with ever increasing awareness that our environment is being ravaged at an alarming rate and the very seriously high rate of diabetes, there has been much research into understanding, controlling and reversing these processes. in my m.sc. studies, the oxidation of methanol and glucose on pt based nanomaterial electrodes has been examined while the electrochemical oxidation of white liquor has been studied on a nanostructured ir02-based electrode. surface morphologies were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (sem), energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (eds), and x-ray diffraction (xrd). electrochemical analysis was performed by methods including cyclic and linear voltammetry (cv and lv), chronoamperommetry (ca), chronopotentiommetry, (cp), amperometric (i-t), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (eis).