Drawn to the Light

What was your route into spectroscopy?

I’ve always been intrigued by how electromagnetic radiation interacts with matter – and the whole idea of being able to use those signals to tell us something about the material and, in particular, a sample. As an undergrad doing electrochemistry, I was actually more interested in –  astonished by, in fact – how much information spectroscopic techniques can generate. So, when I went to grad school, I was grateful to have my first shot at using fluorescence spectroscopy to work on biological problems with Linda McGowan. That led me to a postdoc with Gary Hieftje, where I discovered an entirely new world – every kind of spectroscopy you could imagine! Some years later, I took a very useful and exciting sabbatical with Chuck Eckert – a chemical engineer at Georgia Tech – that opened up a whole new vista of research that we worked on for almost 20 years. Essentially, we wanted to understand how supercritical fluids solvate molecules, and how they solvate surfaces, which has ramifications for extraction, separations, and so on.

Who else has influenced you?

I’ve always admired Joel Harris – he’s almost been a de facto big brother to me – though I’m not sure he knows that. From him, I learned how to strive to achieve good detail in science – to try to ferret out as much information from my experiments as possible. But there are several others...

What is your current focus?

We have three main efforts. The first is developing nanocrystal and silicone-based platforms for chemical sensing, the second is developing (and understanding) anti-fouling coatings for fresh water and marine applications, and the third effort is in studying the chemistry between the ocular surface and exogenous agents. Quite diverse... But the link is that they all exploit some form of spectroscopy – largely photo luminescence, infrared and/or Raman for characterization – and we also do a lot of imaging. For example, nanocrystals demand small-scale imaging so we may use atomic force microscopy (AFM)-Raman or tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS). It’s a pretty big toolbox.

What separates good research from great research?

I honestly think ‘good’ is somewhat subjective; it depends on how your peers use your work to push science forward. In isolation, no research is particularly worthwhile unless it drives somebody else to a particular end point that is either industrially relevant or important to society. ‘Great’ is when it pushes several projects or areas forward.

What excites you most about your role?

I would say my interactions with students. It’s really quite amazing to watch people solve their own compelling problems, and how that process spirals and grows almost exponentially. I’ve been doing this long enough now that I have students who are now professors at other universities, training other students, who in turn have their own research programs solving problems in industry... It’s great to see things come full circle.

How important is networking?

A good network can provide important allies when it comes to cost-prohibitive experiments. I’m always amazed by how open the spectroscopy and analytical chemistry community is to collaboration. Today, you need a team of folks from very different backgrounds to address complex problems – and even to focus on the right question to ask.

Which breakthroughs in spectroscopy are most striking?

I think the whole advancement of ultra-fast measurements has been spectacular. Back in the early 80s, the ‘picosecond world’ was really fast – but that’s been shattered. A picosecond measurement is more or less routine today. Femtosecond and sub-femtosecond type dynamics are astonishing – and there’s even a whole arena of attosecond work, which can answer questions about the onset of chemical reactions, the details of bond-breaking and bond-formation – the most fundamental aspects of chemistry. Early femtosecond work focused on relatively simple reactions, but is now being used to probe biological systems – and I think we’ll see the same transition at the attosecond timescale soon enough. And being able to couple scanning probe microscopies with spectroscopy – gaining atomic resolution with chemical information – is just amazing.

What are the biggest challenges in spectroscopy or analytical science?

We’re moving towards making measurements on smaller length scales at increasingly small time scales. But that’s an enormous amount of data to process, and an enormous challenge – one that is facing many other areas of measurement science. It’s also not cheap; there’s an inverse relationship whereby the smaller and faster you go, the more expensive it gets. But that’s another reason for collaboration; we can’t all have $5-10m instruments, and maybe we shouldn’t. Why duplicate?

What advice can you offer to those building a career?

First and foremost, though you have to work very hard to be successful, you must also have fun. And that means working on problems that you find interesting or exciting (but still relevant) – if you can. Often it’s about looking outside your comfort zone, because that’s where new opportunities can be found. What questions are compelling in other fields, and how can you contribute? That’s how to stay excited and engaged. When I get home, my wife asks, “What’s new?” And I reply “Everything...” – every single day.