The John Dolphin Fellowship Scheme: Three Years on ………

John Dolphin was a long-serving member of the Executive Committee of The Chromatographic Society in the 1980’s including being Chairman from 1985 to 1987. Following his untimely death in 2007 his family formed the ‘John Dolphin Trust’ in his memory to benefit a range of charitable activities.  The Chromatographic Society was honoured to receive a donation of £50000 from the ‘John Dolphin Trust’ in 2009 to be used ‘towards the sponsorship of students undertaking their PhDs’.

This request is entirely in keeping with John’s outlook on separation science. In the early-1990’s John was responsible for establishing the Hypersil ‘Young Chromatographer of the Year’ award. The Executive Committee took the decision to create a fellowship scheme bearing John’s name and use the donation to provide support for PhD/DPhil students at universities in the United Kingdom to attend and present part of their work at a major overseas conference in separation sciences. Students must either be working in the area of separation science or be able to demonstrate a significant use of chromatography or separation science in their work. Each application for a ‘John Dolphin Fellowship’ must be supported by a letter of endorsement by the applicant’s academic supervisor and are reviewed by members of the Executive Committee. Successful applicants are provided with an appropriate contribution towards the cost of attendance (i.e. accommodation, registration, travel) at their selected conference. They are asked to acknowledge receipt of a ‘John Dolphin Fellowship’ from the Society in their presentations or on their posters in order to promote the scheme. Furthermore, subject to conditions of disclosure with other interested parties, copies of their presentations or posters are placed on the Society’s web-site to enable members of the community of separation sciences as a whole to view their work.
The scheme began in 2010 and, to date, the Society has awarded eleven fellowships. In each of these applications the recipient has received over 70% of the cost of attendance (i.e. accommodation, registration and travel) at their chosen conference. These have ranged from a contribution of £460 to enable one student to travel from the University of the West of Scotland to Liverpool for an international conference to another contribution of £1210 for a student from the University of London to travel to an international conference in Japan. In the latter case we were pleased to be informed that the student had received a prize from the conference organising committee for his poster. Other students have been supported in their attendance at conferences in Italy and the USA With appropriate investment of the donation and possible matching of our contribution with those from other interested parties it is hoped that the ‘John Dolphin Fellowship Scheme’ will be available for a minimum of fifteen years.
The Chromatographic Society welcomes applications for funding from this scheme. Further details of the application process can be obtained from our web-site www.chromsoc.com.