Professor of Chemistry and Civil and Environmental Engineering

Ph.D. Environmental Engineering Science, Minor in Chemistry, Caltech, 1979
M.S. Environmental Engineering Science, Minor in Chemistry, Caltech
B.A. Chemistry with Honors, State Univ. New York (SUNY) with special studies in Graz, Austria, 1973

Dr. Pankow’s academic training combined basic chemistry (BA, SUNY, 1973) with engi­neer­ing (Ph.D., Caltech, 1979). His research has involved the application of chemical prin­ci­ples to un­der­­stand­ing how chemicals partition be­tween important phases in the envi­ron­ment. He has been listed as a “highly cited researcher” (http://isihighlycited.com/) since 2003. A pri­mary focus of Dr. Pankow’s work has in­volved the study of the “gas/particle (G/P) partitioning” pro­cess, i.e., how compounds dis­tribute them­selves between the gas phase and the associated particles of aerosol systems. This type of par­ti­tion­ing is of enormous fun­damental importance in all contemporary mo­del predictions of the amounts of pol­luting parti­cu­­late matter (PM) that form in urban and re­gional air, and in the global atmos­phere (12,700 Google hits for Pankow+parti­cle). His ground­breaking work on this theory, which is used in climate change re­search, resulted in his re­ceipt of the 1999 American Chemi­cal Society Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science & Tech­no­logy, and of the 2005 Haagen-Smit Prize (http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sgg/singh/winners5.html). Gas/par­ticle parti­tioning also affects the behavior and fate of individual toxic pollutants in the atmosphere, and theory developed by Pankow (1987) provides the foun­da­tion of the Junge-Pankow model (145,000 Google hits for “Junge Pankow”) used to predict how toxic compounds such as PCBs, pesti­cides, and dioxins be­have in conta­mi­­nated air, includ­ing how such com­pounds are tran­sported to sensitive remote polar eco­sys­tems (e.g., http://www.epa.gov/bns/reports/stakemay2005/PCB/Gong.pdf). In addition, gas/particle partition­ing plays a fun­da­mental role in con­trolling the de­livery of the chemical doses of nicotine and car­cino­gens from cigarette smoke. Dr. Pankow recently served on a select advisory panel convened Nov. 29-30, 2007 by NIH on the topic of “Science and Future Directions for Nicotine Regulation”. Note that the U.S. Con­gress may soon choose to finally grant FDA regulatory control over tobacco products. Dr. Pankow is very inter­ested in the topic of cancer risk from exposure to tobacco smoke carcinogens. Findings in his 2007 sci­entific article on cancer from smok­ing have be­come a main focus of the high-stakes debate on how Con­gress should move forward with the proposed FDA legislation, and high profile scientific journal citations of that article are coming from, among others, Dr. Ellen Gritz at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Hous­ton, Texas. Dr. Pankow is also very interested in contaminants in drinking water, and has recently secured a new five year project from the U.S.G.S on that topic. Dr. Pankow is the author of more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, and four books. His book Aquatic Chemistry Concepts has served as the text in graduate and undergraduate courses in water geo­chemistry at numerous universities. Among many others, these include Stanford, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, Harvard, and University of Wisconsin. Dr. Pankow serves as a grant proposal reviewer for many agencies including NSF, NIH, EPA, among many others, and as a reviewer for many scientific journals.

Office Location: EB 202D
Office Hour: by appointment
Phone: 503-725-2844
Email: pankowj@pdx.edu