Standing on the shoulders of giants (wearing lab coats)

BY STEVE RANGER, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Any sufficiently advanced technology might seem indistinguishable from magic – but any scientific innovation that has been around for long enough will be considered entirely unremarkable. No matter how incredible it was when it first arrived.

Few of us even register the huge impact that science has on us every day. The long history of advances in pharmaceuticals that keep us healthy, or the creation of the materials that keep us warm or safe, are developments that rarely few of us ponder deeply in our daily whirl.

A visit to Philadelphia’s Science History Institute – home to a collection which records the history of advances in chemistry, engineering and life sciences – was a useful reminder of the innovations that make our modern lives possible.

Truly, our everyday lives are built on the shoulders of giants. And many of those giants will have been wearing lab coats.

The Science History Institute was also a fitting venue for SCI America’s recent Innovation Day – the reason for my visit – which gives young researchers a chance to learn about, and share their thoughts on, topics at the frontiers of today’s chemical research.

It was a chance to think about the issues of today and tomorrow while surrounded by evidence of how scientists had tackled the pressing issues of the past.

Some of the sessions looked at the immediate challenges faced by every science-based business: how to harness artificial intelligence to make products and processes more efficient was an issue raised several times.

And there were other issues discussed that will be familiar to many in industry, like how to help early-career professionals to build the right set of skills, ranging from problem solving through to entrepreneurship and communications, and how to create work-life balance in an industry where research can’t always sit comfortably with demands for hybrid work.

But there was also an awareness of the importance of long-term thinking. That is not just because projects can take years to get from the lab to their initial commercialisation, and then take even more time to scale up to success. It was also the understanding that there are huge trends at play, like the rising demand over the next few decades to deliver products for a growing international middle class, which will put even further pressure on limited resources we have.

And that means it’s not just what happens in the lab that’s going to matter. These mega-trends will put even greater emphasis on the need for sustainable and circular business models built around shifting customers to greener products. These are business models that need to be developed now, so that they can play out over the next 20 or 30 years.

I can think of few other industries where the impact of investments and business decisions made today will play out so publicly and for so long. With the challenges of net zero and sustainability still to tackle, there remains plenty of work to be done.

One of the skills that the assembled industry execs said was in most demand was the ability to zoom in to a subject, but also to zoom right back out to provide the big picture and explain the bigger context, either to customers or colleagues. It’s a skill that is going to be useful in any line of business, but it’s perhaps particularly relevant in an industry going through huge change and with so much potential for positive impact across the world.

Taking their advice, zooming in and zooming out is something we’re doing at lot in this month’s issue, too.

We look at why researchers are investigating the science behind the most fleeting experiences – what happens in your mouth when you bite into a piece of chocolate. Zooming out to space (or at least out to low Earth orbit) we take a look at how the research on the International Space Station has shown that making drugs in microgravity is not only possible but is creating better compounds.

Concerns about mental health and the impact of cognitive diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, are increasingly focusing on the result of the global drive to ever-increasing intense industrialisation and its accompanying result – pollution. It is timely therefore that the issue of C&I examines the impact of air pollution on the human brain.

Meanwhile, a further feature looks at the big picture risk of some of the materials that are the most fundamental building blocks of science – like copper and sand – potentially ending up in short supply over the coming decades.

All-in-all it looks like there will be plenty of scientific and business innovation ahead to fill up the science museums of tomorrow. I’m excited to see where we go next.

More great stories on science and innovation from Chemistry & Industry magazine

Get the latest science and innovation news by subscribing to C&I today.