On March 14, 2008 the 2008 Nichols Symposium and Dinner was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, NY. The theme of this year's symposium was "DNA: Not Merely the Secret of Life”.  Featured speakers included two alumni of our graduate program and Ned’s research group,  Professor Hao Yan of Arizona State University, and Professor Chengde Mao of Purdue University.  Professor Yan delivered a talk entitled “Designer DNA Architectures for Nanobiotechnology”, and Professor Mao gave a talk entitled “DNA Nanostructures: All Stars”.  Professor Eric Winfree of CalTech presented a talk entitled “Programming a DNA World”. The program finished with Ned’s seminar entitled “Using DNA Information for Structural Control”.   Ned Seeman, the pioneer of DNA Nanotechnology, adds the Nichols Medal to the list of his many accomplishments, including over 220 papers published, the Sidhu Award, the Feynman Prize, the Emerging Technologies Award, the Tulip Award in DNA Computing and the World Technology Network Award in Biotechnology.