Analytical chemistry is a discipline that has realized great benefits from the growth in power and availability of laboratory computers. The decade of the 1980's produced a generation of general-purpose laboratory microcomputers that could be used routinely for the control of chemical instrumentation and the analysis of data arising from chemical measurements. The combination of computational and control capabilities offered by these computer systems has made possible the development of a variety of automated analytical instruments for use in dedicated monitoring scenarios such as patient monitoring in hospitals, process monitoring and control in the chemical industry, and environmental monitoring.

For the 1990's and beyond, the focus of research in combining computational and instrumental methods is turning to the development of intelligent chemical instrumentation. The term, intelligent instrument, refers to a new generation of analytical instrument with advanced capabilities for data interpretation, self-optimization, and decision-making. Building upon these concepts, researchers at CICI are conducting basic research in the development of new methods and instrumentation for a variety of chemical analyses. Work is currently underway in each of the areas of electrochemistry, spectroscopy, and chromatography.

CICI offers a unique environment for students who are interested in working with instrumentation, computers, and software.There is a large demand for doctoral students with expertise in chemometrics.Chemometrics is emphasized throughout the OU analytical chemistry curriculum.Chemometrics includes the topics of systematic design and statistical interpretation of experiments, signal processing, calibration, modeling, and machine intelligence.A burgeoning area of research is adapting chemometric methods to be used in bioinformatic applications of proteomic and genomic experiments.

Prospective graduate students interested in forensic science should consider exploring graduate work in analytical or bioanalytical chemistry with a forensic emphasis at Ohio University.You will have the advantage of receiving financial aid in the form of teaching or research assistantships and a full tuition waiver. Most graduate programs in forensic science do not have assistantships and are not research based degrees.Our program provides the strong scientific and research background lab directors are looking for.

As you work towards a PhD, you can take classes in forensic chemistry, DNA typing, and toxicology as well as taking traditional graduate coursework in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, and chemometrics.In addition, you will work closely with a member of our faculty performing research in one of several areas in forensic science including remote sensing, DNA typing, toxicology, explosives analysis, and hazardous materials detection.Researchers in our department have received major funding for forensic based projects from the National Institute of Justice, the US Army, and various counter-terrorism agencies.

The Ohio University Center for Intelligent Chemical Instrumentation has a history of research related to Homeland Security that spans a decade.The US Army has sponsored Prof. Harrington's research which was focused on chemical weapons detection.

Prof. Harrington's group has worked on real-time modeling and compression methods of ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) data. He is currently funded by the Army for wavelet compression of IMS spectra acquire from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used for remote detection of chemical weapons. Prof. Harrington has worked on biological weapons detection and developed advanced algorithms for pattern recognition of microbes with mass spectrometry (MS).He presently has a microbiology lab with a BioSafety Level 2 capability for analysis of microbes by IMS and MS. Prof. Harrington is also working with detection of food-borne pathogens and there is concern of a biological attack on the national food supply using pathogenic organisms. Prof. Harrington is a pioneer in the area of real-time chemometric modeling of sensor data.

Prof. Dewald has studied gun shot residues using electrochemical sensors. His group contributes knowledge regarding the application of electrochemistry to detection of trace metals.

Intelligent instrumentation is of paramount importance for Homeland Security because analytical instrumentation that is field employed can not require operators with sophisticated knowledge in analytical chemistry.Some sensors may not have an operator, but may be stand alone monitors or propelled in robotic vehicles (e.g., the IMS detector in the UAV).These smart instruments must encode analytical knowledge so that they display an alarm or perform a required action when a target analyte is detected.Consider IMS that is used in virtually every US airport for detecting explosive residues on hand-luggage and has been recently been installed in the Pentagon.The IMS instruments have a green light that illuminates if no explosives are detected and a red light for detection.Therefore, the algorithms embedded in the instrument must make the accurate decision that a spectroscopic signature attributed to an explosive occurs amidst a large range of potential interfering compounds.Prof. Harrington is an internationally recognized leader in this area of research.

Harrington, P.D.; Voorhees, K.J.; Basile, F.; Hendricker, A.D. Validation using sensitivity and target transform factor analyses of neural network models for classifying bacteria from mass spectra. J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 2002, 13 , 10-21.

Harrington, P.B.; Buxton, T.L.; Chen, G. Classification of Bacteria by Thermal Hydrolysis Methylation Ion Mobility Spectrometry and SIMPLISMA. Int. J. Ion Mobil. Spectrom. 2001, 4 , 148-153.

Harrington, P.B.; Chen, G.; Urbas, A.A. Strategies for Smarter Chemical Sensors. Int. J. Ion Mobil. Spectrom. 2001, 4 , 26-30.

Buxton, T.L.; Harrington, P.D. Rapid multivariate curve resolution applied to identification of explosives by ion mobility spectrometry. Anal. Chim. Acta 2001, 434 , 269-282.

Deluca, S.; Sarver, E.W.; Harrington, P.D.; Voorhees, K.J. Direct Analysis of Bacterial Fatty-Acids by Curie-Point Pyrolysis Tandem Mass-Spectrometry. Anal. Chem. 1990, 62 , 1465-1472.

Chen, G.; Harrington, P.D. Real-time interactive self-modeling mixture analysis. Appl. Spectrosc. 2001, 55 , 621-629.

Rob Heramb and Bruce R. McCord, Smokeless powders and their analysis, a brief review, Forensic Science Communications, (2002) 4 (2) 1-7.

Federica Crivellente and Bruce R. McCord, The application of pH mediated sample stacking in the analysis of multiplexed short tandem repeats, J. Cap. Electrophoresis, (2002) 7 (3-4) 73-80.

Chad E. Wissinger and Bruce R. McCord, A reversed phase HPLC procedure for smokeless powder comparison, J. Forens. Sci.,( 2002) 47 (1) 168-174

J. M. Doyle, Mark L. Miller, Bruce R. McCord, David A. McCollam, and George W. Mushrush, A Multicomponent Mobile Phase for Ion Chromatography Applied to the Separation of Anions from the Residue of Low Explosives, Analytical Chemistry, (2000),72,10, 2303-2307.

Kelly D. Smith, McCord, B. R., W. A. MacCrehan, K. Mount, and W. F. Rowe, Detection of Smokeless Powder Residue on Pipe Bombs by Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography, Journal of Forensic Sciences (1999) 44(4) 789-794.

Alice R. Isenberg, Ralph O. Allen, Kathleen M. Keys, Jill B. Smerick, Bruce Budowle, and McCord, Bruce R., Analysis of Two Multiplexed Short Tandem Repeat Systems using Capillary Electrophoresis with Multiwavelength Fluorescence Detection, Electrophoresis, (1998) 19, 94-100.

Elaine S. Mansfield, James M. Robertson, Marina Vainer, Alice R. Isenberg, Rachael R. Frazier, Karin Ferguson, ShiTse Chow, Dennis W. Harris, David L. Barker, Peter D. Gill, Bruce Budowle, and McCord, Bruce R., Analysis of Multiplexed Short Tandem Repeat (STR) systems using Capillary Array Electrophoresis, Electrophoresis, (1998) 19, 101-107.

M. Miller, McCord, B., R. Martz, and B. Budowle, The Analysis of Dried Blood Stains by Electrospray LC/MS/MS and Ion Chromatography, Journal of Analytical Toxicology, (1997) 21,7, pp. 521-528.