🌟 Nano Hockey Sticks to Win Over Diseases with Steve Streets: Episode 203 of Under the Microscope 🔬

What to Expect:

In this episode, Steve Streets shares his innovative research on using nanotechnology to develop treatments for diseases. Steve discusses his journey from studying biology to conducting nanomedicine research and his work on developing nano hockey sticks to target diseases at the cellular level.

About the Guest:

🌟 Key Takeaways from This Episode:

• Nanomedicine: Steve’s research focuses on using nanotechnology to develop treatments for diseases.
• Career Journey: From studying biology to conducting nanomedicine research in the United States.

In This Episode, We Cover:

Steve’s Research :

research focuses on using nanotechnology to develop innovative treatments for various diseases. By designing nano hockey sticks, he can target and treat diseases at the cellular level, providing new and effective solutions for healthcare.

Steve’s Career Journey :

Steve’s academic journey began with a Bachelor’s in Biology. He pursued his passion for nanomedicine, leading him to his current role as a researcher in the United States, where he focuses on using nanotechnology to improve healthcare outcomes.

Steve’s Favourite Research Experiment :

Steve’s favorite experiment involves developing nano hockey sticks to target and treat diseases at the cellular level. This research has significant implications for creating new and effective treatments for various medical conditions.

Life as a Scientist-Beyond the Lab :

Steve values the collaborative nature of scientific research and enjoys engaging with the global scientific community. He is passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists.

Steve’s 3 Wishes

1. Increased funding for research: Steve wishes for more financial support to advance innovative research projects.
2. Greater collaboration between researchers: He advocates for stronger partnerships to enhance knowledge sharing and collaborative efforts in research.
3. Improved public understanding of scientific research: Steve emphasizes the importance of public awareness and support for scientific advancements.

Steve’s Time on @RealSci_Nano :

Steve will be taking over the RealSci_Nano Twitter account to share his research on nanomedicine. Followers can expect to learn about the innovative techniques and treatments his work focuses on.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. My name is Pranakti. I’m your host of Under the Microscope. And today we have with us Steve Street, who is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Victoria in Canada. So on the left side of Canada, close to the U. S. border. So hi, Steve. How are you? Hello. Pretty good. Thanks. Let’s be here.

Let’s get started. All right. With your research. So could you please explain your current research at the University of Victoria in super simple words, please? So, um, I work on precision nanomaterials, which is a fancy term for trying to make things that are really small. Um, and so if you think about it in terms of school subjects, you’d be thinking about, um, the, for example, engineering or design and technology, the smallest machinable size, the smallest size you could 3d print or like laser cut or something like that.

It’s separately in science and in chemistry, you’d learn about the molecular world and like atoms and molecules and materials [00:01:00] and nanoscience is the space in between those two sizes. So it’s about how you can make things too small to machine, but too big. To be too big to control biomolecules, basically, if that makes sense, and basically like controlling the shape of stuff in that size regime is really hard because everything wants to be a sphere.

So I work on making non spherical nanomaterials. And the general point of it is we’re trying to find out if. Changing the shape of a nanomaterial can affect its, uh, interactions and properties with the world and biology for a variety of applications. Okay. All right. So when you say you make, uh, materials, so which, which size range are we talking about here?

Are we talking about millimeter, micrometer, nanometer? What are we talking about? Okay, so we’re talking about the nanometers, so some things that are from, so say, the smallest particles we make are like 10 nanometers, and then the largest are several microns, so between sort of 10 microns is the [00:02:00] size that we’re working with.

Okay. And is it because I assume that if you want to make like shapes of, I don’t know, a millimeter or let’s centimeter, it’s easy to make. They don’t become spheres, right? Like everyday materials. Why do you say that the materials tend to be like, why, why is it so difficult? Yeah. It’s a good question and I think it’s probably because under that scale you can’t physically manipulate things yourself so you have to rely on fundamental physics of how like molecules and like materials interact with each other and um like as far as myosphere is the lowest volume shape so naturally things want to minimize their volume and their interactions with things that aren’t themselves and so that leads them to make Um, spheres.

Okay, that’s like the lowest energy state and the material from molecules to atoms. They try to go to the lowest energy state, which is spherical. And that’s why. Okay. So what kind of shapes do you make? You make like [00:03:00] pyramids or yeah, that’s a good question. So we, we, I primarily make nanofibers, so things that are quite thin and short, so they have a small cross section, but they’re very, very long in one dimension.

