Stereo Chemistry

In the 20th century, corporate powerhouses like Bell Labs and DuPont Central Research funded R&D from their balance sheets, creating a clear path for postdoctoral scientists to innovate beyond their university research. In 2024, with the decay of corporate laboratories, graduates are taking the commercial start-up route more and more. C&EN, business reporter Matt Blois discusses several such start...

On average, from 2011 to 2021, academic labs generated around 4,300 metric tons of hazardous waste each year. One of the largest lab-used solvents discarded is dichloromethane and more than half of that waste ends up burned. In today's episode, policy reporters Krystal Vasquez and Leigh Krietsch Boerner dive into the processes academic labs use to dispose of said waste, the consequences of new EPA...

Tragedies in the communities of Flint, Michigan, and East Palestine, Ohio, continue to affect residents 10 years and 1 year on, respectively, from the initial events. Residents of both cities continue to rebound and rebuild despite ongoing issues revolving around the toxic chemicals that were introduced to their towns through human decisions. C&EN physical sciences reporter Priyanka Runwal travele...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of chemicals known as PFAS, are often called "forever chemicals" because of how long they persist in the environment. They are prevalent in drinking water and have been linked to negative health outcomes. A slew of cleantech start-ups are cropping up with the aim of breaking down and destroying PFAS molecules. In this episode of C&EN Uncovered, reporter...

As the science of drug discovery has grown in scale and gotten more complicated, so have the drug molecules themselves. But there's a promising class of drugs made of just a handful of atoms that punch above their weight by leveraging the natural chemistry of the cell. Recent discoveries have opened up a new era of pharmaceutical chemistry that some people are calling a golden age. In this episode...

Resting on the bottom of the ocean are potato-sized nodules of valuable minerals that are more or less up for grabs. Multiple corporations and some nations are racing to build deep-sea drones that can withstand the extreme conditions at the seafloor and bring these 1-20 cm nodules to eager buyers on the surface.   Many of the metals in these nodules are critical for green technologies like batteri...

The Nobel Prize announcements are big events at Chemical & Engineering News. But we find out the winners at the same time as everyone else.    Then, the race is on for our reporters.    This year, staffers Laurel Oldach and Mitch Jacoby took on the task of covering the science prizes. In this episode, they reflect on this year's winning research in chemistry and medicine and share what it's like c...

The first issue of C&EN was published in 1923 with the stated purpose of "the promotion of research, the development of the chemical industry, and the welfare of the chemist."   The world of chemistry has grown a lot since then, and the magazine has been there to report on it all. To celebrate our 100th anniversary, C&EN reporter and informal historian Alex Tullo has sifted through thousands of is...

Early-career scientists are increasingly gravitating toward science policy, but the transition from the research bench to the policy office can be a tricky one. What can that path look like, and how can chemistry knowledge translate into a successful science policy career? In this bonus episode of C&EN's Bonding Time, Mark Feuer DiTusa sits down with recent science PhD graduates and science policy...

Hydrogen might be the key to a clean energy future, but only if it can be made without fossil fuels. Most hydrogen today is made from methane.   With generous government tax credits and enthusiasm for sustainable technology, the race is on for green hydrogen.   Craig Bettenhausen, our usual host, guides C&EN associate editor Gina Vitale through the hydrogen rainbow and how the periodic table's num...

The modern world runs on electronic devices and energy systems that are powered by valuable elements such as lithium and uranium. There are a limited number of terrestrial mines that produce energy-critical elements, which makes the supply of these materials prone to disruption. So researchers are looking to an unconventional source: seawater. Almost every element on the periodic table can be foun...

Be they powered by fossil fuels, batteries, or hydrogen, cars are here to stay. So what can be done to make tires greener? In this episode of Stereo Chemistry , C&EN reporters Alex Scott and Craig Bettenhausen look at where the rubber meets the road, literally. Scott examined efforts to make tires more sustainable in a recent cover story for C&EN. He found people working on the movement and fate o...

