Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Education:
Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Washington, 1979
B.S., Chemistry, Cum Laude, State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, 1975

Career Highlights:
McGown was named professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rensselaer in the summer of 2004, after spending 17 years at Duke University. She 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. In addition to her research and teaching activities at Duke, she spent five years as Director of Graduate Studies for the university’s chemistry department.

A frequent public speaker, McGown has offered dozens of presentations at universities throughout the United States; made international conference presentations in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, and the United Kingdom; and was a National Tour Speaker for the Society for Applied Spectroscopy in both Canada and the United States. In addition, McGown has given lectures to industrial and governmental groups such as Dow Chemical Company, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Groton Central Research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She has authored or co-authored over 100 journal publications, more than 200 conference publications, one book, and ten book chapters.

Among the panels and committees on which she has served are the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bioanalytical Engineering and Chemistry Study Section, the Analytical and Physical Chemistry Grant Selection Committee of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, a National Science Foundation CAREER award panel, an NIH Human Genome Research Institute Special Emphasis Panel, and a NASA Advanced Environmental Monitoring and Control Peer Review Panel. She also served as program co-chair for a Federation of Analytical, Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) Meeting in Austin.

A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), McGown also is an invited member of the Society of Fluorescence, a winner of a Gold Medal Award from the New York Section of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and a PerkinElmer International Liquid Chromatography Technical Paper Award winner for an article she co-authored with her graduate student Maria Brak-Smalley.

McGown currently serves on the editorial boards of Spectroscopy, Instrumentation Science and Technology, and Applied Spectroscopy and previously has been a member of several other journal boards, including Analytical Chemistry and Chemical and Engineering News. Her professional memberships include AAAS, American Chemical Society, American Association of University Women, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and Sigma Xi. She is also an affiliate of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

Research Areas:
McGown’s research projects fall into several broad categories, including spectroscopic analysis, chemical separations, analytical/bioanalytical chemistry, biomaterials, biotechnology, biomedical research, 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 related techniques, and mass spectrometry.

Current research interests in the McGown group include design and applications of reversible biogel materials, directed proteomic approaches to protein capture in electrophoresis and mass spectrometry, analytical applications of aptamers and related oligonucleotides, and DNA and genomic analysis. She is also interested in on-the-fly fluorescence lifetime detection in chemical separations, as well as in conducting spectroscopic studies of molecular aggregates and characterization of complex macromolecular systems of biological, environmental, and toxicological importance.

Selected Publications:
L.W. Dick Jr. and L.B. McGown, “Aptamer-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization for Affinity Mass Spectrometry,” Analytical Chemistry, 76, (11), 3037-3041, (2004).

T.U. Vo and L.B. McGown, “Selectivity of Quadruplex DNA Stationary Phases Toward Amino Acids in Homodipeptides and Alanyl Dipeptides,” Electrophoresis, 25, (9), 1230-1236, (2004).

M.A.R. Silinski and L.B. McGown, “Capillary Electrochromatographic Separation of Bovine Milk Proteins Using a G-Quartet DNA Stationary Phase,” Journal of Chromatography A, 1008, (2), 233-245, (2003).

H. Yang, K. Erford, D.J. Kiserow, and L.B. McGown, “Effects of Bile Salts on Percolation and Size of AOT Reversed Micelles,” Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 262, (2), 531-535 (2003).

J.D. Hewitt and L.B. McGown, “On-the-fly Fluorescence Lifetime Detection of Humic Substances in Capillary Electrophoresis,” Applied Spectroscopy, 57, (3), 256-265, (2003).

H. He and L.B. McGown, "DNA Sequencing by Capillary Electrophoresis with Four-Decay Fluorescence Detection," Analytical Chemistry, 72, (24), 5865-5873, (2000).

K.S. Freeman, T.T. Tang, R.D.E. Shah, D.J. Kiserow, and L.B. McGown, "Activity, Stability of Lipase in AOT Reversed Micelles with Bile Salt Cosurfactant," Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 104, (39), 9312-9316, (2000).

S.L. McIntosh, B.K. Nunnally, A.R. Nesbit, T.G. Deligeorgiev, N.I. Gadjev, and L.B. McGown, "Fluorescence Lifetime for On-the-Fly Multiplex Detection of DNA Restriction Fragments in Capillary Electrophoresis," Analytical Chemistry, 72, (21), 5444-5449, (2000).

R.B. Kotia, L. Li, and L.B. McGown, "Separation of Nontarget Compounds by DNA Aptamers," Analytical Chemistry, 72, (4), 827-831, (2000).

C.M. Sharpless and L.B. McGown, "Effects of Aluminum-Induced Aggregation on the Fluorescence of Humic Substances," Environmental Science & Technology, 33, (18), 3264-3270, (1999).

Contact Information:
Linda McGown
(518) 276-3681
mcgowl@rpi.edu
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem/faculty/mcgown/mcgown.html