WWU’s Greg O’Neil, chemistry students unlock new technique to identify waxes used as alternative fuel sources, cosmetics

Professor of Chemistry Greg O’Neil has spent a decade investigating how to utilize an algae-produced wax for alternative fuel sources and cosmetics. Now, his lab has an easier time identifying and quantifying the wax thanks to a new method developed by WWU chemistry student Sarah Maffett and a team of researchers in O’Neil’s lab. 

For more than 50 years, researchers relied on a technique called gas chromatography, or GC, to analyze the wax, known as alkenones. 

“GC is very useful — it’s extremely sensitive, needing only tiny amounts of material, and provides a lot of information,” O’Neil said. “However, as the name implies, it requires alkenones to be vaporized into a gas, which is not easy.”

Like candle wax or beeswax, alkenones are solid waxes at room temperature. Lighting a candle causes the wax to melt, but it would take a lot more energy and heat to make the candle boil. Similarly, boiling alkenones for GC takes a long time and very high temperatures.

Maffett led the project to develop a method to identify alkenones using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a technique similar to MRI imaging. 

By using NMR, the alkenones do not need to be vaporized, making identifying and quantifying the wax faster and easier for researchers.

NMR utilizes a 500-megahertz magnet — nearly four times stronger than a standard MRI machine — and exciting the sample with radio waves. This disrupts the atoms’ equilibrium and creates a “bulk spin.”

“Once you've disturbed the atoms’ equilibrium, they're going to reassert their equilibrium, but they do it gradually because of the magnetic environment that you put it in,” Maffett said. “As the bulk spin relaxes, it relaxes gradually, kind of like a spinning top. And as it spins and relaxes, it causes an oscillating magnetic field.”

The magnetic field is detected by the NMR’s detector probe, which researchers then use to identify which molecules are present in a sample. 

“Every atom in your sample is going to decay at a different rate and at a different frequency,” Maffett explained. “We can identify each individual frequency that those atoms were decaying at, and that allows us to characterize the molecule.”

Maffett was able to lead the NMR research project after previously working in O’Neil’s lab on related alkenones research. She was excited to have the chance to do independent research, but sometimes the scope of the project was daunting, she said.

“Leading a project fosters a lot of independence,” Maffett said. “It’s on you to read the papers and set up the experiments. There are not a lot of other people you can go to — the decisions are on you to make.”

Though she was the lead on the paper, Maffett stressed that she was not the only one involved with the research. 

“There were a lot of smart, devoted chemists working on this project, and I’m happy they’re recognized in the paper as well,” she said.

Maffett worked with fellow Western students Nazir Pamplin, Christian Cornejo and Andre Weaver; Robert Nelson and Christopher Reddy from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (who previously partnered with O’Neil on cosmetic applications); and O’Neil on the project.

Chemistry senior Pamplin worked in the O’Neil lab towards the end of the project and shortly after Maffett graduated.

Pamplin began working on the project because it was a vital step in other alkenone research projects they were interested in. 

Beyond the applications for future research, the project taught Pamplin how to utilize NMR, which they said is a vital tool for chemists. 

"The basis of most synthetic chemistry analysis is running NMRs and being able to read them,” they said. “It was an amazing boot camp for me.” 

Having the opportunity to work on published research as an undergraduate is extremely valuable, Pamplin said.

“Western is a very unique school in that if you show up and you're excited about something, they'll give you the resources to be able to pursue that while also making sure that you have the platform to be able to excel,” they said.

The team published their findings in the May 2026 edition of ACS Omega, an open-source journal from the American Chemical Society.

Maffett graduated in June 2025 with a B.S. in Chemistry and is now in the doctoral chemistry program at the University of British Columbia. 

Pamplin continues to work in the O’Neil lab and will graduate in spring 2027.

To learn more about the O’Neil lab and the Department of Chemistry, visit https://chemistry.wwu.edu/oneilg/faculty-research

Mikayla King, ’17, covers the College of Science and Engineering and Woodring College of Education for University Communications. Reach out to her with story ideas at kingm24@wwu.edu.