March 10, Friday -- Nobel laureate Robert Grubbs, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, will deliver the plenary speech during the annual R. Bryan Miller Symposium, held in the Mondavi Center Studio Theatre. Grubbs shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on new catalysts to make chains and rings of carbon atoms, processes used daily in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. His talk, on "Synthesis of Small and Large Rings via Olefin Metathesis," will begin at 4 p.m. Other speakers during the one-day symposium include Catherine Hunt, president-elect of the American Chemical Society and a UC Davis alumna; John Piwinski, vice president for chemical research at Schering-Plough Corporation; Joel Barrish, vice president for inflammation chemistry at Bristol-Myers Squibb; Justin Du Bois, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University; and Arthur A. Wellman, special counsel and patent attorney with DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. Registration for the entire symposium costs $75 for general admission, $10 for UC Davis students. Free admission to Grubbs' talk only is available to students (advance registration required). The Miller Symposium is held annually in honor of R. Bryan Miller, a long-serving professor of chemistry at UC Davis who died in 1998. This year's symposium will introduce the new program in pharmaceutical chemistry at UC Davis.