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 of C&EN Uncovered, reporter Laura Howes explains this exciting field of research and its...

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 batteries. But these nodules are also an important part of ecosystems we are just beginning to...

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 covering the most prestigious prizes in science.   C&EN Uncovered, a project from...

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 issues of the magazine, and in this episode, he guides our host Craig Bettenhausen on a...

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 professionals Jennifer DiStefano and Jared Mondschein to hear about their intertwined...

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 number 1 element could become the number 1 fuel.   C&EN Uncovered, a new project from...

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 found in global oceans–but most are dissolved in ultralow concentrations. In this episode of Stereo...

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 of tiny specks of tire-and-asphalt dust in the environment as well as large-scale efforts...

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 the chemistry behind enhanced nutrient removal systems. Chemical engineers, environmental...

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 episodes from the Stereo Chemistry archives. A transcript of this episode is now...

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 to greenlight such a project under the lake. In this episode, C&EN reporters Craig...

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 of bringing lithium iron phosphate to a North American market.C&EN Uncovered, a new...

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 in developing a health-based limit to help consumers understand what the monitoring results mean...

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&EN’s podcast, Stereo Chemistry, offers a deeper look at subjects from recent cover...

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 collaboration, how winning the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has changed their lives, and how...

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 with organic chemist Antoni Riera to discuss the applications of the award-winning chemistry....

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 strongly dispute those claims. In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, we’ll explore the environmental...

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 just prior to his Nobel win. In the expansive and candid conversation, Goodenough tells Stereo...

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 fellow at Imperial College London but also how she manages burnout and the importance of a...

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 trace how a genetic mutation that helped our distant ancestors survive is influencing our health...

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 modern science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, wants to change that....

Helium shortages can derail research and threaten expensive instruments that depend on the gas to operate safely. In late 2020, analysts predicted—and we reported—that pressures on the global helium market were likely to ease as new production capacity came online. Today, helium users are again facing price spikes and limited supplies, driven by a variety of factors including political instability in Europe and technical malfunctions at key suppliers. In this bonus episode of Stereo...

Being a chemistry professor is a juggling act. But sometimes professors have too many balls in the air. How do they know which ones to grab and which to let drop? In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, C&EN's Leigh Krietsch Boerner sits down with organic chemists Sarah Reisman and Melanie Sanford to hear how they decide what projects to work on, what sparks joy for them in the lab, and what being an organic chemist really means to them. A transcript of this episode will be available soon...

Imagine you’re an atmospheric chemist. There’s a pandemic. And public health officials release information about how the virus spreads from one person to another—information that directly contradicts your knowledge of how tiny particles move in the air. What do you do? In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, Jose-Luis Jimenez and Kimberly Prather talk to C&EN editor Jyllian Kemsley about how they’ve handled that situation over the past 2 years. They share their frustrations with public...