So we call these one, one dimensional materials because that we talk about just like. One dimension is a lot bigger than the others but like our our group can make a variety of stuff So we can also make a two dimensional platelets Which are just like like a sheet of paper kind of on the nano scale so they they have like are big in two dimensions, but then still really really like thin and then There’s there’s like not as many There’s not as much research on it, but we’re working on three dimensional materials as well.

So getting the, like the fibers or the platelets to stack together into sort of like arrays and these sorts of things. But there’s, there’s not too much research on that. But like, um, people have done some, some work on it. Okay. You, you mainly work on these, can we call them filler, needles, or what, what, what can we call them?

Nanofibers is what we normally call them. Like, yeah. In real life, like in common people language. What can we call it? Can we call it like hair? Yeah. Like sticks is what I normally say. Sticks. Yeah. Yeah. And why do, why do you make them, two questions, which material, uh, [00:04:00] are these sticks, nanosticks made out of?

And why do you make sticks? So why don’t you make cylinders? Yeah, that’s a good question. So, um, we, we work with polymers. Um, so we work with, uh, yeah, what we call block copolymers. Polymers are like long chains of, uh, big molecules that are made up of lots of repeat units of the same or the same thing, or, and if you have one polymer chain that has two different, what we call blocks, so two different types of molecule that make it up, you can get it to go through a process, which is known as self assembly, which is a a bottom up way of producing, um, nanomaterials.

There’s, there’s like a, there’s two ways of making them. There’s like the top down approach, which is to use something like lithography or, um, yeah, to, to like engineer things really much smaller and smaller and smaller. And then there’s the, the chemistry way, which is to build molecules bigger and bigger and bigger.

Um, and so self assembly is this sort of, This process where molecules will organize themselves into the lowest energy state and you can control, um, yeah, like the properties of that. And there’s, uh, one interesting thing about people that work in nanomaterials and, um, different, uh, like shapes is that everybody uses an analogy with something from the real world.

So for example, like fibers, hairs, [00:05:00] sticks, cylinders, and sometimes there are people use different words and sometimes there are like subtle differences between. them. So the difference between the cylinder and a stick in, in my mind would be the, the cross section. So the cross section of a cylinder would be round and then the cross section of, yeah, like a fiber or a nanofiber would be like rectangular or so.

And that would be down to the chemistry of the polymers you’re working with and how they like to assemble. Okay. Okay. So you already mentioned top, top down. That is something that happens, for example, in semiconductor industry with lithography and all of that in real life. If you want to take an example is if you want to build a build a building.

So top down would mean that you start from the top floor. Or not even you start from like the roof and above that and then you make it like smaller and smaller and then you cut it from different sides. So that’s like the top down and bottom up is the foundations and then first floor, like ground floor, first floor, second.

That’s what you do is more of the bottom up, which is the. Ground floor first floor second floor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. [00:06:00] It’s kind of like if you if you’re gonna scope something Think about um, it’s like a top down approach You’ll be taking like a block of stone and then chiseling it away until it had the shape of whatever you wanted whereas bottom up which is what we do would be to just take lumps of clay or something and then mold it and Create it into the shape you want rather than removing it.

Right. Right. Yes, that makes sense. So tell me how did you like, I’m pretty sure as like a five or six year old, Steve did not think that he would be sitting in Victoria and making the, uh, sticks, nano sticks. How did, how did that happen? Tell me about how did you end up? Stock, uh, in Victoria. Tell me. Yeah. So I think as a kid, I always loved playing with Lego.

So I was, I was obsessed with Lego and I used to like building stuff and, uh, yeah, creating all kinds of things. And I think that kind of theme has kind of continued through my life. It’s just that now I work with much, much smaller Legos bricks. So, um, yeah, that’s kind of the way I think about it. And, um, yeah, I sort of, I’ve had an interesting career path that sort of varies a bit and it’s not been standard, I guess, but.

Every, every step of my career, [00:07:00] I’ve just made the decision, which I did what I wanted to enjoy most and what I thought sounded most interesting. And I sort of took advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. So, um, yeah, like I didn’t intend on studying chemistry at university. I was thinking of doing computer science.

I went to a couple of open days and I had a couple of bad experiences with computers. with the computer science open days and then I had a couple of really good people that like presented um chemistry at the universities and I thought oh this actually sounds quite interesting I was probably wowed like a lot of people by sort of like lasers and explosions and liquid nitrogen and stuff and I was like yes this is cool I wanna I wanna study this um yeah and and then afterwards I worked in industry for a bit after my chemistry degree um because at the time I just I was looking for all opportunities, and I won an award for being the most improved chemistry student at my, um, undergraduate, and the company that provided that award were the company that they offered me a job afterwards, basically, and I was like, this seems like a good opportunity.

