Speaker: Promoting Research for Global Impact

Isiah Warner, PhD
Vice Chancellor LSU

Professor Warner is an analytical chemist with over 300 refereed publications in a variety of journals relevant to his area of research. He has particular expertise in the area of fluorescence spectroscopy, where his research has focused for more than 35 years.

He is considered one of the world’s experts in this area. For example, he is the corresponding author in the highly cited biannual reviews on “Molecular Fluorescence, Phosphorescence, and Chemiluminescence Spectrometry”, for the journal, Analytical Chemistry. Over the past 20 years, he has also maintained a strong research effort in the areas of organized media and separation science.

Professor Warner has been performing research in the more specific area of analytical measurements using ionic liquids for several years. It is this research on ionic liquids which has lead to the recent conceptualization and implementation of a group of uniform materials based on organic salts (GUMBOS) as novel materials which can be exploited for a variety of analytical measurements.

Novel nanoparticles (nanoGUMBOS) have been developed from these materials which can primarily be classified as frozen ionic liquids. However, some GUMBOS are not ionic liquids since they do not fit the traditional definition. Several publications in key chemistry journals (e.g. Nano Letters, ACS Nano, and Langmuir) and a pending patent have resulted from this new area of research.