When two wastewater treatment facilities in Baltimore, Maryland, broke down in early 2021, the surrounding waterways began filling up with sewage. In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, C&EN business reporter Craig Bettenhausen takes the pod to visit the Back River Plant and Patapsco Plant in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to demystify how these facilities treat wastewater and take a deep dive into th...

Stereo Chemistry's longtime host Kerri Jansen is stepping down from her role as executive producer of the podcast. Jansen has been with Stereo Chemistry since it began in 2018, and has played an integral role in the production of C&EN's flagship podcast. In this bonus episode, Jansen talks with C&EN's interim coeditors for audio & video, Ariana Remmel and Gina Vitale, about some of her favorite ep...

Carbon capture and sequestration is the trapping of CO2 emitted by industrial processes and depositing it beneath the Earth's surface. Spurred on by tax credits offered by recent federal legislation, companies are racing to implement the technology in geologically suitable locations such as in Louisiana . However, the community around Lake Maurepas, Louisiana, has resisted efforts by Air Products...

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are cheaper, safer, and longer lasting than batteries made with nickel- and cobalt-based cathodes. In China, the streets are full of electric vehicles using this technology. But LFP never caught on as a chemistry for electric vehicle batteries in North America. In this episode, C&EN reporters Craig Bettenhausen and Matt Blois talk about the promise and risks...

Researchers reported finding microplastics in drinking water nearly 5 years ago, prompting California lawmakers to require monitoring of the state's drinking water for the tiny particles. But in 2018, there were no standard methods for analyzing microplastics. So California regulators reached out to chemists and toxicologists from all sectors to develop those methods. They also sought assistance i...

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a supercomputer named Frontier has broken the exascale computing barrier, meaning it can calculate more than a million trillion floating-point operations per second. In this episode, C&EN reporters Craig Bettenhausen and Ariana Remmel discuss how Frontier works and what that kind of power could mean for computational chemistry. C&EN Uncovered, a new project from C...

In this bonus episode of C&EN's Bonding Time, we hear from 2022 chemistry Nobel laureates Carolyn Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, who shared the prize along with Morten Meldal for their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. After a November symposium honoring the US-based Nobel awardees at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC, the two chemists discussed their long history of col...

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless for their development of click and bioorthogonal chemistry which are used by chemists around the world to track biological processes and produce pharmaceuticals. In this special episode of Stereo Chemistry , hosts Gina Vitale and Ariana Remmel delve into the science behind the prize and talk wit...

Replacing gas cars with electric ones is a main pillar of plans to fight climate change . But the lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars come with a cost. Communities near the Salar de Atacama in Chile, where about a quarter of the world's lithium is extracted from salty aquifers, say mining companies pose a serious threat to the local environment and their access to water. Mining companies s...

Famed lithium-ion-battery pioneer and Nobel Prize–winner John Goodenough has achieved yet another milestone—a century on Earth. Goodenough celebrates his 100th birthday on July 25, 2022. In honor of the occasion, Stereo Chemistry host Kerri Jansen and C&EN reporter Mitch Jacoby revisit their 2019 interview with the renowned scientist, recorded at his office at the University of Texas at Austin jus...

This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of the podcast ChemConvos featuring an interview with materials scientist, self-described "Raman spectroscopy enthusiast," and prolific Wikipedia editor Jess Wade. On ChemConvos , hosts Henry Powell-Davies and Medina Afandiyeva seek to uncover the story behind the scientist. In this episode, the trio discusses not only Jess's work as a research fe...

Our bodies need sugar to survive. But most of us consume way more than we actually need, and many foods and beverages pack a dose of added sweeteners. So why are we eating all of this extra sugar? This month, Stereo Chemistry is sharing an episode of the podcast Tiny Matters that examines that question. In the episode, hosts Sam Jones and Deboki Chakravarti explore sugar's impact on our bodies and...

Chemists may know James Harris as the first Black scientist to be credited with codiscovering an element. In fact, we referenced this in a previous episode of Stereo Chemistry about making superheavy elements. But beyond this memorable factoid, details about the accomplished nuclear chemist are scarce, and most sources repeat the same superficial information. Kristen Frederick-Frost, curator of mo...