Saturday, July 14, 2007

Two prize winners

This past week, The University of Pittsburgh hosted its annual biology conference: Science 2006. A number of exciting things happen at this event. Among them are the free lunches (pizza on Thursday and hoagies on Friday).

Additionally, there is a 'poster session', in which graduate students present their current research in the form of a poster. Of the 200 posters, 12 finalists are selected and one grand prize winner is crowned. It's basically a science fair for grown-ups. I was selected as a finalist but did not win the grand prize.

In a less prestigious award ceremony, Pitt bestows upon one nationally recognized scientist the Dickson Prize which carries with it a $50,000 honorarium. Since the prize's inception in the 1970's, 5 Dickson Prize winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

Pitt knows how to pick 'em. This year's recipient was Roger Kornberg. The day before he came to Pitt to accept his prize, Dr. Kornberg received a call from Stockholm at 2:30am notifying him that he had been chosen as this year's recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This award brought Kornberg $1.4 million.

He came to Pitt the next day to accept his Dickson prize. I attended his acceptance lecture. When he heard that I, a poster session finalist, was in attendance, he insisted upon meeting me and posing together in a picture. Naturally, I complied. You can find that picture by linking to my pics from my main profile page. The picture is entitled "Two prize winners." From left to right, you will see me standing and Dr. Kornberg seated. Just thought I'd share this image of such combined prestige with the masses. Enjoy.




Originally Posted: Tuesday, October 8, 2006
(Then) Curent Mood: impressed
http://blog.myspace.com/yajeev

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats man. Like two models.

Posted by Russ on Sunday, October 08, 2006 at 7:59 PM