Dr. William E. Wallace (1942 – 2008) – (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH))

Current position?
Research Physicist, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Adjunct Professor: Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, WVU;
Genetics and Developmental Biology Program, Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Consumer Sciences, WVU.
Honorary Professor, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, PR China.

Skills learned as a WVU Physics student that are most useful in your career?
Much of my work is research on biophysical mechanisms of toxicity of respirable particles from occupational or environmental exposures. My training in spectroscopy has been at the center of this.

Reason for coming to WVU to study Physics?
I came to WVU because I am a native West Virginian. Why Physics? Sputnik had just been launched, with all its societal reverberations, a couple years before I graduated from high school; and physics looked like the most fundamental and exciting field of the sciences.

Return visits to WVU as an alumni?
As fate would have it, after the PhD I received a National Research Council postdoc at a Federal research lab in Morgantown; and I’ve stayed on here as a US Government researcher with continuing WVU contacts.

Most rewarding Physics course(s) taken?
Math Physics from Prof. Dr. Charles D. Thomas, and Quantum Mechanics from Prof. Dr. William E Vehse were perhaps the best.

Favorite Physics professor(s)?
So many! At the top for me was, of course, my PhD adviser, Bill Vehse – a Renaissance man: a researcher, an educator, a man of near infinite patience and also a cellist.

Involvement in graduate research projects?
As a graduate student, in addition to my thesis and dissertation research I held a part time job as a student intern physicist with a US Bureau of Mines Research Center, which provided a good practicum.