Credit: (Image by Robert Tranter.) Tranter explores the reactions of chemicals under high temperatures and pressures. Senior chemist Robert (Rob) Tranter of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory is no stranger to shockwave chemistry, but he received a happy shock of his own when he recently was named a Fellow of the Combustion Institute. Members of the international combustion community who are named Fellows of the Combustion Institute are recognized by their peers as being distinguished for outstanding contributions to combustion science, whether in research or in applications. Tranter is a member of Argonne's Gas-phase Chemical Dynamics group in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering division, in which he explores the reactions of different chemicals under high temperatures and pressures. To generate these temperatures and pressures, Tranter uses a shock tube -- an instrument containing a highly pressurized region of helium gas separated from a less pressurized region of the reaction mixture (test gas).