Spring 2025 Newsletter

Message from the Chair

Welcome to the 2025 Chemistry Department Newsletter!

As I wrap up my first year serving as Chair of our department, I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to the incredible staff and colleagues who have supported me throughout this transition. Learning the many processes that keep our department running smoothly has been both humbling and inspiring, and I could not have done it without the deep institutional knowledge, patience, and generosity of our team.

In this newsletter, we celebrate faculty and student achievements, describe exciting research breakthroughs, and share updates from our community and other events. The accomplishments of this group over this past year have been truly astounding. Whether it's pushing the boundaries of molecular discovery or mentoring the next generation of scientists, the stories below showcase the incredible work being done across our labs, classrooms, and beyond.

As we celebrate these successes, we also mark a bittersweet milestone – the retirement of Professor Spencer Anthony-Cahill, whose 28 years of dedicated teaching, service, mentorship, and research have left an indelible mark on the department and its students. Steve Sible will also be missed after retiring in February. Steve’s fiscal support over the last decade, particularly for faculty and student research-related activities, had a significant positive impact on this department and its ongoing research enterprise.

While we’ve accomplished a great deal together, we continue to navigate persistent budgetary challenges that impact how we support our students and pursue our mission. These challenges underscore the importance of reaffirming our commitment – not only through our time and energy, but also through financial support. A sincere thank you goes out to all who have donated to the Chemistry Department. This year two new scholarships were established for chemistry students, the Thomas W. Pearson Scholarship Endowment and Toby L. Cahill Memorial Scholarship. If you're in a position to do so, I encourage you to consider making a donation to directly benefit our students and their continued success. This can be done by visiting the website https://foundation.wwu.edu/.

Thank you for being part of our community,

Spencer Anthony-Cahill's Retirement

By Clint Spiegel

The end of this academic year marks the 18^th of my career at WWU, meaning it has reached adulthood. While this may sound silly, it also seems appropriate: my longtime mentor, Professor Spencer Anthony-Cahill, is retiring. It’s finally time for me to fledge.

Spencer grew up a kid of the Pacific Northwest, spending much of his youth in Issaquah and exploring the Kittitas Valley. He graduated from Whitman College with a degree in Chemistry, where he met his wife, Yvonne. From Walla Walla, Spencer attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was one of Peter Schultz’s first graduate students. After receiving his PhD, also in Chemistry where he focused on a bioorganic chemistry approach to incorporate non-natural amino acids into proteins, he joined Bill Degrado’s group at Dupont in Delaware, where he was introduced to Aikido, which would serve as an enduring part of his life, as both student and teacher. After several years working in the biotechnology industry in Boulder, Colorado, Spencer and Yvonne moved to Bellingham in 1997, where Spencer would begin his academic career in the Chemistry Department at WWU.

Unbeknownst to Spencer, I chose him as a mentor long before I joined the faculty in 2007. Spencer and I first met while I was just starting my graduate studies in Seattle, where we both attended the Volcano Conference in Bioorganic Chemistry in 2001. I recall not only talking with Spencer about science and life, but also simply observing him interact with his undergraduate research students. The energy and curiosity of these nascent scientists struck a chord with me, and seeing how Spencer led them through the nuances of their first conference was perhaps the first time I could see myself taking on a professorial role. I had taken notice of WWU Chemistry, and when I finally felt prepared to apply for an academic position, the opening for a biochemist in our department was the only job I applied for; I wanted to work with Spencer, so I could continue to learn and grow as a scientist and teacher with him as my mentor.

Perhaps it is a bit of a selfish indulgence for me to reflect on Spencer’s impact on me when his academic career has been singularly focused on one motivation: teach, train, mentor, and care for his students. Of course, Spencer’s influence at WWU was campus-wide, where he served several different roles in leadership, most notably as Chemistry Department Chair from 2016-2020 and a preceding role as the President of the WWU Faculty Senate. To be sure, all the roles Spencer engaged with would have an underlying motivation to sustain and improve the educational environment we have here at WWU and in the Chemistry Department, specifically. When Spencer joined WWU Chemistry, it was during a time of great transformation for the department. He established a vibrant research program in protein engineering with a focus on hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers for blood replacement and led an overhaul of the biochemistry curriculum to eventually incorporate a full year of biophysical chemistry to the curriculum.

