Science shines at BC

The Issue: BC science departments rising in national repute What we think: Commitment to sciences pays dividends

Boston College has a reputation for scholarship. Professors pack their free time with hours of extracurricular analysis for academic articles, and students hole up in the many libraries on campus to pore over texts and write papers. A different kind of research, however, is evolving at this University historically focused on the liberal arts.

The sciences are blooming, and now a number of BC professors have major research accomplishments that have brought prestige and notoriety to the school. A team of BC chemists, led by associate professor Dunwei Wang, has developed nanonets, or "a flexible webbing of nano-scale wires that multiplies surface area." Wang has managed to solve a continuing scientific problem: How to create thin substances while maintaining their strength? This new nanotechnology will help to improve the future quality of electronic wiring and energy appliances, a breakthrough that builds upon a series of victories by our natural science departments.

Just last year, the University completed the construction of a "clean room" on Newton Campus that will be instrumental in the development of nanotech research at BC. In fact, the clean room is what lured Wang here.

Also, in 2005, Amir Hoveyda, professor in the chemistry department, received considerable press after his work with catalysts that will change the way medicines are manufactured. Although he didn't win the Nobel Prize for chemistry, his name was all over the final paper of the men who did.

All of these developments have changed the way that people see BC. The university is attracting graduate students who want to work with the best equipment in the newest laboratories. BC is getting its name into scholarly journals like Science and Nature. It is netting professors who are in the vanguard of their fields. And most importantly, we are getting students who want to be doctors, scientists, and mathematicians.

This is the right cycle for a school that prides itself on educating the whole person and a great way for the hard sciences to distinguish themselves as something other than a nagging requirement in the University core.