Richardson to Berkeley by Way of Boston: UT Dallas Grad Dodani Makes Detour to Collect $5,000 Women in Chemistry Scholarship

 

Sheel Dodani of Plano, Texas, received her B.S. degree in chemistry from The University of Texas at Dallas on May 5 and will soon be headed to the University of California, Berkeley, where she will enroll this fall in the Ph.D. program in chemistry.  But before she heads west, Dodani will make a detour to Boston to pick up a $5,000 scholarship from a major pharmaceutical company at a national chemical society meeting.

 

Dodani recently learned she is a winner of a prestigious Merck Index Women in Chemistry Scholarship from the pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co.  The awards are granted to outstanding women entering into a graduate program in synthetic organic or medicinal chemistry.  Dodani will receive her award at the 234th national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society, to be held in Boston August 19-23.

 

Dodani will also have an opportunity to present research she conducted at UT Dallas as part of the “Many Faces of Chemistry:  The Merck Index Women in Chemistry Award Symposium” to be conducted during the meeting.

 

The scholarship is the second major honor won by Dodani in the past six months. Last November, she won the $1,000 second-place award in the inaugural Frank and Sara McKnight Prize in Undergraduate Chemistry competition conducted by The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

 

The Merck Index is an encyclopedia of chemicals, drugs and biologicals, which is produced by the pharmaceutical company.

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