The Bard chemistry program has a long history of students going on to graduate studies. In the last fifteen years, 58 students have graduated with a concentration in chemistry, 50% of whom were women and 70% of these chemistry graduates have continued their studies in graduate school or medical school. More specifically in the last five years, two of the fifteen chemistry graduates have applied to medical school. Both are currently in medical school, one is in an M.D./Ph.D. program. Nine students are in graduate school studying chemistry, one in economics, one in material science, one in pharmacology, and one is working in the chemical industry. Students are required to complete a senior project in the senior year. Throughout the school year and summer, other opportunities exist to work on research projects under the supervision of a faculty member.

Mahmud Hussein ‘05
Mahmud Hussein arrived at Bard with an interest in science and medicine. In the middle of his second year he became increasingly interested in chemistry. He spent the following summer doing research at Bard with financial support from the American Chemical Society. The summer after his junior year was spent as an REU student at Syracuse University. In his senior project, Mahmud synthesized novel organic ligands which when reacted with platnum produced orthometallated complexes. Mahmud is currently a Ph. D. candidate in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvannia working in the laboratories of Amos B. Smith.

Emily Grumbling ‘04
Emily majored in both film and chemistry at Bard. In her chemistry senior project she studied the thermal and photochemical decomposition of aryl diazonium ions; she found surprising thermal stability in many of these ions. Emily is currently a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at the University of Arizona studying the chemistry of interstellar space through spectroscopy.

Gavin Jones ‘03
In his senior project work Gavin studied the addition of acids to some allenes. He also found unusual reactivity of allenes toward electron-poor dienophiles. He spent one summer doing research at Bard with financial support from the American Chemical Society, and another at Syracuse University as an REU student. Gavin is currently a Ph.D candidate in chemistry at UCLA, working in the laboratories of Ken Houk, using experimental and calculation tools to investigate organic reactions.

Babacar Cisse ‘03
Babacar Cisse was a chemistry major at Bard with a strong interest in medicine. During his first year he participated in Bard's ISROP program, which exposed him to research in the sciences. After his sophomore year, he worked in a research lab at Harvard University studying the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual differentiation in Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria, with the ultimate goal of finding novel ways to curb the disease. He expanded on this work in his senior project work in biochemistry. Babacar is currently an M.D./Ph.D. student at Columbia University medical school.

Jihan Khan ‘03
In her senior project work Jihan studied some unusual behavior of a ferrocene derivative. Her goal was to isolate a hydrocarbon with significant acidity. She spent one summer doing research at Bard with financial support from the American Chemical Society. She is currently a chemistry Ph.D. candidate at Brandeis University developing chiral catalysts.

Ian McBee ‘02
Ian studied the sequential Cope-Cope rearrangement of 4-vinyl-1,7-octadiene in his senior project. He spent the summer of 2000 doing research at Bard with financial support from the American Chemical Society. After graduation Ian worked as a research associate at U.S. Genomics, a company that develops technologies for the direct analysis of DNA, before going to on graduate school. Ian is currently a Ph.D candidate in chemistry at the University of Vermont.

Franz Folmer Andersen ‘01
In his senior project Franz studied the photochemical generation of oxetenes and the potential of 2,3,4,4,-tetramethyloxetene as an inverse electron demand Diels-Alder dienophile. During the summer of 1999 he was a research student at Bard with financial support from the Petroleum Research Foundation of the American Chemical Society. Currently Franz is completing his Ph.D. studies at the University of Texas at Austin where he developed a colorimetric method for determining the chiral purity of amino acids.

Malini Ranganathan ‘01
In her senior project work Malini studied the efficiency of a catalytic antibody designed to catalyze a simple organic reaction. This reactivity was compared to enzymatic catalysis and added reagents were studied to provide catalytic groups absent in the antibody. Malini is currently a Ph. D. candidate at UC Santa Barbara where she is pursuing her interests in developing environmentally friendly energy sources.