Arthur Suits is in the Department of Chemistry at Wayne State University, and works on chemical reaction dynamics and astrochemistry.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

When I was 10 I got the ingredients for gunpowder for Christmas after much pleading. I’ve always been fascinated by the magic of chemistry, whether it is exploding rockets or quantum mysteries. I would probably be locked away in Guantanamo nowadays for the things we did back then.

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

Novelist/filmmaker. Our world seems rather finite to me some times, and the freedom to create new worlds and new characters is very appealing.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

In collaboration with Bob Field’s group at MIT we are developing a new instrument, inspired by the chirped-pulse microwave technique invented by Brooks Pate, that we hope will merge the fields of spectroscopy and dynamics and yield a very powerful new tool with which to study a broad range of chemical phenomena. We are grateful to NSF for generous support for this effort.

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

Jesus perhaps, I would like to be included in that famous painting.

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

I was in the lab briefly yesterday with my students, although I was not running it myself. We are studying the photodissociation of ozone in the presence of a strong nonresonant laser field.

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

The Complete Works of Shakespeare and “Live Evil” by Miles Davis.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Margaret Murnane at JILA. Although technically a laser physicist, her work is broad in scope and is having a profound impact on the understanding of electron dynamics in molecules at the shortest timescales.

Su-Yuan Xie is in State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces & Department of Chemistry at Xiamen University, China, and he works on carbon-based materials – especially fullerenes.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

The term of “elements” is translated as “Yuan Su” in Chinese. Almost certainly because my first name (Su-Yuan) is simply the reverse form of “Yuan Su”, my classmates gave me the nickname of “chemical elements” since I was a little boy. To some extent, this chemistry-related nickname pushed me to study chemistry.

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

I might have become a doctor, because I admire the people who cure disease and take care of patients. It is really excited to bring health and happiness to someone.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

I am working on synthesis of carbon-related materials, especially the fullerenes, a class of carbon cages with promising properties (such as electron acceptor) for photovoltaic application. Among various dreams, I hope that my work would bring more and more new structures of fullerene into the reality, and help people to find new electron acceptor materials used in future solar cells.

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

I admire Sir Isaac Newton very much. He is the greatest physicist for his seminal discovery about Law of Gravity. I am wondering how he could discover the Law of Gravity from such an inappreciable fact with an apple dropping onto the ground.

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

My last experience to perform experiment was in 2005 when I spent sabbatical year in Clemson University. The experiment was about the functionalization of boron nitride nanotubes.

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

I would take the Fortress Besieged by Chung-Shu Chien, and a piano music album by Richard Clayderman.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Lawrence T Scott at Boston College, for his systematic research on chemical synthesis of bowl-shaped hydrocarbons that are so beautiful and in principle useful.

Paul J. Dauenhauer is in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he works on high temperature chemistries of biopolymer/biomass conversion to fuel and chemical feedstocks.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Like many people on this blog, chemistry classes in high school were an enlightening and engaging experience. The synthesis and study of chemicals has a creative aspect that is much like playing with childhood toys such as Legos. At the same time the study of chemical processes is quantitative, and solving the mysteries of how chemical bonds break and form is similar to putting together the clues of a Sherlock Holmes story. So I guess my interest in chemistry comes partly from my childhood interests of creative toys and great novels.

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

If I was capable, I would become a professional musician. My personal hobbies are playing the trombone and banjo, and it is interesting to think about a career spent performing or producing new and original music.

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

We are currently working on understanding the high temperature (>400 °C) thermolysis chemistry of biopolymers such as cellulose and lignin. These are the largest volume polymers on the planet, and they can be thermally deconstructed through gasification or pyrolysis to fuel precursor mixtures that will lead to renewable biofuels. Our specific work focuses on understanding the different glycosidic cleavage pathways of cellulose as it thermally decomposes to an array of anhydrosugars, furans, and volatile oxygenates such as glycolaldehyde. We have recently discovered some of the key reaction mechanisms of furan formation which we hope will lead to a complete kinetic description of cellulose pyrolysis.

