The Graduate Mentoring Award honors a Biochemistry student who consistently provides quality guidance and scientific training in mentoring undergraduate students in their research efforts. This year's Mentoring Award is awarded to Ian Lewis. Ian is carrying out pioneering research on isotope-assisted, NMR-based metabolomics. Ian has named his group which consists of 6 undergraduates "Team Metabolon." He and his undergraduates have amassed a collection of ~725 small molecule metabolites and, with assistance from a postdoc, Qiu Cui, have begun collecting 5-6 NMR spectra from each compound to create a metabolomics database.
His mentees wrote that Ian is patient, funny, motivating, and fun. They all mentioned that the reason Ian is such an awesome mentor is because he explains why experiments are done, what the results mean, and why the research is important. What they love about Ian is that he keeps science fun! Congratulations!