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Nick Kim’s background is in applied environmental chemistry. Now a senior lecturer at Massey University Wellington, New Zealand, his main research interests lies in the diffuse contamination of natural and built environments. “I was employed as a scientist in one of New Zealand’s regulatory agencies for about 10 years. The agency was in charge of environmental controls and was actually a weird mix of EPA-style licensing and local government politics, with the odd court case thrown in,” he says. From an artistic point of view, Nick says he sees every physical thing as a dynamic variation of the Periodic Table. “Students look perplexed when I compare them to the desks that they’re sitting at. Of course, some students are a closer match than others...”