1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I had a terrific chemistry teacher in high school, who let me do an independent study project. Also, my Pchem Professor in College was very good. I loved math and chemistry, but thought of them as two separate areas. When my Professor showed me that the two come together in theoretical chemistry, I was hooked!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

If I had the talent, rock star! But since I don’t, I would have probably pursued statistics. That was my other consideration for graduate study. At the time, I was told that all statisticians could do was actuarial work, but there are so many new opportunities in informatics. I am happy to say I get to dabble a little now… in statistics, not as a rock star.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

In my subfield, we work on teams with other scientists to develop new drug molecules. I think that is a very noble pursuit.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Maybe Howard Hughes. He was very gifted, and it is such a shame that treatments were not available to help him with his mental illness. For the same reason, maybe Abraham Lincoln. They had such great success while dealing with untreatable and, at times, debilitating illnesses.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

A few months ago, I did some de novo structure-based design to improve a potential inhibitor of HIV-1 protease. A student has been using the design to run dynamics simulations. We are completing the paper now.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The CD would have to be U2’s “The Joshua Tree” or the Black Crowes “Shake Your Moneymaker”. Classics! The book would have to be a photo album of my family. I would miss my husband and son very much.

Heather Carlson is in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and works on theoretical chemistry and computational modeling of protein-ligand interactions. She studies bioinformatics, the basic biophysics of molecular recognition, and applied drug discovery.

I write from windy Port Elizabeth, South Africa, a port city on the Eastern Cape of the country. It is described by some as “the Detroit of South Africa” for its prowess in the manufacturing sector. It is also an embarkation point for those with a yen to commune with large African mammals. Many of these do their communing through the medium of a large gun.

“And you are here to stop that?” queries my cab driver, as we drive by a billboard outside the airport which advertises the reason I am here: the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology.

The reason this conference is so interesting is that no, the people gathered here from the four corners of the earth are not necessarily interested in stopping that. These scientists do have an agenda, but it is not protecting the lives of individual animals but of whole ecosystems. If hunting dollars can go towards protecting and managing a piece of bio-diverse land, and if the hunting is controlled so that the hunted species are not at overall risk, great. If it keeps land clear from development for the exuberant and beautiful ungulates and felines of Africa, cool.

And there’s lots of money in this kind of hunting. Trophy hunting generates $1 million in revenues for South Africa, according to the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa (which’s motto is “Conservation Through Hunting”).

The aesthetics of the average conference-goer and the average hunter are clearly distinguishable variations on the theme of “I’m comfortable with dirt and the outdoors” but they rubbed shoulders on the plane in to PE (as the many call it) with ease. There are lots of reasons why the two groups would get along. They both like nature. They both want to see it preserved.

In fact, yesterday a workshop on “conservation hunting” takes a look at the growing trend and examines case studies of where it is has worked and where it hasn’t. The workshop was led by Lee Foote of the University of Alberta who notes in program that “Unfortunately, neither a theoretical basis nor sufficient critical overview of [conservation hunting] has yet been advanced.”