Welcome to the Department of Chemistry at Whitman College.

Department News

Faculty and Staff News

We are excited to welcome several new members to the Department. Eric Abbey (Organic Chem), Smitha Pillai (Organic/General Chem), and Steve Hughes (Physical/General Chem) will teach in the Chemistry Department during the 2011-2012 year. Kate Rambo joins us as the Chemistry Stockroom and Facilities Manager, and Dalia Rokhsana will return as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. We also welcome Nathan Boland, who will join us in 2012-2013 as an Assistant Professor.

Instrumentation and Recent Funding

The Department has added several new instruments for the 2011-2012 academic year. A new Agilent HPLC, installed in Fall 2011, and a new Agilent LC-MS, installed in Spring 2012, have already served students in research and in advanced lab classes. A pair of new Buck Scientific gas chromatographs were purchased for use in the organic chemistry labs.

Assistant Professor Marion Götz received a $35,000 grant from Research Corporation in May 2010. This grant funds student-faculty research exploring "Structure-based design and synthesis of bimodal proteasome inhibitors as therapeutic agents."

Tim Machonkin was awarded a NSF-RUI grant of $259,000 to carry out work on "The Sources of Substrate Specificity in Hydroquinone Dioxygenases." Funding from the grant supports collaborative student-faculty research over a period of three years (April 2010 - Mar 2013).

The Department of Chemistry was recently awarded an NSF-MRI grant of $389,000 for the acquisition of a new 400 MHz NMR spectrometer. Installed in the Hall of Science in January, 2010, the new NMR is used for student-faculty research and in chemistry laboratory courses.

Whitman College received an $800,000 Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant to enhance the Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology (BBMB) programs. This money, along with contributions from the college, has provided funds for the creation of new laboratory spaces and a program to support student-faculty research. This HHMI grant has also supported a summer-institute for middle school science teachers, curriculum development for new courses in the biomolecular sciences, and a new tenure-track position in Chemistry.