I am a third-year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh contacting you on behalf of the Pitt-CMU ACS Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee. We are a group of chemistry and chemical engineering graduate students from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University who have been selected to organize a symposium at the Spring 2021 ACS National Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We invite you to our website for more information about our symposium and speakers, who are experts in the field of materials science (https://pitt-cmu-gsspc.github.io/).

We are contacting you in the hopes that you will share two excellent opportunities for your graduate students. We ask that you share the following information and attachments with the graduate students in your department. We are currently accepting applications for:

• The Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee for the Spring 2022 ACS National Meeting to be held in San Diego, California
• Graduate student travel grants to attend the Spring 2021 ACS National Meeting being held in San Antonio, Texas

The Graduate Student Symposium Planning Committee is a unique opportunity for graduate students to learn how to organize and execute a symposium and make invaluable connections within and outside of academia. Communicating your research to the scientific community is important in not only moving science forward, but also in making connections and networking, yet funding to attend conferences can be difficult to come by, especially in these trying times.

Information on how to apply to either opportunity is attached. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions (pitt-cmugsspc@pitt.edu).

Thank you for your time!

Zoe Simon

Pitt-CMU GSSPC Finance Chair