Good Chemistry
UT Arlington creates $1 million endowment with Dionex Corp. contribution to College of Science
Energy, health care, and other industries could benefit from a new endowed chair in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Science.
Dionex Corp. recently donated $500,000 to create the Hamish Small Chair of Ion Analysis. The amount will double as a result of the Maverick Match, a program that leverages UT Arlington’s natural gas royalty funds.
Small invented suppressed ion chromatography, the technique by which most ions are analyzed. “He is one of the giants of modern analytical chemistry,” says Christopher Pohl, Dionex senior vice president of research and development. “We at Dionex wanted to honor his many contributions to analytical chemistry by permanently endowing a chair named in his honor. UT Arlington is a perfect setting for such an honor.”
Pamela Jansma, dean of the College of Science, notes that the Dionex gift is the California-based company’s first such endowment and is particularly noteworthy for the company’s multinational presence and work with academic organizations.
“UT Arlington has the leading ion chromatography research group in the world,” Dr. Jansma says. “So the endowment is a natural fit.”
UT Arlington researchers have conducted basic studies on eluent generation and suppression, carbon dioxide removal, online concentration, charge detection, and capillary-scale ionic separation and detection techniques.
Small never worked for Dionex, but his efforts to develop novel ion exchange columns and an ion suppressor helped pave the way for companies like Dionex, the market leader in ion chromatography instrumentation.
Ion chromatography enables the separation of ions based on their charge. It is widely used in diverse industries, from power generation to water analysis to pharmaceuticals to semiconductor fabrication.
