PULLMAN, Wash. – Professors Herbert Hill, Jr. and Ursula Mazur have been named 2011 fellows of the American Chemical Society in recognition of their accomplishments in chemistry and service to ACS, one of the world’s largest scientific societies.
They will be honored Aug. 29 during the organization’s national meeting in Denver, Colo.
As part of the third class of ACS fellows, Hill and Mazur bring the number of Washington State University-affiliated honorees to 10, including seven faculty. WSU is among the most recognized institutions, with as many faculty fellows as Stanford, Harvard and the University of Michigan and more than MIT, Virginia Tech, Penn State and the University of Washington.
“WSU has quite an impressive chemistry department by almost any measure,” said Daryll DeWald, dean of the College of Sciences. “Recognition of our faculty by the American Chemical Society is testament to the breadth and depth of the research happening across the university.”
* Regents Professor Herb Hill, Jr. is one of the pioneers of ion mobility spectrometry. IMS separates ions based on their size-to-charge ratio and is one of the key technologies employed at airport security checkpoints to detect explosives. IMS technology is also commonly used for detecting drugs of abuse in cargo containers and chemical warfare agents in the air.Hill and his research group are working on a liquid-based IMS technique for medical research and on coupling ion mobility to mass spectrometry, a method that could be used to analyze more than 2,000 metabolites in a single drop of blood.
“We’re working with colleagues across campus to evaluate this technique for studying various biological stresses on the human body, such as cancer or drug addiction,” said Hill.
Hill joined the WSU faculty in 1976. He is a founder of the International Ion Mobility Spectometry Society and its associated journal. He has more than 225 peer-reviewed scientific publications and holds several patents related to IMS.
He received the Keene Dimick Award for Chromatography in 1989 and the Beynon Award in Mass Spectrometry in 2009. Hill was appointed Regents professor, the highest academic honor at WSU, in 2011.
* Professor Ursula Mazur is a leading researcher in the field of novel nanomaterials. Using microscopic and spectroscopic techniques to study the unusual electrical and optical properties of biologically based organic semiconductors (such as heme in hemoglobin and pigments like chlorophyll), Mazur seeks to create more efficient materials for solar energy harvesting.“We can create assemblies from molecules that mimic nature and use them to convert light energy into electrical energy,” said Mazur.
Mazur’s research has been consistently funded by federal agencies. She recently received a $420,000 National Science Foundation grant to study real-time chemical reactions at the single-molecule level. Results of this research could reduce the energy cost for producing a wide range of chemicals.
Mazur became a full-time faculty member at WSU in 1993. Originally trained as an organic chemist, she has published 100 papers on subjects ranging from microwave spectroscopy to nanochemistry.
Other ACS fellows affiliated with Washington State University:
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Sue Clark, Regents professor, WSU College of Sciences.
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Glenn Crosby, professor emeritus, WSU College of Sciences.
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Darryl DesMarteau, WSU alumnus, BS 1963 (chemistry); professor at Clemson University.
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Jean Futrell, WSU College of Sciences Dean’s Leadership Council member; Battelle Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
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Kerry Hipps, professor, WSU College of Sciences; chair, WSU Department of Chemistry.
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Kenneth Nash, professor, WSU College of Sciences.
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Thomas Rauchfuss, WSU alumnus, Ph.D. 1976 (chemistry); professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Yong Wang, Voiland Distinguished Professor, WSU College of Engineering and Architecture; laboratory fellow, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Additional information about the program is available at www.acs.org/fellows.
Sources:
Herbert Hill, Jr., hhhill@wsu.edu, 509-335-5648
Ursula Mazur, umazur@wsu.edu, 509-335-5822
Media contact:
Joanna Steward, College of Sciences, jsteward@wsu.edu, 509-335-3933