Pratik has hit an important milestone in his career at Stanford--his first paper was published! Pratik is a second author on a paper that was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS.) This is one of the top journals for a chemist to get his/her work published in, so this is a great accomplishment for him as well as his fellow authors.
This is a summary of the paper in Pratik's own words. (Mind you, I can't even understand the title and my eyes glaze over when I get an in depth explanation. This is Pratik's version of a layman's definition...):
"In order to understand why complicated biological proteins are capable of doing reactions quickly and efficiently, we build artificial models that are amenable to study by a variety of tools that we have developed. We can use that knowledge to improve the design of the catalysts used in industry or design drugs to treat diseases that result from improper functioning of these proteins. In this particular work, we have prepared a compound that acts as a model for the enzyme galactose oxidase involved in metabolism of a type of sugar called galactose. We identified the structural features of the compound responsible for its interesting properties and ability to react in a manner similar to the enzyme."
We can't put the whole paper on the web due to copyright issues, but you can ask for an email copy from Pratik if you're really interested.
I may not understand it, but I'm really proud of him and of all the hard work he's put in. A second paper is also in the pipeline (another second author) and a first author paper should also be coming out within a few months. He's really moving along and there has been talk with his boss of defining his final thesis. Thus, he's on track to graduate on time, probably in 2010.
Congrats to Pratik and the other authors who worked hard to make this publication a reality!!
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