What cannot be overstated was the substance and style of Spencer’s student mentorship. It is my belief that his philosophy of enlightening students was rooted in his experience in Aikido, where he teaches to live by three values: courage, wisdom, benevolence. No matter where his students came from to join his lab or his classroom, he has always met them where they’re at, helped them define and achieve their own goals, and ultimately strived to teach them to think critically and independently. It is not hyperbole to state that the impact Spencer has had on his students is deep and lasting. Yvonne also played a large role in his students’ lives, bringing them to her dinner table for nourishment, laughter, and a sense of belonging. This year, Spencer will be given the 2025 WWU Alumni Outstanding Faculty Legacy Award; I cannot think of a more deserving mentor to receive this honor.

One may wonder where the roots of Spencer’s motivation and qualities as a teacher and mentor come from, and I suspect his mother, Toby Cahill, played a large role in that. Spencer and his sister, Leslie, grew up in a single parent household, where Toby taught them the values of service and compassion. To celebrate her life, Spencer and his family have endowed a scholarship in her name, with this being its inaugural year. The Toby Cahill Memorial Scholarship celebrates students who are engaged in some level of service to their community and is renewable for a second year for scholarship recipients.

To conclude this soliloquy, I was struck by attending Spencer’s last lecture course at the end of Winter quarter. As a tradition, faculty members from our department attend the last minutes of our colleagues’ last lecture as a congratulatory sendoff. Always mindful of significance in the moment, Spencer shared a poignant one with his class. He showed them a photo that he took of his very first class as a WWU professor, talking about where some of his students were now, 28 years later. He then asked for permission to take a photo of his very last class. To me, if these photos serve as anything, perhaps they’re bookends to a long and impactful career, and each book, volume, or paper held together on this shelf represents a student who learned to be courageous, wise and benevolent through their experience working with Professor Spencer Anthony-Cahill.

Steve Sible's Retirement

After nearly 15 years of dedicated service, Steve Sible retired from his role as Fiscal Technician in the Department of Chemistry this past February.

Since joining the department in 2010, Steve has been an essential part of our administrative team, playing a key role in supporting faculty, staff, and students. His work coordinating summer student researchers helped enrich the undergraduate research experience, while his careful management of grant-related activities, including overseeing travel to conferences, ensured smooth operations and continued scholarly engagement for many in the department.

Steve’s professionalism, reliability, and friendly nature have left a lasting impression on all who have had the pleasure of working with him. We are grateful for his many contributions over the years and wish him all the best as he embarks on this well-deserved next chapter.

Department Highlights from WWU News

The following are links to WWU News articles from the past year highlighting members of our department.

More Department Accomplishments

It's been an impressive year for our students, alumni, and faculty, many of whom have earned university and national recognition (in addition to the stories linked above)!

• Adelle Koenig (BS Chemistry, 2024) was awarded a 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Hanna Kodama (BS Biochemistry, 2023) and Olivia Caldwell (BS Chemistry, 2025) also received Honorable Mention in this highly competitive program.
• In the fall of 2024, Prof. Mike Larsen was promoted to Associate Professor, and Profs. John Antos, Rob Berger, and Tim Kowalczyk were promoted to Full Professor.
• Prof. Jay McCarty received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation ($676,280 over 5 years) in support of his group's research project titled "Bridging time and length scales of intrinsically disordered protein conformations and assemblies using advanced computational methods".
• Prof. Spencer Anthony-Cahill received WWU's 2025 Alumni Outstanding Faculty Legacy Award.
• Prof. Clint Spiegel received WWU's 2025 Paul J. Olscamp Research Award.
• Prof. Ying Bao received WWU's 2025 Arlan Norman Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring.
• Prof. Jim Vyvyan received a ChemCUR Outstanding Mentor Award from the Council on Undergraduate Research.
• Prof. Mike Larsen was named an Emerging Investigator by the journal Polymer Chemistry, one of the flagship publications in his discipline.

