I was there, where were you?

University Hall, at McMaster U.

The 42nd POMs, held at McMaster on November 7-9, 2014, is now in the history books. There were just over 50 registrants, some of whom presented the 21 talks and 15 posters. The topics ranged from - Acetylation to Zinc catalysis. The pdf of the program was - here.

Talk of Anabel Lanterna (U of Ottawa)

As we have come to expect at POMs , the quality of the student talks and posters was very high, in part because "our protégées" really know how to take advantage of modern graphics packages and how to use Powerpoint well.  I think us profs should take lessons from them!

John Warkentin, Ossie Tee and Nick Werstiuk on the French River.

Several speakers made references to former Mac professor John Warkentin, who died earlier in 2014. They included John Pezacki and Adrian Schwan (below), and the after-dinner speaker (moi, Ossie Tee) at the Banquet held in the University Club. My after-dinner speech largely involved a few serious and several amusing incidents involving JW over many years.

John Pezacki (left) and Adrian Schwan (right)

     John Pezacki (NRC, Ottawa) gave the last talk, entitled "Using Physical Organic Chemistry as a guide for how to best label living Bacteria". He dedicated his talk to the memory of John Warkentin who was his Ph.D. supervisor and long-time mentor. He suggested that JW's oxadiazoline method for generating nucleophilic carbenes should be referred as the "Warkentin Method".  Also, he reminded us of the J. Warkentin bursary, at McMaster, and encouraged us to support for the benefit of the next generation of chemists at McMaster. Donations may be made to the John Warkentin Bursary through -- www.givetomcmaster.ca - specifying where the contribution is to be directed.
     Sponsors of the 42nd POMs were the Faculty of Science, the School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, all of McMaster University, and also the Hamilton Section of the C.I.C. They afforded the prizes awarded to students: for talks - Serena Singh (Kluger, Toronto) and Lee Belding (Dudding, Brock); posters - Roya Mirabdolbaghi (Dudding, Brock) and Seyedeh Taimoory (Dudding, Brock). So, the Travis Dudding Group (below) almost had a shut-out.

Maryamdokht T., Travis Dudding, Lee Belding, Roya M.

Reminder: This year's POMs is scheduled for the University of Windsor, where the contact person is Holger Eichhorn. The website link is … here.