The W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles has awarded West Virginia University’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences $500,000 for the study of spatiotemporal dynamics and complex chemical systems. The grant, made through the WVU Foundation, is the first from the prestigious Keck Foundation to the University.
The grant will fund research being conducted in the C. Eugene Bennett Department of Chemistry by Kenneth Showalter, the Bennett Chair and Professor of Chemistry. His research program at WVU is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading efforts in design and control of dynamical behavior in chemical systems. He is also regarded as one of the nation’s leaders in nonlinear dynamics.
We are grateful to the W.M. Keck Foundation for financial support of this research,Showalter said.The Foundation’s generous support for cutting-edge research will permanently enhance West Virginia University’s research mission. This grant will position the nonlinear chemical dynamics program at the University as one of the world’s pioneering research groups in this new and exciting areaexploring the boundary between living and nonliving entities.
Showalter’s three-year research initiative will provide new insights into collective behavior in nonliving systems akin to that found in living systems. His research team supported through the grant consists of two undergraduate students, two graduate students and a research assistant professor.
The research concerns higher-level spatiotemporal dynamicsthat is, how chemical entities interact with their environment and with one another. Building upon their expertise in the study of the spatiotemporal behavior of chemical systems, Showalter’s team will develop and characterize particle-like waves that autonomously navigate and traverse obstacle-filled landscapes. They will investigate swarming behavior of collections of waves arising from the communication occurring among the individual waves via fixed and dynamic potentials.
This award is truly an extraordinary recognition of the fine research being done in the C. Eugene Bennett Department of Chemistry and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences,said interim Dean Rudolph Almasy.This is an exciting development which will affect faculty and students.
The research accomplishments of Showalter’s team, such as the first control of chemical chaos and demonstrating the beneficial role of noise in propagating-wave signal transmission, have been reported in more than 100 scientific papers, including four articles in Nature and three articles in Science. Their study on controlling waves graced the cover of the June 14, 2002, issue of Science.
The W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by William Myron Keck (1880-1964), the self-educated son of a Pennsylvania oil worker who in 1921 founded The Superior Oil Co. The Foundation is one of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, with assets of more than $1 billion. It funds undertakings that have the potential to benefit human quality of life, with primary focus on science, engineering and medical research.
The West Virginia University Foundation Inc. is a private, non-profit corporation chartered in 1954 to secure, hold, and administer funds and properties given by individuals, corporations and philanthropic foundations in support of West Virginia University.