Alumni Spotlight

We caught up with Alexis Chang (BS Biochemistry, 2016), who shared her experiences at Western, working in industry, and currently as a PhD student at the University of Washington.

Q: When were you at Western? You mentioned you did research in the department - which lab, for how long, and can you briefly describe your project? When/how did you initially get into research?

I attended WWU from 2012 to 2016. I joined Dr. Clint Spiegel’s in late summer ahead of my junior year (~August 2014) and was a lab member until I graduated in June 2016. In Dr. Spiegel’s lab, I worked on two projects both focused on understanding the structure and function of the human blood clotting protein Factor VIII. The first project aimed to express isolated domains of FVIII in Escherichia coli with the motivation of pinpointing which domains exhibited phospholipid binding properties. The second project consisted of assaying phospholipid binding affinity of a FVIII domain containing point mutations.

My interest in science started when I was about 5, I took a tour of a WA forensics lab. I was fascinated by the ability to backtrack what happened at a crime scene based on subsequent observations. While I wasn’t interested in studying crime, I wanted to learn how to understand biological phenomena from scientific observations. My excitement for scientific research was heightened by my grandmother who was fascinated by archeology and always kept Science and National Geographic magazines in the living room.

Fast forward to college, and I was having trouble deciding on a major. I remember a conversation with Dr. Steven Emory in which he encouraged me to try out research in a lab and if I enjoyed it then look into chemistry, biochemistry, or molecular biology degrees. After a few months of pondering, I sat down with a friend and we sent out emails to all professors accepting research students. Clint responded with a potential opening. Our meeting involved him performing a gravity protein purification experiment in the lab while telling me about what his lab studied. Seeing the techniques sold me. I said I would like to join and the rest is history.

Q: When did you graduate? What did you do after graduating?

I graduated in June 2016, then spent a few months trying to find a biochemistry job in or near Bellingham. Without good options, I applied in Seattle and found a research position under the direction of Dr. Greg Ireton and Dr. Scott Delbecq (previous Spiegel lab alum as well!) at InBios Inc. InBios has been around since the late 1990s developing point of care diagnostics for infectious diseases such as Dengue and Zika, and more recently Covid. I performed DNA cloning for E. coli, insect cell and mammalian expression constructs. I also joined the protein purification team for both antigen and antibody production. I worked at InBios for four years before going for my PhD at UW.

Q: What are you doing now? How did you decide on UW for your PhD?

I am now in the lab of Dr. Judit Villén studying post translational modification of proteins by mass spectrometry. I am particularly focused on improving methods for comprehensive study of tyrosine phosphorylation. This protein modification is quite low in abundance relative to total protein content in a cell yet is a potent signal for changing cellular dynamics. Signaling by phosphotyrosine is critical for myriad cellular processes including even development, immune function, and memory. Dysregulation of phosphotyrosine signaling drives numerous cancers and drug resistance mechanisms. Therefore, my PhD has been focused on developing easy and affordable phosphotyrosine enrichment methods as well as applying those methods to investigate the evolutionary adoption of phosphotyrosine signaling along the emergence of animal multicellularity.

Deciding on UW for my PhD: I was always impressed and a bit overwhelmed by the scale of academic research at UW. I knew UW was too big for me as an undergraduate but that I would consider a large institution for graduate studies. My fiance and I were both living in Seattle already with both our families nearby. I ended up only applying to UW, all five of the protein biology related programs. Thankfully I was accepted to the Department of Genome Sciences, which in fact has a large protein mass spectrometry division despite its name!

Q: What is your favorite memory of your time in Biochemistry at Western?

