More than 800 family, friends, and faculty filled the Michigan Theater on April 27, 2017 to celebrate students of the Class of 2017 who were graduating with majors from the Department of Chemistry.
This year's commencement address was presented by David Walt*, professor at Tufts University. Born in Detroit, Walt earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from U-M in 1974 and a Ph.D. in chemical biology in 1979 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the founder of the firm Illumina. Walt and his wife, Michele May, have provided generous support for our summer research program for undergraduates.
* In July, 2017 Walt moved to the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, after 30 years at Tufts.
