Medford Native Named SURE Summer Scholar at Stonehill

Medford native Michael Smith, a member of the Class of 2016 at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., has been named a Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Summer 2015 Scholar. The SURE program provides students with an opportunity to perform significant, publishable research under the guidance of an experienced faculty researcher at the College.

The research experience will help to provide students with a competitive advantage in graduate and professional school applications and in post-college employment opportunities, as well as to provide assistance to faculty in research activities.

Smith will be working with Professor and Chair of Chemistry Louis Liotta and two other Stonehill students on various synthesis projects

During past summers, Professor Liotta’s groups have developed a process for efficiently converting commercially-available sugars into iminosugars.

The students will be responsible for synthesizing, purifying and characterizing specific compounds as well as investigating the usefulness of a new synthetic approach. The students will be encouraged to present their findings at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society and will prepare a report that will serve as a basis for an article in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

Smith is a Biochemistry major.

– Submitted by Stonehill College