KINGSTON, R.I. – October 6. 2009 – A renowned chemist from the California Institute of Technology will discuss “Explosive Detection” at the Friday, Oct. 9 University of Rhode Island Forensic Science Seminar.

The talk by Nathan Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, will be from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in Room 124 of Pastore Hall, 51 Lower College Road Kingston. All seminar talks are free and open to the public. As a public health precaution, the University asks those with influenza-like symptoms on the day of the lecture not to attend.

Lewis has been on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology since 1988 and has served as professor since 1991. He has also served as the principal investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials Resource Center at Caltech since 1992. From 1981 to 1986, he was on the faculty at Stanford University, as an assistant professor from 1981 to 1985 and as a tenured associate professor from 1986 to 1988. Lewis earned his doctorate in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lewis has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Presidential Young Investigator. He received the Fresenius Award in 1990, the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry in 1991, the Orton Memorial Lecture award in 2003, the Princeton Environmental Award in 2003 and the Michael Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Electrochemistry in 2008. He is the editor-in-chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Energy & Environmental Science. He has published more than 300 papers and has supervised approximately 60 graduate students and postdoctoral associates.

His research interests include artificial photosynthesis and electronic noses.