The King's Connection Magazine Volume 24 // Number 1 | Page 9

CAMPUS NEWS

FACULTY, STUDENTS CONTRIBUTE TO 2013 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

S

tudents and faculty at The King’s Centre for Visualization
 n Science (KCVS) have made important contributions
i
over the past eight years to the education and outreach
efforts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW), the organization honoured with the
2013 Nobel Peace Prize in October.
“We were thrilled with the news of this well-deserved
honour for OPCW, which has been working tirelessly for a
world free of chemical weapons,” says Chemistry Professor
DR. PETER MAHAFFY, a member of the OPCW Temporary
Working Group on Education and Outreach, and co-director
of the KCVS.
“OPCW works to raise public awareness, in addition to its
important scientific work of verification and implementation
of legal and political frameworks. And we are pleased that
King’s students and faculty have contributed so meaningfully
to this work in 2013 by creating a rich set of interactive web
resources to help the public understand the responsibility that
each of us has to ensure that chemicals are used responsibly
and for beneficial purposes.”
A comprehensive set of interactive web materials
(www.multiple.kcvs.ca) created by the KCVS research team
in 2013 explores the beneficial uses, misuses, and abuses
of multi-use chemicals, both historically and presently, and
introduces the Chemical Weapons Convention. Users are
invited to explore what is being done to monitor the abuse
of multi-use chemicals and to discover the responsibilities of
both scientists and the public in responding to the misuse of
chemicals, such as in the production of chemical weapons.
The web materials, developed by the KCVS team as a joint
project of the OPCW and the International Union of Pure
& Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), were piloted at the World
Chemistry Congress in Turkey in August 2013, several days
before chemical weapons were used in Syria. The materials
were used