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Western Washington University student Audrey Cheung of Hong Kong and her faculty advisor, Associate Professor of Chemistry John Gilbertson, have won a Division of Inorganic Chemistry Award for Undergraduate Research from the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Cheung will be given her award at the Spring National ACS meeting in San Francisco in the beginning of April. As part of her award, Cheung will give a talk at the conference’s “Frontiers in Undergraduate Research” symposium. Typically, this award is only given out to one student from an undergraduate-focused school such as Western each year.

“I just feel so honored to have gotten this award, and I certainly wouldn’t have even started this research project it wasn’t for Professor Gilbertson,” she said. “I came to Western because I had heard that its science programs offered students the opportunity to do their own research, and I was right. It has been an incredible opportunity.”

Cheung matriculated to Western as a transfer student from Whatcom Community College who had an interest in Chemistry that was brought to life once she joined Gilbertson’s research group. Within a year, she had published her first research in the journal “Chemical Communications,” a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

She is now a master’s-degree student at Western and continues to refine her research, which has to do with the structure and electron-transfer ability of certain kinds of copper-based compounds, as part of Gilbertson’s overarching work on CO₂ reduction.

“Audrey’s work is just amazing, and this award is a testament to all the time she has put in, her independence, and her intellectual curiosity,” Gilbertson said.

For more information on Gilbertson’s or Cheung’s research, contact him at (360) 650-2790 or john.gilbertson@wwu.edu.