Marieke Op de Beeck, from the University of Ghent, Belgium, won the OBC poster prize at the Learning Organic Synthesis Tremendously (LOST II) symposium held on 18-20 March 2009 in Namur, Belgium. 

The international symposium was held in honour of Professor Alain Krief, who retires from the University of Namur later this year. Professor Krief joined the department of chemistry in 1972 and became known as a pioneer in the field of selenium in organic chemistry. In celebration of Professor Krief's accomplishments and to reflect his wide research interests, the LOST symposium featured lectures covering a range of topics, including synthetic methodology, nanotechnology and carbohydrate chemistry. 

The poster presentations were judged by Professor Krief and members of the symposium's scientific committee, who all agreed that the standard was excellent. After much discussion, they chose Marieke Op de Beeck's poster, entitled 'Furan as a masked reactive entity for the generation of reactive oligonucleotides', as the winner of the OBC poster prize. 

Marieke is in her third year of her PhD under the supervision of Professor Annemieke Madder. As her prize, she received an OBC poster prize certificate, a one-year subscription to the journal and a copy of the RSC book 'Seminars in Organic Synthesis: Volume 18'. 

Joanne Thomson