{"id":31141,"date":"2024-04-12T16:29:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T20:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=31141"},"modified":"2024-05-28T19:10:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T23:10:44","slug":"skyler-warf-24-wins-best-poster-at-acs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/skyler-warf-24-wins-best-poster-at-acs\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyler Warf ’24 wins best poster at American Chemical Society national meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Skyler Warf \u201924 never imagined she\u2019d win an award at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society<\/a> in New Orleans. She briefly stepped away from the poster session floor for a break and nearly missed her name being called as winner of the ACS Poster Award in Computational Chemistry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was super flattering and unexpected,\u201d said Warf who presented a poster based on her work with Chemistry Professor George Shields<\/a>, “Prebiotic Peptide Formation in Gas-Phase Atmospheric Nanoclusters of Water: From Glycine to Diglycine to Triglycine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work was published last year with Warf as second author in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics<\/a>. The paper looked at how amino acids on primordial Earth locked arms to form the first peptides, small chains of amino acids necessary to form larger proteins that make up life.<\/p>\n

The winning poster wasn\u2019t the only one Warf prepared. She also presented a poster focused on research with Chemistry Professor Greg Springsteen<\/a>, \u201cEsterification of Carboxylic Acids using a Diverse Suite of Chlorosilanes.\u201d The paper explores how to decrease the amount of chemical waste coming out of organic chemistry labs by identifying safer, cheaper chemicals that have a longer shelf life for conducting esterification, a chemical reaction in which two reactants (typically an alcohol and an acid) form an ester and water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will save organic chemists time and money by not wasting chemicals that expire, and it will help the environment by decreasing waste flow,\u201d Warf said. She expects to be first author on the manuscript, which will be submitted for journal publication.<\/p>\n

Undergrads don\u2019t typically work in multiple labs. But it turns out COVID constraints in 2020 made remote computational work with Shields more feasible. Wrapping up two years\u2019 work under Shields\u2019s mentorship<\/a>, Warf decided to get exposure in a \u201cwet\u201d lab setting. That\u2019s when she took a bench in Springsteen\u2019s organic lab.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Warf has big decisions to make about where she\u2019ll pursue her doctorate as two R1 universities are putting on the full court press. She\u2019ll leave Furman with a published paper, one in the queue, and mentoring experience as a senior in Springsteen\u2019s lab. She\u2019ll cap things off with a May Experience in the British Isles to participate in \u201cCanterbury Trails: A Study of Pilgrimage<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she\u2019s grateful to be a part of the chemistry department\u2019s<\/a> \u201cfamily-oriented culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fellow senior majors will attest to this, too. We get a lot of support from the professors. They give you really difficult work, and they have incredibly high expectations, but it doesn’t come without support,\u201d Warf said.<\/p>\n

From interpreting figures or helping with other academic work to providing a listening ear about social struggles or even missing home, Warf said professors\u2019 doors are always open. \u201cThat kind of care is so important in such a challenging major. That\u2019s definitely got me through, I\u2019d say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warf presented two posters at the ACS National meeting. One of them earned “best poster” recognition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":31142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,53,35,47,61,55],"tags":[371,239,2715,2714,553],"class_list":["post-31141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-admission","category-chemistry","category-parent-news","category-study-away-and-international-education","category-the-furman-advantage","category-undergraduate-research","tag-american-chemical-society","tag-computational-chemistry","tag-faculty-mentorship","tag-organic-chemistry","tag-origins-of-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32341,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31141\/revisions\/32341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}