The Michael E. Gebel Award is presented each year at the UCI Department of Chemistry's annual Edward K.C. Lee dinner. Jennifer Bentson-Gebel established this award to memorialize his life and accomplishments. Mike had a deep commitment to improving our environment and hence chose to work for CARB, even though he had many other options at considerably higher salary. Mike worked for a period of time between obtaining his Bachelor of Science from Cal-State Los Angeles and joining the Chemistry graduate program at UC Irvine. It was something of a financial struggle in graduate school, particularly in the first few years and an award would have helped significantly at this time. As a result, Jennifer has indicated a strong preference that this award go to a second year graduate student working in Environmental Chemistry and who has had a period of work before continuing on to graduate school. The first award was presented in 2007.