John Birks |
Dr. John W. Birks is co-founder and President of 2B Technologies, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. He is also Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Fellow Emeritus of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) of the University of Colorado, Boulder. John earned a B.S. degree in Chemistry with High Honors at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in 1968 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974 under the direction of Professor Harold Johnston. He began his academic career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1974. In 1977 Prof. Birks moved his research group to the University of Colorado where he could collaborate more closely with CU, NCAR and NOAA scientists on research in atmospheric chemistry. Prof. Birks is best known for quantifying the rates of several chemical reactions key to understanding ozone depletion in the Antarctic “ozone hole”, his seminal work in 1981/82 with Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate, 1995) in developing the “nuclear winter” theory, and his invention of new instruments for chemical analysis at ultra trace levels. Prof. Birks has published more than 130 scientific papers, edited 3 books, and holds 6 U.S. patents. Prof. Birks has supervised the research of 39 students earning the Ph.D. degree and 9 students earning M.S. degrees. His awards include Alfred P. Sloan and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships, the Thomas Jefferson Award of the University of Colorado, the Witherspoon Peace and Justice Award, the Colorado Section Award of the American Chemical Society, the Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest of the American Physical Society, and the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology. He was the recipient of the 2000 Hazel Barnes Prize, the highest faculty award of the University of Colorado. After 25 years of service, in 2002 Prof. Birks retired from the University of Colorado and joined 2B Technologies, a company he co-founded with Dr. Mark Bollinger in 1998. At 2B Tech, Dr. Birks is working with a team of scientists and engineers to develop a new generation of instrumentation for environmental and biomedical analysis. He also is co-founder of InDevR (Instrument Development and Research), a Boulder technology company specializing in the invention and development of new analytical instrumentation for the biomedical sciences. 2B Tech and InDevR are now co-located in Boulder, Colorado. |