Chemistry News

WWU will host George M. Janini, program director in the Division of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation, on Monday, Sept. 7. Janini will meet with members of the Chemistry Department in the morning, have lunch with faculty and administrators, and present "NSF Chemistry: Funding Opportunities For Your Research" at 2:30 p.m. in Biology 212.

The campus community is invited to attend the seminar.

The human body has a complex system of defenses designed to find, attack and destroy any foreign body that makes its way inside; sometimes that attack can take the form of physically destroying the intruder, or the body can simply encase the object in proteins, in effect wrapping it up and isolating it.

But as advances in medical science push boundaries into new and exciting territories, finding ways to fool our body’s defenses – because something being introduced into the body is actually helpful, not harmful – is becoming more important.

The Western Washington University Chemistry Department will hold a two-day symposium on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 5-6, in honor of the late Mark Wicholas, who joined the WWU Chemistry Department in 1967 and served as its chair from 1982 to 2007.

The Research Corporation for Science Advancement has named Western Washington University assistant professor of Chemistry Tim Kowalczyk a 2018 Cottrell Scholar, an honor that comes with a grant stipend to allow him to continue his research into the developing technology around solar thermal fuels.