Skip to main content
Intellect

BYU professor's Web site receives "Internetional" honor

Brigham Young University chemistry professor Brian Woodfield has been selected to receive a 2008 Pirelli "Internetional" Award, the world's first Internet multimedia award aimed at the diffusion of scientific and technological culture worldwide.

Awards are granted every calendar year to the best multimedia presentations oriented toward physics, chemistry, mathematics, life sciences and science communication conducted on emerging online communication platforms that go beyond a simple Web site. The overall budget for the prize is €115,000, or about $178,000.

Woodfield won the award for his innovative online laboratory, Virtual ChemLab. He came up with the concept as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and used grants from BYU and the Department of Education to fund the project.

Virtual ChemLab contains all the amenities of a real laboratory setting, including limitless supplies of expensive or hazardous substances to which students usually have infrequent access. With the click of a mouse, students can set up, conduct simulations and view the outcome of each chemical combination or experiment.

The simulations, which Woodfield says have increased student performance in BYU organic chemistry labs by 30 percent, have also been implemented in more than 20 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

For more information, visit pirelliaward.com or contact the BYU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at (801) 422-3667.

Writer: Marissa Ballantyne

Related Articles

data-content-type="article"

Wildflowers not wildfires: How BYU and Provo City are helping to restore Rock Canyon Trailhead

July 10, 2025
At Rock Canyon Trailhead in Provo, Utah, BYU researchers are fighting fires with flowers. By replacing a problematic weed called cheatgrass with wildflowers, students and faculty are working to protect and restore one of Provo’s most popular hiking spots.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= promoTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= promoTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Wildfires in residential areas are on the rise; why hydrants and the water system behind them were never meant to stop those fires

July 01, 2025
BYU professor Rob Sowby teaches and studies environmental engineering, urban water infrastructure and sustainability. He has particular expertise in the planning, design, construction and operation of public water systems. That expertise has been increasingly important (and regularly sought out) in the wake of apocalyptic wildfires that have taxed those public water systems.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= promoTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= promoTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Meet the BYU math student helping make wildfire predictions faster and smarter

June 25, 2025
Using machine learning and math, a BYU student improved a key tool firefighters rely on during wildfire season
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= promoTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= promoTextAlignment=
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= promoTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText=