dan nocera, chemist and enterprising businessperson

I've made several posts in the past about MIT's Dan Nocera,(here, here, here and here) who has generated quite a bit of buzz with his cobalt phosphate water-splitting catalyst recently published in Science.

He's taken the next step, and launched a company around the catalyst called, wait for it... Sun Catalytix. Bleh, while I hope Nocera can help us figure out our huge energy problems, that company name needs to die an ungraceful death, stat.[1] Scientists are always crappy at naming things (present company excluded).

He's gotten $4 million from a new US agency also with a shitty name, ARPA-A. Whooopeee, let's hope he can put it to good use.

Also, appropos of nothing, this is me in LOLcat form:


[1] I graciously offer the name of Infiniflux to Nocera's company, and any nano/energy startup that is willing to pay me in stock options and a lifetime supply of RedBull. Actually, I'd be willing to settle for just the energy drinks. I am not ashamed to admit.

infiniflux: where blogging about dan nocera happens

Looks like Daniel Nocera has been doing some more work on (and some more promotion of) his much-publicized catalyst for water-splitting. He's just presented at the ACS meeting in Philadelphia, and has Katherine Sanderson of Nature taking note:

In today's talk he confirmed what he had thought then - that the cobalt gets oxidised all the way to its +4 oxidation state... "I guarantee in under five years you'll see this," he said.


...Other big claims he made were that in a system based on his catalyst cuold produce enoguh fuel to run a typical house for a day in just two and a half hours.

(via The Sceptical Chymist)

Daniel Nocera's big secret paper

That mystery paper that Daniel Nocera presented on at the CSC? It finally came out in Science today (doi: 10.1126/science.1162018) as a ScienceXpress [1].

It's all electrochemistry mumbo-jumbo, which uses some sort of implied Co2+ catalyst to split water. I can neither claim to understand or describe it, so here's an idea: the first person to respond in the comments with a plain English explanation of the concepts gets a prize. A prize of solid gold![2]

(Via Digg, if you can believe it or not. Science news travels quickly!)

1. Lamest name ever, seriously. The AAAS should rename it ScienceXXpress (science-double-x-press)!

2. Okay, maybe just gold nanoparticles. Okay, maybe just a mixtape and a piece of science memorabilia. Of solid gold! Actually, you can negotiate the prize after you explain the science. Prize money tops $25.

live from the CSC!

Hi there internet,

I've been running around this week like a headless chicken[1] trying to absorb as much of the science as possible at this year's CSC, albeit unfortunately missing some probably amazing talks. My body can only take so much, you know. I'm actually supposed to run off to a mixer right now, with the enticement of free drinks and food. Hmmm. maybe that's part of why I have been able to go to as many talks as I wanted?

Apart from the colossal disappointment that has been the conference food[2], I have seen a really great time, and actually enjoyed some amazing talks. So, brief recap:

-Daniel Nocera from MIT gave a BADASS talk on global energy needs and solar conversion. That man has guts, probably because he has the science to back it up. The climax of his talk was results that he didn't even present- he just told everyone to watch Science. Nonetheless, he still had some wicked stats on energy; well worth the read:

• “Powering the Planet: Chemical Challenges in Solar Energy Utilization”; Nathan S. Lewis and Daniel G. Nocera, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2006, 103, 15729-15735.
  
  
• “The Global Energy Future: The Challenge for Science in the 21st Century”; Daniel G. Nocera, Daedalus 2006, 135, 112-5.

-Right after that, Greg Scholes gave a pretty sweet talk, though I was distracted by his amazingly hip wardrobe and accent. I swear, I thought I saw him playing bass last year when Interpol played. I've never seen a cardigan/tight pants combo so fashionable with so much quantum to back it up.

• Gregory D. Scholes, "Controlling the Optical Properties of Nanoscale Systems” Adv. Funct. Mater. 18, 115–1172 (2008).
  
• Gregory D. Scholes, “Insights into Excitons Confined to Nanoscale Systems: Electron–hole Interaction, Binding Energy and Photodissociation” ACS Nano 2, 523–537 (2008).
• Gregory D. Scholes & Garry Rumbles, “Excitons in Nanoscale Systems” Nature Materials 5, 683–696 (2006).

- Being from the U of A, I helped with the organization of a symposium, though it was a little out of my subject area. While I respect and admire Chemical Education research, especially as a new TA, I have to admit my expectations were kind of lowish as I missed some other presentations that looked nifty. However, and I should disclose that one of my favourite talks was from my first-year chemistry prof, I was blown away by the session. Teaching is equal parts public speaking, thoughtful communication, personality and some really innovative visualization techniques. It was genuinely exciting to be there as a chemistry major who knows just how much non-chemists dislike the discipline, and the people who are working to fix that. I feel a little guilty for being such a nob in first year. If you happen to be a teaching prof, please please please go check out this links that will definitely merit some further blogging:

• The King's Center for Visualization in Science: free visualization applets and course material for teachers (disclosure: these are my peeps)!
  
• Scivee.tv: very web 2.0 way to publish, if you're into that sort of thing. who knows, maybe it'll be the next Nature!
  

Anyway, I'll try to post some more with cool things I encountered. Infiniflux, forever!

From your chemistry pal,
Joel


[1]. I kid you not, I typed that phrase into the google with no knowledge of the random weirdness that resulted.


[2]. Not including the free food at this mixer, but the general lack of food at coffee breaks and poster sessions has made me grumpy. I won't name any names (I guess apart from linking to the conference page, whoops), but if you are ever going to a major conference here in Edmonton, make sure to pack a lunch.