Sponsor and Collaborate | Structural Nucleic Acid Anticancer Research Society

🚨501(c)3 application request for helping STARS🚨

Dear Corporations, foundations, and fellow nonprofit organizations,

Good morning, I hope this email finds you well.

My name is Susanna, and I am a biochemistry major at Georgia Tech, and I work in the Oyelere Lab on the design and synthesis of compounds for prostate cancer.

I am also the Director of the Structural Nucleic Acid Anticancer Research Society (STARS), a student-led nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging and empowering students in crystal-growing, crystallography, and therapeutic research. So far, we have organized over 12 events and programs, such as crystal-growing competitions, crystallography workshops, and lecture series sessions over the past four years with 380+ participants cumulatively. Currently, we are applying for tax exempt 501(c)3 status and endeavor to obtain the status ahead of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) conference this July, so that we may fundraise more readily to run our next year's programs for students.

We will be requesting an expedited reviewal of our 501(c)3 application by IRS, but that would require letters of support from individuals who endorse us on our mission.

Here are some photos from our previous crystal-growing competitions and crystallography workshops, with the crystals grown by the students themselves:

Walton HS Crystallography Workshop (May 2024)

GT Crystallography Workshop (Aug. 2024)

Lysozyme protein crystals grown by the student participants (Aug. 2024)

We hope that your company would like to help us. For your convenience, we have drafted a supporting letter for you attached below.

If you would like to support us on our endeavor to provide valuable scientific experiences and skills to all K-12th and undergraduate students and to inspire them in structural biology and crystallography, please help our 501(c)3 application by editing, signing, and sending the letter of support to us as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Susanna Huang

shuang466@gatech.edu

Director

Structural Nucleic Acid Anticancer Research Society (STARS)

https://www.starsanticancer.org

Professors version

Download supporting letter draft

Sponsor and Collaborate

Our events are only possible with our generous sponsors. Thank you to all our sponsors who believed in us and have supported us along the way.

Previous and Current Sponsors

American Crystallographic Association (501(c)3 nonprofit organization) sponsored the 2022 Cobb County Crystal-Growing Competition with in-kind donations of over $700 in awards certificates, medals, and National Geographic crystal-growing kits for student winners

The American Crystallographic Association (ACA) is a prestigious, international crystallographic association, boasting more than 40 Nobel Prize Laureates and over 1,300 members from 37 countries worldwide. If you have any structural biology research or exciting discoveries you would like to share, you need to apply to present at the annual ACA conference! The next conference in the summer of 2025 will be the 75th anniversary of ACA conferences, the Diamond Anniversary. You don’t want to miss it!

You can see their website here: https://www.amercrystalassn.org/

Hampton Research, Inc. sponsored the January, April, May, and August 2024 Crystallography workshops with in-kind donations of over $800 in crystallization plates and other crystal-growth materials and is sponsoring the May 2025 high school crystallography workshop with $300 on GoFundMe.

Hampton Research is the leader in crystal-growth and optimization products, with crystallography plates, macromolecular screens, harvesting loops, harvesting pins, and so much more. If you ever need any reagents, materials, or supplies to perfectly optimize your crystal growth or harvest your crystals for diffraction experiments, you can always count on Hampton Research. They have everything.

You can see their website here to browse any materials or reagents you need for your crystallization projects: https://hamptonresearch.com/

DECTRIS, USA, Inc. is sponsoring the May 2025 high school crystallography workshop with $100 on GoFundMe.

DECTRIS is extremely well known for their PILATUS detectors, among many others, that are often found at international and national synchrotron facilities, such as the Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Argonne National Laboratory. These instruments are crucial for detecting the diffraction patterns from crystallography diffraction experiments, which can then be processed into electron density maps and used for subsequent model building and refinement.

You can see their website here to view their detectors and products: https://www.dectris.com/en/

We also thank our collaborators whose reach, connections, and expertise enable us to bring about our programs and events in the first place.

Previous and Current Collaborators

Timber Ridge ES STEM teacher, Ms. Alison Dunford
- 2021 Timber Ridge Crystal-Growing Competition
- 2021 Cobb County STEM teacher conference (STEMapalooza)
Dodgen MS high school physics course teacher, Ms. Debbie Amodeo
- 2022 Cobb County Crystal-Growing Competition
- 2022 Cobb County STEM teacher conference (STEMapalooza)
- 2023 Dodgen Crystal-Growing Competition
Georgia Institute of Technology Biology Lab Manager, Ms. Allison Onstine
- Jan. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
- Apr. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
- Aug. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
- Nov. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
Emory University Assistant Professor, Dr. Xu Liu
- Jan. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
Georgia Institute of Technology Post-doctoral Associate, Dr. Maximilian Bernbeck
- Apr. 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Georgia Tech
Walton HS AP Biology teacher and Science Olympiad coach, Mr. Douglas Wolfe
- May 2024 Crystallography Workshop at Walton HS
Georgia Institute of Technology Communication Lab
- Fall 2024 Skills-building series, resume building
Georgia Institute of Technology Assistant Professor, Dr. Andrew McShan (McShan Lab)
- Fall 2024 Lecture series
Georgia Institute of Technology Research Associate, Dr. Dustin Huard (Lieberman Lab)
- Fall 2024 Lecture series
Georgia Institute of Technology Professor and Associate Chair of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Angus Wilkinson
- 2024 Oak Ridge National Laboratory Trip
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distinguished Researcher, Dr. Dean Myles
- 2024 Oak Ridge National Laboratory Trip