Calvin Junior to Present at AAAS Meeting

January 12, 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Calvin junior Mark Vander Wal will be attending the 2006 American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting as one
of 25 Merck Scholars nationwide.

His travel costs, lodging and meeting registration will be funded by
the pharmaceutical company Merck. The AAAS annual meeting will be held
February 16-20, 2006 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Vander Wal, a Grand Rapids native and graduate of Grand Rapids
Christian High School, also will present a poster demonstrating his work
on pulling forces in DNA molecules at the conference's student poster
session, a significant honor.

"The conference is rather prestigious," says Calvin chemistry professor
Kumar Sinniah, about the gathering, which attracts scientists from every
discipline. "They're very selective about who can make presentations at
this conference."

Vander Wal's research involves hybridizing separate strands of DNA
(combining two strands to create the helix) and then pulling the strands
apart and measuring the forces involved.

Sinniah says the Calvin junior came to some interesting conclusions.

"What is remarkable," says Sinniah, "is that he was able to show that
the pulling force will vary based on how hard you originally pushed the
two strands together."

Vander Wal is excited about attending the conference.

"It will be a great experience to go to a chemistry conference and
learn about the research people have been doing from around the
country," he says. "And also it will be an opportunity to present what I
have, in a small way, been doing."

Vander Wal is hopeful his research can contribute to the larger
conversations going on in the scientific community.

"There's tons of people out there who do these measurements with the
same type of instrument," says Vander Wal. "But different groups have
been doing different projects and getting different results. So 'Group
A' in California and 'Group B' in Florida are doing the same experiment
but getting different values. And we think part of the reason, at least,
is that people haven't been controlling for the force of bringing things
together."

Contact Vander Wal at mnv2@calvin.edu or 616-307-0665
For the full story, including a JPG of Vander Wal, see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/vanderwal.htm

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Received on Thu Jan 12 09:59:13 2006