Yeah, is it working? You had what? Most improved? What does that mean that you started with grades [00:08:00] low and then you went Like you improved over the course of your undergrad. What does that mean? That’s basically what it means It’s it means someone who had lower grades at the start of their degree and then had better grades at the end So I I my my I think my my average every year went up.

So I think I started at like 60 percent and then in my first year and they had me like 65 in my second year and You In my third year, I got like 69. 5%. I worked out my, my average was like 69. 5 percent or whatever it was. It was the highest grades you could get without Getting a first basically. And so I, I, I did the maths for like my final year and worked out that if I got like 74%, I, in my final year, I would get first.

So then I was like, okay, I’m committed to doing this in my final year. And so like my final year, I got like, I got like 84 percent or something. So, um, I, I tried a lot harder in my final year and, um, Yeah, so like , oh my God, this is so cool. I, I love the idea. Sorry, sorry for interrupted, but I loved, I, I want to take the moment to acknowledge or rather mention that I love the idea of most improved [00:09:00] student because.

Oftentimes the scholarships or awards or whatever, everything is for like the, the, the, the people who come first, second or third, maybe fifth and that’s it. But these are usually people who are consistent, consistently over the course of their studies are first, second, third, fourth or fifth. But this is really cool.

Oh, wow. No wonder you took that job. That’s awesome. Okay. Sorry, please go on. Yeah. So yeah, it was a really good idea. And I like. I think people that like that normally have the most interesting, like, like journeys, I guess, um, because they’ve, they’ve had to overcome obstacles and, uh, yeah, showing improvement.

And whereas if you, if you’re always in the front and always best, then you, there’s, you haven’t had to overcome as many obstacles, I guess, or, um, yeah. So I, I, I worked in this industry job for about a year or so. Um, I do, it’s in agri chem, it’s like a, Contract based agrochemical company. So my job is literally like weighing soil out and then working out how many like what pesticides were in it.

Um, so measuring the amount of different pesticides and stuff. And we’ve got to work with quite a lot of different things. So it was, it was kind of interesting, but then also it didn’t really challenge me as much as I wanted. And so then I thought about. Doing a PhD and yeah, I was lucky to get into [00:10:00] the Bristol chemical synthesis like center for doctoral training, which was like an amazing opportunity.

And so, yeah, for people that don’t know about them in the UK, they have these things called CDTs, which are centers that specialize in training PhD students in. Areas that are important like the the economy or whatever. So they pick one particular area and then It’s great as a student because you get to choose the project you want to work on So you there’s lots of academics that work with the center and you Do a few rotations in each lab and then you get to pick from like I think we had about like three 30 projects that we could choose from and we got to choose what PhD project we wanted.

So it gives the power to you rather than the power being with the academic, which is, um, which is quite nice. So yeah, the one choosing, so I worked on, I was always fascinated by, um, like biology and medicine and stuff. So I chose to work with, um, carbohydrate based anti cancer drugs, um, which is a bit, which is a bit, yeah, it’s very different.

Cause at the time, I didn’t do biology at school, so I knew no biology, just chemistry, and it was quite a steep learning curve for part of my project, but it was, it was, I really enjoyed it, um, and it was, yeah, really interesting. So was this like pasta or bread [00:11:00] as anti cancer? Because you said part. Yeah, so we’re like, like sugars basically, um, so yeah, we, I was working with glucose, I worked with a couple of sugars, um, like glucose and mannose, and um, so yeah, literally, um, like, Table sugar, or like, so brewer’s sugar, if you, if people that brew beer, it’s like, uh, like dextrose or glucose.

I was modifying that, um, and then, yeah, attaching it to, like, some molecules that people use in, like, the semiconductor industry, and made these weird, we call them amphiphilic molecules, so they They had really weird properties, but, um, I was trying to get them to bind to these special four stranded DNA structures that are called, uh, G quadruplexes.

And the G quadruplexes, like, were known to, um, be overexpressed in a variety of cancers, and so we were trying to stabilize them and then, like, kill the cancer cells. Did it work? Which kind of cancer? Is it coming to the market? If I eat bread, will I be curing my cancer? Tell me. I, I don’t think so. These ones were like structurally, uh, a bit different.

