William Weightman Walker Professor and Head
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Washington, 1979
B.S., Chemistry, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1975

Career Highlights:
McGown began her faculty career as a pre-doctoral lecturer at Texas A&M University from 1978-79, and then as an assistant professor of chemistry at California State University, Long Beach from 1979-82. She then joined the Department of Chemistry at Oklahoma State University and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1985. She left O.S.U. in 1987 to join the faculty at Duke University where she remained until coming to Rensselaer as professor and department chair in 2004. In 2006, she was appointed to the William Weightman Walker Chair in Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

A frequent public speaker, McGown has offered dozens of presentations at universities and conferences throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America and Europe . She has authored or co-authored over 100 refereed journal publications and more than 200 conference publications. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 2001, McGown received the Gold Medal Award from the New York Section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy in 1994. She has served onnumerous panels and committees including the National Institutes of Health Bioanalytical Engineering and Chemistry Study Section and the Analytical and Physical Chemistry Grant Selection Committee of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. She served as program co-chair for the 1996 Federation of Analytical, Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) Meeting in Austin and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Frederick Conference on Capillary Electrophoresis/Proteomics. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals including Chemical and Engineering News, Analytical Chemistry, and Applied Spectroscopy.

Research Areas:
McGown’s research projects fall into several broad categories, including spectroscopic analysis, separations, affinity techniques, biomaterials, forensics, and environmental analysis. Techniques employed in her research include static and dynamic fluorescence spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible absorption and circular dichroism spectroscopies, capillary electrophoresis and electrochromatography, and MALDI-mass spectrometry.

Current research interests in the McGown group include design and applications of reversible biogel materials, separation and manipulation of carbon nanotubes, affinity techniques for protein analysis in capillary electrophoresis and MALDI-mass spectrometry, analytical applications of aptamers, and the role of genomic G-quadruplex DNA in human diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

Selected Publications:
Connor, A.C., Frederick, K.A., Morgan, E.J., McGown, L.B., "Insulin Capture by an Insulin-linked Polymorphic Region G-Quadruplex DNA Oligonucleotide", J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 128, 4986-4991 (2006).

Vo, T.U., McGown, L.B., “Thermally Enhanced Resolution of Fibrinogen Peptides using a G-Quartet Stationary Phase in Capillary Electrochromatography”, Electrophoresis, 27, 749-756 (2006).

Connor, A.C., McGown, L.B., “Aptamer Stationary Phases for Protein Capture in Affinity Capillary Chromatography”, J. Chromatogr. A, 1111, 115-119 (2006).

Snyder, T.K., McGown, L.B., “Multiplex Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism Analysis by Capillary Electrophoresis with On-the-Fly Fluorescence Lifetime Detection”, Applied Spectrosc., 59, 335-339 (2005).

Dowling, V.A., Charles, J.A.M., Nwakpuda, E., McGown, L.B., “A Reversible Gel for Chiral Separations”, Anal. Chem., 76, 4558-4563 (2004).

Dick Jr., L.W., McGown, L.B., “Aptamer-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization for Affinity Mass Spectrometry”, Anal. Chem., 76, 3037-3041 (2004).

Joyce, M. V.; McGown, L.B., “Detection of G-quartet Structure in a DNA Aptamer Stationary Phase using a Fluorescent Dye”, Applied Spectrosc., 58, 831-5 (2004).

Yang, H., Erford, K., Kiserow, D. J., McGown, L. B., “Effects of Bile Salts on Percolation and Size of AOT Reversed Micelles”, J. Colloid Interface Sci., 262, 531-535 (2003).

Hewitt, J.D. and McGown, L.B., “On-the-fly Fluorescence Lifetime Detection of Humic Substances in Capillary Electrophoresis”, Applied Spectrosc., 57, 256-265 (2003).

Mihindukulasuriya, S.H., Marcone, T.K., McGown, L.B., “Characterization of Acridone Dyes for use in Four-decay Detection in DNA Sequencing”, Electrophoresis, 24, 20-25 (2003).