Many fond memories:

• The friends we made from the numerous and necessary study sessions and running into each other in the chem building and library. The tests were so difficult you couldn’t survive them without group study sessions. I ended up meeting my husband from biophysical chemistry study sessions.
• Running into classmates late on weekend evenings to see the answer key posted outside of Spencer Anthony-Cahill’s office for Biochem I.
• The annual University Scholars Week
• Quizzing lab mates on organic chemistry reactions in test preparation
• Being in research lab and looking up to the master’s students
• Organic chemistry lab experiments
• Analytical chemistry lab where you get to see who is prone to overshooting a pH titration

Grant Funding and Research Highlights

• Our department was well-represented at the American Chemical Society national conference in March 2025 in San Diego. Faculty and students gave talks, presented posters, and had a chance to meet up to celebrate their accomplishments (top picture).
• At the ACS meeting, in honor of Prof. Mark Bussell's award for research at an undergraduate institution, a ceremony, banquet, and research symposium were held in his honor (bottom picture). The symposium included four WWU alumni who have gone on to careers in academia and industry: Garth Simpson (WWU 1995, professor at Purdue University), Samantha Glazier (WWU 1996, professor at St. Lawrence University), Byron Gates (WWU 1997, professor at Simon Fraser University), and Keith McCrea (WWU 1997, Vice President for Research and Development at ExThera Medical).
• Faculty in the Chemistry and Geology Departments secured grant funding from the Murdock Charitable Trust ($381,585) for new instrumentation with their proposal, "Mass spectrometry and isotopic analysis to support research and teaching in growing WWU STEM programs". Prof. Steven Emory (Chemistry) was the PI of this project, with co-PIs Profs. Karin Lemkau (Chemistry), Camilo Ponton (Geology), and Casey Saenger (Geology).
• Prof. Karin Lemkau was also co-PI - with PI Prof. Brady Olson (Biology) and co-PI Prof. Jim Cooper (Biology) - on a 3-year National Science Foundation grant ($638,888) to study forage fish survival in the Salish Sea.
• Prof. Tim Kowalczyk spent the fall of 2024 at the University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus as a visiting scholar working with Prof. Daisuke Yokogawa's theoretical chemistry group. The principal aim of the visit was to combine Prof. Kowalczyk's group's approach to simulating electronic excitations in organic materials with a family of solvent models developed in Prof. Yokogawa's group, but Prof. Kowalczyk also spent time learning a unique approach to interpretable artificial intelligence for chemical property prediction. Profs. Kowalczyk and Yokogawa and their students continue to collaborate through remote group meetings.
• 

  In April 2025, 14 students and 4 faculty from our department attended the ACS Undergraduate Research Symposium in Ellensburg, Washington. Students presented their research, including a talk by Peyton Schuldheiss and many posters. The picture at right shows all attendees of the symposium.

Building Connections with Mongolia

This winter, the WWU Chemistry Department hosted National University of Mongolia (NUM) Chemistry Department Chair Prof. Bolormaa Oyuntsetseg for a two-day visit and seminar, in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Sciences and the Graduate School. In her seminar, Prof. Oyuntsetseg discussed her water quality research and its importance to public health in Ulaanbataar, capital city of Mongolia and the home of NUM. Prof. Oyuntsetseg's visit follows a visit by WWU Chemistry's David Patrick, Dean of the Graduate School, to the NUM Chemistry Department last year. Both visits were supported by WWU's John C. Street Endowment for Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies at Western. Mark Greenberg, WWU Global Studies Director of Faculty Global Engagement, is leading next steps to facilitate faculty connections between NUM and WWU Chemistry and Environmental Sciences faculty through videoconferencing with the goal of identifying opportunities for research and cultural exchange among WWU and NUM chemistry students.