Uh, yeah, like, uh, it’s a, it’s a really interesting area. There are [00:12:00] no drugs that are currently approved, um, to target quadruplexes, but there is a couple that are in clinical trials and yeah, it’s a, it’s a very interesting area. Interesting. As a scientist, ethically, I should stop saying eating bread might cure your cancer.

I didn’t say that. Okay. Sorry, please. Your PhD sounds really cool. PhD work. Okay. Okay. Go on. Yeah, I go to a PhD. Okay, I got it. Yeah. So, um, yes, as part of that, I, I was trained as like a synthetic chemist, so I was, I did rotations in like, in like inorganic chemistry and um, like submolecular chemistry and organic chemistry and like carbohydrate chemistry is like organic chemistry.

But I also learned. I wanted to test the compounds myself as well because that seemed like one of the most interesting parts. So I did like the, I learned how to grow cells and do the biology side of things myself as well. And that was really fun and rewarding. And so at the end of my PhD, I was sort of thinking about what I wanted to do next.

And I thought I really enjoyed working on like, um, anti cancer applications, but I thought like the, the compounds I was making, they were a long way away from being like approved and like actually solving the problems they were aiming to treat. Um, and so I was thinking about. Other ways that what do I think is most promising for treating cancer and diseases like that and then At the time I was really interested [00:13:00] in like CRISPR and um, nucleic acid medicines and MRNA and stuff like that And but that was in the realms of biology not chemistry Um, and so I I wasn’t sure what I could do to work on that.

Um, but then I applied for for an EPSRC doctoral prize fellowship, which is a opportunity to, um, yeah, conduct your own research in a, in a group in the UK. And so I joined the group of like Ian Manners to work on, um, polymer based delivery systems. Cause I thought that, um, I read a couple of articles about how the delivery of medicines was a big challenge.

And I thought that’s something that is in the realms of chemistry and that’s something that chemists can, can work on. And yeah, so that’s the group that I’m still in today now. So I’ve sort of, um, several years down the, down the road into the journey of working on these systems. Uh huh. Oh, wow. Oh, so that’s what you’re doing right now.

So that’s the, what, what was it? eps, what, what fellowship is it? It’s called, uh, an EPS or C Doctoral Prize Fellowship. So yeah, that was, that was for two years. When, when that finished, um, I, at that point, uh, my supervisor, his group was in the University of Bristol in the uk and then while I was there, they, they decided to move his group to the University of Victoria in Canada.

And so. Towards the end of my EPSRC fellowship, I had the opportunity, um, he often said, would you like to come to Canada and, um, do research [00:14:00] over here? And I was like, yes, this sounds like an amazing opportunity. I would love to visit Canada and see what life is like there. And, um, my projects, I think I hadn’t finished.

Like a few of the projects I was working on. And so I wanted to take the opportunity to sort of complete what I’d been, what I’d been working on. Um, so how long have you been in Canada? So I’ve been in Canada for about three years now, I think. Um, so I arrived just before the pandemic. Oh, Oh, Oh, you. Oh, I think you made the right decision, uh, spending the pandemic or being in Canada, uh, during the pandemic, uh, instead of in the UK, sorry, but they made some city choices.

Okay. But that’s, that’s really cool. Wow. From, Uh, someone who wanted to, who was interested in working on Legos. I think the life, your research came kind of full circle. Like now you’re also doing the same thing, like bottom up, uh, sort of a thing. That is really cool. So, I mean, honestly, your research journey is super fascinating and super interesting, and I have so many questions for you about your PhD work, about your postdoc, about everything, but I’m going to.

Stop myself and ask you this, and this is a [00:15:00] tough question, okay? If you have to pick one research project that you’re most proud of, or the most fun or quirky one, could you pick one and explain it to us in simple words in the section we call In Other Words? Yeah, so I think I would pick the, so I, I, I’ve told you that I mentioned worked on like tiny sticks as we call them.

Um, and the, the area that I’m most interested in applying them to is, um, nanomedicine. So we want to try and use them as tiny delivery systems to deliver medicine inside the body, um, which is, which is a big challenge. Getting medicines to the right location is quite hard. And that’s, that’s for example, one of the reasons why, um, like brain cancer is much harder to treat than if you had say a blood cancer or liver cancer or something like that.

Um, it’s much harder to get medicines into the brain, um, to treat the disease. And so basically I, when I, I worked, I make these tiny sticks, um, I functionalize them and. Gave them the ability to complex DNA so they could carry nucleic acid cargo and yeah. So there’s a few people use polymers for delivering DNA and that’s like quite a known thing.

