgers) College in 1871. Over a long career here, he taught physics, botany, and physiology, as well as chemistry, and served as Dean of the College from 1901-1913. The Van Dyke endowment was set up with funds from a bequest by Prof. Van Dyke's niece.