Portland State Magazine Winter 2016

6 pORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE winter 2016 Vaping study expands ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES took a hit last year, when three Portland State researchers linked vaping with high levels of cancer- causing formaldehyde. Their study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , stirred controversy as it went viral. Chemistry professors James Pankow, David Peyton and Robert Strongin tested a common e-cigarette model and a particular e-liquid. A new $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will substantially expand their study. “Our goal is to better understand the processes that may create toxic chemicals during vaping and find ways to minimize them,” says Strongin. pa r k b l o c k s Former president passes away Gregory B. Wolfe, who helped Portland State become a university in 1969 and award its first doctorate in 1972, passed away on Dec. 12 in Florida. He was 93. During his presidency from 1968 to 1974, PSU and the country experienced violent antiwar demonstrations. Wolfe was known as “a tireless (and within the University community, an almost completely successful) advocate of peace and the rational settlement of controversy,” wrote the late history professor Gordon Dodds in The College That Could Not Die . Wolfe went on become president of Florida International University, Miami, where he guided its transition from a two-year school to a full four-year university.