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Chemist Lisa Lewis Wins Excellence Award Wednesday, October 8, 2003 Lisa Lewis's students will tell you that she's a great teacher -- a fact recently underscored by Indiana University, which named Lewis one of its 2003 Symposium for Excellence in Undergraduate Chemical Research award recipients. IU, which has one of the nation's premier graduate chemistry programs, honored Lewis and seven other professors from schools including Hope College, Williams College and Illinois State University, for "their research contributions as well as for their important work as mentors who encourage students to pursue careers in science," according to the IU Chemistry department announcement. "I have no idea who nominated me," says Lewis, who traveled to Bloomington, Ind., to present her research and meet with chemistry students. Lewis admits she was "quite intimidated" by some of the other awardees, whose work she knows is highly regarded among their peers. "I was excited to be included in this group of researchers and have my work [recognized on a par with theirs]," Lewis explains. For the past several years, Lewis has included several Albion College students on her research into using titanium dioxide, an inexpensive, nontoxic chemical, as a water-purification treatment. In the presence of light, titanium dioxide can degrade chlorohydrocarbons (a carcinogen found in contaminated groundwater) into benign compounds. Lewis and her students have been working to better understand this process and have identified side reactions that compete with the degradation process to make it less efficient. "This research not only has an environmental bent, but it could benefit the local Albion community, which has problems with groundwater contamination," says Lewis. "For my students and for me, that makes it especially rewarding." Lewis, who shares a faculty position with her husband, Craig Bieler, has been a faculty member at Albion College since 1995. Lewis currently also serves as director of the Albion College Honors Institute. She is a member of the national Project Kaleidoscope’s Faculty for the 21st Century and while on sabbatical in 2002-03, served as PKAL’s Scientist-in-Residence. Lewis holds a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of California at Irvine. |
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