And um, recently people have developed what they call my cell plexes, which are self-assembled polymer nanoparticles [00:16:00] that carry DNA. But normally when people carry DNA, they put DNA in the center of an nanoparticle where it’s protected. But in miso Plexus, they’re on the outside of the DNA, so they’re on the outside of the particle.

Um, so you can think like a good way to think about these, like, these tiny sticks would be like a hairbrush, for example, um, so you’ve got like the, the, the backbone of the hairbrush is like the core of the, of the nanofiber or the, or the, the particle and the, like the, the bristles of the other Corona or what we call the outside part, um, which is what makes it, um, Dissolving water and um, what makes it self assemble and what I developed is these these particles that can Bind like dna sequences to the outside.

So it’s kind of like hair getting stuck in the hairbrush It’s like that except on a nano scale and it can deliver the the hair is a medicine rather than just hair But these are like Yeah, so these are like the first example of like a non spherical MySQLplex and yeah, it was what I wanted to work on, why I joined like the Manus group and got my EPSRC fellowship and so it was really satisfying to see that project [00:17:00] through from like thinking about it as an idea and what I wanted to work on to like actually achieving something and like publishing, um, with it, so I think that was, yeah.

I can’t imagine why you picked this one. This sounds so cool. That is so, so cool. So maybe we can, we can tweak the analogy a little bit and say that this hairbrush would get stuck is not good. Hair, but it’s what gets stuck is maybe some oil or some nourishment for the hair and then you use that to, I mean, you’re not the hair, but yeah, well, uh, that sounds so cool.

And what was, what were these, uh, sticks made out of this, this, uh, block, uh, polymer that you mentioned earlier? Yeah, yeah. It’s a block copolymer. So the process by which we make these, these particles, these like sticks is called a crystallization driven self assembly, which is quite a complicated sentence.

But what it literally means is that the, there are different driving forces for making the polymers come together into like a nanoparticle. And in CDSA, if you have a. Polymer that can crystallize with the core forming block. So if the like the backbone of the hairbrush is something that could crystallize then as that crystallizes that like favors the formation of one dimensional structures.

And, um, so I have. The system I made, I sort of used a bunch of sort of like off the shelf components from different fields. So I took a crystallizable core forming [00:18:00] polymer, um, that had been shown to, to crystallize and self assemble into nanofibers into like tiny sticks. And then I took a polymer that had been widely studied in gene delivery, which is called like a PDMA EMA.

But, um, yeah, it’s this part and people have, Showing that this polymer can bind to DNA and take it inside a cell But the way most people do that is just mixing polymer and DNA without having them being in any nanostructures And if you do that, it makes what’s called a polyplex, which is literally like a bundle It’s like if you if you have like a drawer full of cables that you haven’t touched and they all intertwine and get tangled up Together that’s literally what it looks like.

So imagine like a nano sized ball of wool that has two different Um, types of wool in it. Um, so that’s what like normal polymers do. So I took the polymer that can bind DNA and then added it to the polymer that can crystallize. Um, and then that enabled me to get, like, the one dimensional, um, like, tiny sticks that were able to bind DNA.

Actually binds DNA onto the outside and retain some control over their size and shape. [00:19:00] Okay, that sounds, that sounds really cool. So can we say that because I’m going in the direction of using the nanosticks to deliver medicine. So can we say what is this magic brush that the witches have? That they fly on or in Harry Potter there.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like the, like the, the broom, like the Nimbus 2000, but in this case, in your case, it’s like the witches are actually going to cure your cancer potentially, or they’re going to cure any, is it only for cancer or any, any drug delivery? That’s, that’s a good question. This is something we I want to study next, and this is because, uh, it’s kind of like a platform.

So there’s, you could, in theory, bind any, any nucleic acid. So any DNA or RNA medicine could be delivered. And it’s sort of like a modular system. So we could, what we hope to be able to do is to adapt it to target different locations in the body and different diseases, and then deliver different, uh, types of medicine.

Um, so I, I just worked with. I made, um, glow in the dark, um, brain cancer cells, basically. So, um, I delivered a DNA sequence for what’s called like firefly luciferase, which is the, it’s the thing that makes fireflies glow in the dark. Um, it’s a protein, um, and [00:20:00] it’s a good way of testing how well your delivery systems work because how, how much the cells glow is directly related to how much.

you delivered, how much medicine you delivered. Wow. Please tell me you have pictures and videos. Please, please, please tell me. So I’ve got pictures. I’ve got some pictures of the cells and stuff. Oh my God. That sounds cool. That sounds so cool. Okay. So, okay. I’m thinking like nano brooms. For which is who are drunk?

