Keynote speaker: Nancy Ryan Gray, PhD, director of the Gordon Research Conferences, will address "Gordon Research Conferences: Paving the Frontiers of Science."

Tthe 5th Annual Research Forum begins at 11 a.m. with a welcome; 11:15 a.m., Dr. Gray's address; noon, break for lunch; and 1 to 3 p.m., poster session.

Dr. Gray has served as GRC director since 2003. Prior to joining the organization, she served as the director of membership at the American Chemical Society (AMC) where she also was the liaison to the Board Committee on Grants and Awards.

Before AMC, Dr. Gray spent nine years working as an industrial research chemist at Exxon Production Research Company in Houston. She served as a research specialist in organic chemistry working in the Environmental Conservation Section where she was responsible for communicating chemical data and technical results to operationas and field managment personnel at Exxon as well as to environmental compliance regulators and government representatives.

She received her BS degree in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1981 and her doctorate degree in Fuel Chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University in 1985. Dr. Gray was a Scientific Fellow at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, during 1984.

Gordon Research Conferences is a non-profit organization managed by and for the benefit of the scientific community. The organization provides an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies.