| R. S. Houk was
born in New Castle PA and received the B. S. degree in
Secondary Education from Slippery Rock State College in
1974. He received the Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from
Iowa State University in 1980, where he worked with V.
A. Fassel and H. J. Svec. He has been on the faculty at
Iowa State University since 1981 and has a concurrent
appointment in the Ames Laboratory of the U. S. Dept.
of Energy.
His long term interests are in inorganic analysis by
mass spectrometry, particularly ICP-MS, electrospray
MS, and the combination of these methods with chromatographic
and electrophoretic separations for measuring elemental
speciation. He built the first ICP-MS device and has
won the following awards: ACS Award in Chemical Instrumentation
(1993) and the Lester W. Strock Award (Society for Applied
Spectroscopy, 1986), Hasler Award (Soc. for Analytical
Chemistry of Pittsburgh & Fisons, 1993), Wilkinson
Teaching Award (Iowa State, 1993), the research Excellence
Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
(Iowa State, 2000), and the Anachem Award (ACS Detroit
Section, 2000).
Houk has published 145 papers and serves on the boards
of the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry and
Spectrochimica Acta Part B, the two major journals in
atomic spectroscopy. Houk has also recently been studying
electrospray ionization MS for inorganic analysis.
Website: http://www.chem.iastate.edu/faculty/Robert_Houk |