This award is presented each year to the 4th year graduate student(s) with the most creative Independent Research Proposal. Dr. Voorhees was a graduate student with Professor Roger Adams and was the coauthor on the seminal paper describing catalytic hydrogenation with palladium oxide (J. Am. Chem. Soc 1922, 44, 1397-405), which came to be known as Adams' catalyst. Recent recipients of the Vanderveer Voorhees Award:
| 2023 | Sydney McKee (Hergenrother) Chelsea Swartchick (Chan) |
|---|---|
| 2022 | Daniel Szczepankiewicz (Mehta, Sarlah) Dinh Nguyen (Mitchell, van der Donk) |
| 2021 |
Emily Mumford (Denmark) |
| 2020 | Matt Boudreau (Hergenrother) Yaroslav Boyko (Sarlah) |
| 2019 |
Lucas Hernandez (Sarlah) |
| 2018 | Andrew Zahrt (Denmark) |
| 2017 | Jonathan Lehmann (Burke) |
| 2016 | Jonathan Tietz (Mitchell) |
| 2015 | Michelle Richter (Hergenrother) |
| 2014 | Michael Lambrecht (Hergenrother) |
| 2013 | Tommy Osberger (White) |
| 2012 | Paul Gormisky (White) |
| 2011 | Marinus Bigi (White) |
| 2010 | Pulin Wang (Burke) |
| 2009 | Rahul Palchaudhuri (Hergenrother) Stacie Richardson (Baranger) |
| 2008 | Nathan Duncan-Gould (Denmark) Darrel Kuykendall (Zimmerman) |
| 2007 | William Collins (Denmark) Benjamin Leslie (Hergenrother) |
| 2006 | Jack Liu (Denmark) |
| 2005 | John Heemstra, Jr. (Denmark) |
| 2004 | Justin Montgomery (Denmark) |
| 2003 | Dahui Zhao (Moore) |
| 2002 | Matthew Gieselman (van der Donk) Gregory Beutner (Denmark) |
| 2001 | Kyle Hurth (Katzenellenbogen) |