Bringing Chemistry to Life

Anyone that’s followed this podcast will know that Paolo’s final question to each guest is, “What advice would you like to share with younger scientists just starting their career?” Here, our guest, Dr. Monte Helm, professor of chemistry at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, shares advice that he clearly lives by, which is, “… be flexible ii your career and follow what you think you’ll be passionate about.” 

While Monte’s academic training is in inorganic chemistry, he’ll tell you he’s always cared about teaching as much as the subject itself. Join us to meet this lifelon...

Most of us don’t grow up across the street from a chemistry building or know from an early age that we want to be a scientist, but Alan Dyke, VP of Business Development for ProChem, Inc. (CTO of Boulder Scientific Company at the time of the interview) did and became a chemist. Dr. Alan Dyke, former colleague, and friend of Paolo’s, shares his career path and discusses the history and current state of the field of catalysis. 

With a father that taught university-level chemistry, and a brother in the field, it may not be surprising that...

Bringing Chemistry to Life is as much about the people behind the science as it is about the science itself. We’ve been remiss in sharing a bit more about the creator and host! In this unique episode we flip the script and move Paolo from the host chair to the guest chair to hear his story. 

From Paolo’s childhood memories watching his father fix electronics and his dreams of being in the NBA, he chats about developing into a skilled bioorganic chemist, working in biocatalysis and his contributions to international study programs. He describes the “God-lik...

With four seasons under our belt, we’ve heard some amazing stories about how our guests have found, or often “stumbled” into, their careers in science. We’ve also had many conversations where past guests have passionately discussed the importance of their early career teachers as well as what teaching does for them in their current careers. This conversation is squarely centered on these two topics, with a good dose of photochemistry mixed in too. 

We meet Dr. Izzy Lamb, Assistant Professor at Fort Lewis College, which is a small liberal arts school in Colorado with a primarily...

After realizing at a young age that rock and roll might be a better hobby than a career, our guest chose chemistry and chromatography as his path, and he’s rocked that career choice!

In this fun and engaging conversation, you’ll meet Frank Steiner, PhD, Senior Manager of Product Applications, and Scientific Advisor at Thermo Fisher Scientific, who has earned much respect for his contributions to the field of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). He and his team are customer number one for new HPLC products and generate much of the data used to support product launches. Stee...

Protein biology has always been grounded in the relationship between structure and function but how we determine structure has changed dramatically. While it’s still common to crystallize a protein for X-ray diffraction and then back calculate its structure, supercomputing-powered, AI-driven tools have revolutionized approaches to getting a protein structure and engineer proteins for uses such as biocatalysis. Amazing right, but how? By using wet lab data to train and then compute, protein structure based on their sequence alone, which is why talking with this episode’s guest is so interesting. 

In this episode, Dr. Ahir Pushpanath, Enzym...

Electricity undeniably changed the world and enabled countless other technologies. Now, via storage and mobile access to electrical energy, batteries are positioned to further enable us as a species. So, it is the perfect time to get to know battery technology innovator and entrepreneur, Dr. Simon Engelke, Founder and Chair of Battery Associates, as he shares his passion for sustainable battery innovation. Any battery enthusiast will feel recharged by this electrifying conversation about the past, present, and future of battery technology.  

As a child, Simon was fascinated with energy sources and storage and recalls playing with the fu...

Visit https://www.thermofisher.com/chemistry-podcast/ to access the extended video version of this episode and the episode summary sheet, which contains links to recent publications and additional content recommendations for our guest. You can also access the extended video version of this episode via our YouTube channel to hear, and see, more of the conversation!

Visit https://thermofisher.com/bctl and use the code S4_BCTL in August, StyTun3d in September, BrgChem2Lif in October, or AlwysL3rning in November, to register for your free Bringing Chemistry to Life T-shirt. 

Chemistry is often perceived...

Visit https://www.thermofisher.com/chemistry-podcast/ to access the extended video version of this episode and the episode summary sheet, which contains links to recent publications and additional content recommendations for our guest. You can also access the extended video version of this episode via our YouTube channel to hear, and see, more of the conversation!

Visit https://thermofisher.com/bctl and use the code PaoloRKS in July, or S4_BCTL in August, to register for your free Bringing Chemistry to Life T-shirt. 

Some chemists just see the world around them in a different way. Where you...

Visit https://www.thermofisher.com/chemistry-podcast/ to access the extended video version of this episode and the episode summary sheet, which contains links to recent publications and additional content recommendations for our guest. You can also access the extended video version of this episode via our YouTube channel to hear, and see, more of the conversation!

Visit https://thermofisher.com/bctl and use the code PaoloRKS in July to register for your free Bringing Chemistry to Life T-shirt. 

Moving from a linear economy, where things are made, used and discarded, to a circular one, based on recycl...