Woods Hole's Christopher Reddy to speak on the gulf oil spill Feb. 18 at WWU

Christopher Reddy, Senior Scientist at the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, will present “Hunting for Subsurface Oil Plumes in the Gulf of Mexico Following the Deepwater Horizon Disaster” at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 18, in Science, Mathematics and Technology Education building 150 on the Western Washington University campus.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception will begin at 3:15 p.m. followed by the lecture at 4 p.m.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is the largest marine oil spill in history. Oil plumes produced by the Deepwater Horizon explosion were as large as 10 miles long, three miles wide and 300 feet thick. Reddy will be discussing his most recent work, tracking subsurface oil plumes, following the oil spill, and the analysis of their biodegradation.

This lecture was originally planned to be held earlier this winter, but was rescheduled due to the snow storms on the East Coast leaving Reddy unable to fly out of Washington D.C.

This presentation is made possible by the 2010 Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lectureship grant, awarded to WWU’s Department of Chemistry. Part of the $18,500 Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lectureship award is to bring in a leading researcher to give a lecture in the chemical sciences.

For more information on this presentation, contact Greg O’Neil, an assistant professor of Chemistry within WWU’s College of Sciences and Technology, at (360) 650-6283 or oneilg@chem.wwu.edu.