Summer 2000 -- Vol. 17, No. 1

NEW DEPARTMENT HEAD

Andrew G. Ewing, holder of the J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Natural Sciences, professor of chemistry, and adjunct professor of neuroscience and anatomy, was appointed head of the Department of Chemistry on August, 1, 1999.

Ewing succeeds Peter Jurs, professor of chemistry, who had served the department as its interim head since July 1998, and Steven M. Weinreb, the Russell and Mildred Marker Professor in Natural Products Chemistry, who served as its head from 1994 until he was appointed interim dean of the Eberly College of Science in July 1998.

"The department has a faculty and staff of such high caliber that it should rank in the top 10 in the nation," Ewing said. "We need to continue this tradition of excellence by aggressively pursuing new directions in education and research. In addition, the department is facing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a new building to be located between the Biotechnology Institute and the first life-sciences building. We need to take full advantage of the strength of our department and the central role of chemistry in the development of this new part of the Penn State campus."

Ewing is one of the world's foremost leaders in developing microscale techniques and tools for understanding fundamental processes within the brain's individual cells. His techniques for measuring chemicals in the brain have enabled scientists to study the excretion of single neurotransmitter molecules from single nerve cells--a fundamental process whose understanding neuroscientists declared to be a top priority for the Decade of the Brain in the 1990s.

Ewing's research has resulted in two major methods for monitoring nerve cells during their communication with each other: an electrochemistry technique using very small electrodes and a capillary electrophoresis technique capable of analyzing volumes less than one millionth of a rain drop. He currently is working with scientists at Goteborg University in Sweden to develop mass-spectrometric methods aimed at understanding changes in the cell membrane following exocytosis, the process by which cells release neurotransmitters from small packets to communicate with other cells.

Ewing earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry, cum laude, at Saint Lawrence University in 1979 and a doctoral degree in analytical chemistry with a minor in biological chemistry at Indiana University in 1983. He was a research associate at the University of North Carolina from 1983 to 1984, when he joined the Penn State faculty as an assistant professor. Ewing was promoted to associate professor in 1989, then to professor in 1992. He was named adjunct professor of neuroscience and anatomy in 1995 and was appointed the J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Natural Sciences in 1999. He currently is co-director of the Neuroscience Option in the University's Integrated Biosciences Program.

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