Molecular Biosciences Symposium

The 3^rd Molecular Biosciences Symposium was held on Friday, January 31, 2025. Ten PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, including three WWU alumni from Seattle and Vancouver gave scientific talks in the morning. The symposium also included professional development roundtables at lunch and a presentation and speaker panel on getting into graduate school, moderated by Dr. Bill Mahoney, the Associate Dean of Student and Postdoctoral Affairs, University of Washington Graduate School. Finally, Drs. Lena Schroeder, Director of the Cellular Imaging Shared Resource at Fred Hutch, and Jacob Brockerman (WWU alum!), Scientist at A-Alpha Bio, concluded the day with careers in science talks. The event was attended by over 150 WWU students, many of whom received course credit for participating, and faculty. It was funded by NSF CAREER and Cottrell Scholar awards to Associate Professor of Chemistry Jeanine Amacher.

Publications

WWU undergraduate students (*), WWU graduate students (†)

†Jackson, SN; †Lee, DE; *Blount, JM; †Croney, KA; *Ibershof, JW; *Ceravolo, CM; *Brown, KM; *Goodwin-Rice, NJ; †Whitham, KM; McCarty, J; Antos, JM; Amacher, JF. "Substrate recognition in Bacillus anthracis sortase B beyond its canonical pentapeptide binding motif and use in sortase-mediated ligation". J. Biol. Chem. 2025, 301, 108382.

*Longshore-Neate, F; *Ceravolo, C; *Masuga, C; *Tahti, EF; *Blount, JM; †Smith, SN; Amacher, JF. "The conformation of the nSrc specificity-determining loop in the Src SH3 domain is modulated by a WX conserved sequence motif found in SH3 domains". Front. Mol. Biosci. 2024, 11, 1487276.

*Kodama, HM; *Lindblom, KM; †Walkenhauer, EG; Antos, JM; Amacher, JF. "Amino acid variability at W194 of Staphylococcus aureus sortase A alters nucleophile specificity". Protein Sci. 2024, 33, e5212.

Bao, Y; †Oluwafemi, A. "Recent advances in surface modified gold nanorods and their improved sensing performance". Chem. Commun. 2024, 60, 469-481.

Urbach, AR; Berger, RF; Beuning, PJ; Nevidomskyy, AH. "COMPASS: Career and occupational mentoring for the professional advancement of science students". In ACS Symposium Series: Professional Mentoring Programs for Science Students 2024, eds. AR Urbach and PJ Beuning, 1-11.

Berger, RF; Amacher, JF. "Implementation of professional development initiatives in chemistry at a regional public university". In ACS Symposium Series: Professional Mentoring Programs for Science Students 2024, eds. AR Urbach and PJ Beuning, 83-97.

†Hennig, HK; *Schare, JR; *Lynch, RP; *Bullock, A; †Baldwin, MS; Bussell, ME. "Effect of nickel phosphide phase on the photo-thermal catalytic hydrogenation of carbon dioxide". Catal. Today 2025, 449, 115185.

*Juetten, K; De Bruyn, WJ; *Landram, Z; *Jansen, CDR; Harrison, AW; Strecker, A; Clark, CD. "Production of dissolved organic matter from lily pads (Nymphaea odorata) in a mesotrophic freshwater lake". Aquat. Sci. 2025, 87, 55.

De Bruyn, WJ; Mackinam, D; Harrison, AW; Clark, CD. "Time-resolved fluorescence measurements of dissolved organic matter (DOM) as a function of environmental parameters in estuarine waters". Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 2025, 32, 1952-1970.

De Bruyn, WJ; Harrison, AW; Kocik, E; Mackinam, D; Truong, E; Clark, CD. "Time-resolved fluorescence of oils and oil distillates in artificial seawater at low excitation wavelengths: Assessing the use of lifetimes to decouple oil and dissolved organic matter (DOM) fluorophores in natural waters". Marine. Pollut. Bull. 2024, 209, 117073.

*Clark, LK; Cullati, SN. "Activation is only the beginning: mechanisms that tune kinase substrate specificity". Biochem. Soc. Trans. 2025, 53, 145-159.

*Fugami, KM; *Black, GS; Kowalczyk, T; Seda, T; Gilbertson, JD. "Intermolecular N–N coupling of a dinitrosyl iron complex induced by hydrogen bond donors in the secondary coordination sphere". J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025, 147, 7274-7281.

