Creativity in chemistry

“Creativity is everything in science. As a chemist, I try to answer questions that haven’t been answered before: How can sunlight stimulate a catalyst to produce fuel? How does the catalyst go about rearranging chemical bonds in feedstocks to produce more energy-rich molecules? Why does one catalyst react a thousand times faster than another? I’m asking these questions about molecules and materials that are on the scale of one-billionth of a meter, so to extract the how’s and why’s I need to be creative in my interrogation techniques.” – Jillian Dempsey, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

During the 2015-16 academic year, Dempsey received two prominent awards for early-career scientists: a Packard Fellowship and a Sloan Research Fellowship. Read her full thoughts on creativity hereOpens in new window.