Calvin junior Mark Vander Wal will be attending the as one of 25 Merck Scholars nationwide.

[body photo omitted] 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.”

Sinniah says Vander Wal's work could make an important contribution to DNA research.

“Science is like that," he says. "Each small advance builds on the next one and pushes the whole field forward.”

Vander Wal performed his research as one of eight students working with four professors in this summer’s edition of Calvin’s Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program.

The program, funded by a three-year, $60,000 grant from the Merck Company Foundation, was created to generate collaborative research between the disciplines of chemistry and biology. Each year, one of Calvin’s student researchers has been chosen as a Merck Scholar.

Sinniah says the Merck program, which ended in August when the grant expired, has been invaluable for supplying extra research opportunities for students.

“Every summer, we have 90 students applying for 45 positions in the science division,” he says. “This gave us more. It also brought two scientific disciplines together. And it helps us to identify the really outstanding students.”

Vander Wal is one such individual.

“Mark is an asset to us at Calvin," Sinniah says. "This summer, he was not only helping me, but training the other students. He’s a very focused individual.”

That focus enabled Vander Wal to complete most of the requirements for both a biochemistry and chemistry major. He is leaning toward chemistry and remains grateful for the nonstop research opportunities Calvin has given him.

“I’ve been doing research since first semester, freshman year," he says. "Professor Sinniah talked to me one day and said, I should get into research as soon as possible, so I owe a lot to him."