George Van Den Driessche, an alumnus of Illinois State University, is the winner of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Masters Thesis Award. This is first time an alumnus of Illinois State has captured the award.
Van Den Driessche took the title with his thesis Computational Investigations of Oxygen-Containing Donor-Acceptor Complexes Involving Sulfur Dioxide and Sulfur Trioxide. A chemistry and mathematics major from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Van Den Driessche is now pursuing his doctorate at North Carolina State University (NCSU).
Earning a bachelor’s degree from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Van Den Driessche conducted a senior research project with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Jonathan Fritz. When he began to pursue his master’s degree in chemistry at Illinois State, Van Den Driessche transitioned from experimental chemistry into the field of theoretical chemistry by joining Professor Jean Standard’s lab.
While at Illinois State, Van Den Driessche received an Outstanding Poster Award from the Journal of Physical Chemistry at the 46th annual Midwestern Theoretical Chemistry Conference in 2014. He was also a very active member in the Illinois State American Chemical Society chapter serving as secretary and treasurer. After completing his master’s degree, Van Den Driessche moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to pursue his Ph.D. in chemistry at NCSU where he now works with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Denis Fourches. Van Den Driessche has one publication in the Journal of Cheminformatics and was also a recipient of the ACS CINF Scholarship in Excellence at the Fall ACS meeting in 2016. Upon completion of his Ph.D. Van Den Driessche plans on pursuing a career in industry with a pharmaceutical company.
Van Den Driessche can be reached at gavanden@ncsu.edu.