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

I would very much enjoy having dinner with President Jimmy Carter. In retrospect, his energy policies focusing on renewable energy and efficiency seem visionary! When reading his energy proposals or watching his speeches from the White House (on YouTube), he was advocating many of the policies and technologies that are currently adopted by major corporations. At the time of his presidency, he had the courage to push America toward the future. I would be interested to hear his opinions on how we could continue to improve our energy economy in a way that is sustainable for America and the World.

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

This past summer, I worked with a graduate student to characterize the carbohydrate dimers in aerosols produced from pyrolysis of cellulose. It turns out that cellulose liquefies at high temperature and spontaneously ejects little droplets of liquid by a mechanism called ‘reactive boiling ejection’. We sampled the particles and determined their composition to demonstrate that they come directly from molten cellulose as opposed to an alternative nucleation/condensation mechanism.

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

I would select, “Dave Brubeck Trio & Gerry Mulligan, Live at the Berlin Philharmonie.” This live concert is probably the best performance of Dave Brubeck, and the solos by both Mulligan have amazing energy. The crowd is also really involved in the show which produces an engaging musical experience. I would also select Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander book series. While this is technically a 21- part nautical adventure series, it is one continuous story that is sufficiently complex that it could be read multiple times, which would be useful if I only had one book. Additionally, the series has so much information about ships, hulls, sails, etc. that I could probably use it to escape the island!

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

I would like to hear from Professor James Dumesic at the University of Wisconsin Madison. His scientific presentations have a unique sense of humor, and I’m sure his blog answers would be equally entertaining.

Shutao Wang is in the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his research is focused on bio-inspired interfacial chemistry — in particular materials and developing artificial biointerface with controllable adhesion.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I have to mention my chemistry teacher in high school. In his special humorous style, he managed to catch everyone’s attention with one piece of chalk and show us a colorful world of chemistry. I enjoyed the fact that that molecules can talk to each other, and at times come up with new phenomena to shake the rules of modern physics. Now, I love chemistry because, as in the words of IUPAC on the occasion of the International Year of Chemistry, “Chemistry — our life, our future.”

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

If so, I would like to try to be a cook and perhaps I could be a good cook because I am curious about tastes. There is a lot of similarity between cooking and chemistry; they are the art of mixing but more than mixing. I believe that I can make some creative and appetizing food you may never have tried (my 3-year-old kid always likes whatever I cook!).

3. What are you working on now, and where do you hope it will lead?

We are working on the design and synthesis of bio-inspired interfaces with controllable adhesive properties. To achieve this major property, there are several steps — from discovering specific adhesive phenomena in natural or biological systems, to revealing what chemical and physical mechanism are behind them, to designing and synthesizing functional molecules, and to integrating these molecules within multiscaled structures to form an artificial interface/surface with controllable adhesion.

Adhesion is one of basic properties at solid surfaces, but remains a significant challenge in surface chemistry and related applications such as marine antifouling coatings, anti-adhesive artificial blood vessels, and selective cell adhesion. For example, how can we capture a few circulating tumor cells from billions of blood cell? This is a great technical challenge for the common approaches like immuno-beads separating method based on antibody-antigen molecular interactions.

Facing this challenge, learning molecular and structural recognition from nature, we are trying to develop artificial multi-scaled biointerfaces with specific recognition and adhesion for disease diagnosis (e.g. rare cell capture for early cancer detection and fetal diagnosis). We hope to discover some new principles on adhesion from biology, and use chemical approaches to solve one or two of important adhesion-related challenges in our daily life and industrial applications.

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

I would like to have dinner with Albert Einstein if I can travel through time because I like what he said and did – “Imagination is more important than knowledge… while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”!

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

It was last Friday, my graduate student and I carried out measurement of the adhesive force between pollen and stigma of wild chrysanthemum. It will help us to understand the specific recognition and adhesive property between pollen to its corresponding chapiter and design novel adhesive interface.

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

If exiled on a desert island, I would like to take Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and the music of “I’m on My Way” from the Shreck soundtrack.

7. Which chemist would you like to see interviewed on Reactions – and why?

Akira Fujishima is a Japanese chemist, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo. He is well-known for significant contributions to the discovery and research of photocatalytic and superhydrophilic properties of titanium dioxide (TiO2). He simplified the photo-electron conversion in the photosynthesis system of plant to a photo-induced electron-hole separation in TiO2. This is the way to learn from nature and go beyond nature, my favorite field!