Joel Harris
The Power List 2021
Professor of Chemistry, University of Utah, USA
In another life… I’d probably be teaching mathematics in high school. I love teaching applied math, and I torture the students in my undergraduate analytical chemistry classes by having them use the math they were supposed to have learned before they arrived in my classroom.
Advice? In my experience, the best research outcomes are driven by curiosity and a motivation to understand and figure things out. Practical or technological applications can derive as a consequence of new understanding. The analytical sciences fit well into this paradigm, where novel and more capable methods of observation of the physical/chemical world can provide new insight that illuminates a path to solving practical problems. Curiosity to gain that insight makes coming to the lab a pleasure, so that working in the analytical sciences doesn’t seem like work at all.
