Life > December 6, 2003

Sciences Student of the Year

To the average student, the words 2-undecylpyrrole and 3-methyl-5-pentylpyrrole might as well be of a foreign language.  But to senior Sarah Hubbard, these two molecules became her greatest challenge when she spent a summer conducting biochemical synthesis research at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England.  Within six days of her arrival, Sarah managed to produce these two compounds — a feat that took other researchers in the lab over nine months to accomplish.  Unfortunately, Sarah’s stroke of genius and good luck ended, and it took her another six weeks to reproduce the compounds.

“I was this close to being a genius!” Hubbard said.  “I was greatly humbled by my six weeks of failure after that.  Still, for those six days, I was pretty damn good.”

Despite her frustrations in England, Sarah’s past four years have been anything but failure.  She enrolled in organic chemistry with Paul Jones, assistant professor of chemistry, as a freshman interested in pre-med and knew instantly that she wanted to be a chemistry major.  She then joined Jones’ organic synthesis lab and hasn’t looked back since. 

For her research, Sarah has been awarded several research fellowships, but last spring she was awarded the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater scholarship given to students pursuing a career in mathematics, science or engineering, which awards up to $7,500 per year.