After Bronwen Konecky, award-winning organic and stable isotope geochemist, finished her first year of organic chemistry in college, she threw out her notes and sold her textbook.

She barely has time to sleep among days of nonstop meetings, classes and advising appointments, but professor Jennifer Smith still made time to take a group of about a dozen students to the Soulard Farmers Market Saturday for a day of shopping, cooking and socializing.

Jennifer Smith, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University, recently found a sample of alum in the Dakhleh Oasis in the Eastern Sahara. After working with the material, she was able to link it to blue paint that was found in Egyptian pottery during the New Kingdom.