*Leo, TM; *Robbins, *M; Sullivan, A; *Thornes, H; *Fitzsimmons, G; *Goodey, A; Kowalczyk, T. "Simulation of interlayer coupling for electroactive covalent organic framework design". J. Chem. Phys. 2024, 160, 184704.

*Koenig, AL; *Allis, KM; *Lehr, JS; Larsen, MB. "Effects of crosslink density and plasticizer on thermorheological properties of dissociative guanidine-based covalent adaptable networks". Polym. Chem. 2025, 16, 52-61.

†Moma, M; *Lee, A; Olson, MB; Lemkau, KL; Cooper, WJ. "The impact of polychlorinated biphenyls on the development of zebrafish (Danio rerio)". Biomedicines 2024, 12, 2068.

†Johnson, J; Olson, MB; *Parker, I; *Hoffmeister, I; Lemkau, KL. "Widespread production of polyunsaturated aldehydes by benthic diatoms of the North Pacific Ocean’s Salish Sea". J. Chem. Ecol. 2024, 50, 290-298.

†Cummins, D; *Longstreth, C; McCarty, J. "Analysis of transition rates from variational flooding using analytical theory". J. Chem. Phys. 2024, 161, 194104.

O'Neil, GW; *Clark, TD; †Jones, AP; *Wallace, C; *Carnahan, DM; *Crockett, H. "Diastereoselective β-hydroxy vinylsulfone isomerizations". Org. Biomol. Chem. 2025, 23, 1883-1893.

†Peterson, HJ; O'Neil, GW. "TBAT-catalyzed dioxasilinane formation from beta-hydroxy ketones". Tetrahedron 2025, 171, 134418.

*Tan, ED; *Wier, KE; O'Neil, GW. "Iodine rearrangements of tetraallylsilane and synthesis of silicon-stereogenic organosilanes". Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25, 9996.

Butera, D; Pijning, AE; †Avery, NG; Coxon, CH; Metcalfe, C; Mimoun, A; Lacroix-Desmazes, S; Spiegel, PC Jr; Hogg, PJ. "Patient anti-FVIII drug antibodies bind preferentially to a subset of FVIII covalent states". Blood Advances 2025, online ahead of print.

†Avery, NG; Childers, KC; McCarty, J; Spiegel, PC Jr. "Atomistic mechanism of lipid membrane binding for blood coagulation factor VIII with molecular dynamics simulations on a microsecond timescale". J. Phys. Chem. B 2025, 29, 1486-1498.

†Avery, NG; *Young, IR; *Lu, S; †Vaughan, JD; *Korus, PS; *Richardson, TN; Childers, KC; Smirnov, SL; Spiegel, PC Jr. "Biophysical characterization of blood coagulation factor VIII binding to lipid nanodiscs that mimic activated platelet surfaces". J. Thromb. Haemostasis 2024, 23, 513-524.

Pitner, RA; Chao, JL; Dahl, NP; Fan, MN; Cai, X; †Avery, NG; Roe, K; Spiegel, PC Jr; Miao, CH; Gerner, MY; James, RG; Rawlings, DJ. "Blunting specific T-dependent antibody responses with engineered 'decoy' B cells". Molecular Therapy 2024, 32, 3453-3469.

Belofsky, G; Cruz, C; Schultz, T; Zapata, M; Wilcox, D; Wasmund, B; Salomon, CE; Spiegel, PC Jr. "Antimicrobial isoflavans and other metabolites of Dalea nana". Phytochemistry 2024, 226, 114224.

Childers, KC; Cowper, B; †Vaughan, JD; *McGill, JR; Davulcu, O; Lollar, P; Doering, CB; Coxon, CH; Spiegel, PC Jr. "Structural basis for inhibition of coagulation factor VIII reveals a shared antigenic hotspot on the C1 domain". J. Thromb. Haemostasis 2024, 22, 2449-2459.

Stephenson, NS; *Abelsen, UA. "Recognition experiences of women of color in chemistry: An intersectional study". Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. 2024, 25, 1229-1250.