By Tony Fitzpatrick
Michael L. Gross, Ph.D., professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, recently received the 2002 Midwest Award at the American Chemical Society's Midwest Regional Meeting in Lawrence, Kan.
The society gives the Midwest Award to a chemist in that region, defined by the society as South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and southern Illinois.
Gross came to the University in 1994 after serving as a member of the chemistry department at the University of Nebraska from 1968-1994. The author of more than 400 scientific articles and book chapters, he has edited or co-edited four books and trained more than 100 graduate students, postdoctoral associates and staff members.
Early in his career, Gross made a number of contributions to the field of mass spectrometry. He made the first observation of a gas-phase distonic ion and discovered "charge-remote fragmentation."
With colleague Charles Wilkins, he built the second Fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer in the late 1970s. He later demonstrated a number of significant analytical applications, such as gas chromatography/Fourier transform mass spectroscopy GC/FTMS, laser desorption FTMS, high-pressure trapping in FTMS, and the algorithm for exact mass measurements.
Gross' research goals include the development of a low magnetic field matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization instrument for a variety of research applications.
He continues to develop mass spectroscopy instrumentation and methods to apply to biomedical and biochemical research problems in diseases such as cancer, with John S. Taylor, Ph.D., professor of chemistry, and diabetes and in immunology, with Emil R. Unanue, M.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Pathology and Immunology.
Past University winners of the Midwest Award are: Carl and Gerty Cori, Sam Weissman, O.H. Lowry, Jacob Schaefer, Michael Welch, C. David Gutsche, Garland Marshall and Dewey Holten.