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McCormick Graduate Student Selected to Attend Nobel Laureate Meeting

Patrick Ryan, a chemical and biological engineering graduate student at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University, has been selected to attend the 2010 meeting of Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and in Physics, which will take place June 27 - July 2 in Lindau, Germany.

The annual meeting brings together laureates and young researchers from around the world for lectures, seminars, discussions and events aimed at transferring knowledge between generations of scientists. Ryan is one of nearly 700 students from across the globe who will attend; he was chosen by his department to be a Department of Energy-funded nominee and was ultimately selected by a national committee. Ryan is the second chemical and biological student in recent years to attend the prestigious meeting. Rodney Priestley (PhD, '08) attended in 2005.

As a fourth-year PhD student co-advised by Linda Broadbelt, professor and chair of chemical and biological engineering, and Randy Snurr, professor of chemical and biological engineering, Ryan hopes the meeting will provide him with a chance to network with the world's top scientists. The meeting will also give him a chance to learn more about cutting-edge research at the boundaries of these disciplines and about the professors behind the research, including the life decisions they made that led them to become Nobel laureates.

"I'm ecstatic," he says. "There were a lot of people at Northwestern University that helped me get this far, and I hope I can represent both the school and the United States well. I'm very fortunate."