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Smitty Grubbs, a doctoral chemistry student, has been selected to attend the 59th meeting of the Noble Laureates in Lindau, Germany.

Student nabs opportunity for Nobel Prize conference

By: Tyler Bauer Contributing Writer

Posted: 4/1/09

Garry Grubbs knew his son was exceptionally bright from an early age.

His son, who is also named Garry but goes by Smitty, had trouble waking up from anesthesia after tonsil surgery. To help him wake, Garry Grubbs and his wife, Beverly, quizzed their son on multiplication tables.

The doctors were surprised to hear Smitty Grubbs saying the right answers - especially since he was only three years old.

After 21 years, the chemistry graduate student is headed overseas for the first time to attend the 59th annual Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. At the weeklong convention starting June 28, 500 researchers will meet about 20 Nobel Prize winners and discuss everything chemistry.

"It's pretty wild," Grubbs said. "I've never been to Germany. I don't even have a passport."

NT has been a member of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities, who selected Grubbs, since 1955. Grubbs received an e-mail last week by the organization informing him he had been selected to go. It was a selection process that started in December, he said.

Grubbs works with the radio spectroscopy group headed by Stephen Cooke of the chemistry faculty. Along with chemistry graduate students Chris Dewberry and Kate Kerr, the group works on "different flavors of the same thing," Grubbs said. The flavor he works on uses a broadband technique to study the rotation of molecules made by lasers and hit with a vacuum gas.

Radio spectroscopy is a narrow field.

"There are only 15 labs in the world," he said. "Interestingly enough, there have been three Nobel Prize winners that do what we do."

Dewberry said he had the opportunity to apply for the spot but gave it to Grubbs to give the group a better chance at being selected.

"I got to go to England for previous research," Dewberry said. "So we decided it was Smitty's turn to go on the trip."

Before Grubbs goes to Germany, he and Dewberry will go to Ohio State University to attend the 64th annual Ohio State International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy in early June. They both won graduate student travel grants awarded by the Toulouse School of Graduate Studies.

Grubbs' fiancée and fellow chemistry graduate student Laura Sprunger said she's excited about Grubbs' opportunity to meet Nobel Laureates and be around other chemistry researchers.

"He definitely deserves it," Sprunger said. "He's a good researcher and a hard worker."

At the meeting, Grubbs will have the opportunity to meet Robert Grubbs, his distant cousin, Garry Grubbs said. Robert Grubbs shared the award in 2005 with two of his colleagues.

"It's exciting, I guess," Smitty Grubbs said. "Just to be able to see the world is pretty exciting."