No, that’s too long. Let’s talk about it later. Okay, so, so Steve, uh, what is clear to me is that you love the research aspect of being a scientist. I mean, that was one of the reasons why you chose chemistry over computer science. Uh, cause there is no liquid nitrogen in computer science. There is nothing, no chemicals really like happening there.

So, but what else do you like, especially because you’re a postdoc, so you’re not a student anymore. So what else do you like about being a scientist? I think primarily the freedom and this, this like is, has a number of benefits. So one of them is that we, like, I am pushed to the limits of what I can achieve.

There’s the only limit to what I do is [00:21:00] like what my own brain is capable of, which is, I think it’s very rare for a job to push your brain to the limits of what it can do. Um, it’s like every day my brain gets a really good like mental workout. And I think that’s something that is. Not as present in other careers.

I think it’s something that scientists are quite lucky. I like the freedom to choose your own research directions and you get to You get to pick any area and something that you find fascinating and work on it So I transitioned from making sort of like small molecule sugars That was like designed as anti cancer drugs to delivering to like making like polymer nanoparticles, which is a very different field But I was interested in it and I moved there and I started studying it, which is, um, something I really enjoy.

And I like the freedom of like the work life balance. So it depends on like what groups you’re in and what universities you’re in. But, um, like, um, my supervisor is quite laid back. And so I get to, we get to choose our own working hours. We get to choose like when we work, when we want to work and for how long we want to work.

And, um, yeah, I like the freedom of, of that kind of thing. Yeah, the work life balance is better, um, in that respect. So the mental gym and the work life [00:22:00] balance. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I also, I also really like, uh, meeting people from, you get, as a scientist, you get to meet people from all walks of life. And every place imaginable.

Um, and I, I really enjoy meeting other people, um, the lived very different lives to yourself and talking to them and seeing, um, yeah, and yeah, scientists, science is like a utopia in that sort of way. You have like people from all over the world coming together to like advance humanity in some way, which is one of the things I think is like really cool.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree. And, um, Honestly, I have to say that it’s a bit of an unusual thing because usually academia at least in most part of the most parts of the world is not known to offer work life balance. Let’s put it that way. That’s of course part of the broken systems and broken institutions, so on and so forth.

So I’m very happy that you’re in a place where you get the freedom to have your own working hours because I think. Research or being a scientist is also a very creative process and [00:23:00] you can’t just be like, okay, from nine to six, you have to be in the lab and you have to, because the freer you are, the more free you are, the more creative and more productive you will be.

So it’s basically actually helping the employer get the best talent out of you. Um, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, that That that that makes sense. And how’s the campus like? Is there like a lake or is there like, is there like trees? I mean, not not right now, probably because it’s winter, but is it like a beautiful campus or is it just like a yeah, it’s it’s a beautiful campus.

Um, with some, I think it’s unfortunate. A lot of the buildings were built in the 60s. So they’re quite like, it’s the architecture is not as, you know, Great. I don’t think the architecture does the campus justice because the campus itself is beautiful. We’ve got like, yeah, so there’s big green spaces, lovely trees and forests.

There’s like a botanical garden on campus. Um, there’s, we’re also about like a 10 to 15 minute walk from the beach. There’s this like beautiful, um, bay called Capra Bay. Um, and you can see the Olympics are like. We’re on an island, and south of the island is the Olympic Mountain Range, which is near Seattle.

So basically, if you look across the water, you can see the Olympic Mountains, um, and there’s like, if you look across the east side of the island, there’s the Cascades, which [00:24:00] are run near Vancouver. So the backdrop, wherever you look, is like mountain ranges, basically, which is Really, really beautiful. Yeah, the campus is really beautiful.

I need to visit you. I have this strong urge, uh, this feeling that I need to visit you because what you’re 10, 15 minutes walk from the beach. What the hell dude? What the hell? Wow. It’s so good. Also people think the weather is really bad in Canada, but, um, in Victoria, like sometimes in summertime, it’s 20 degrees sunshine, blue sky from about May till the end of September.

So you can go, it’s like really, it’s like much more consistent than you would think. Yeah. My, my, my, my, my boss is from the UK and he, as a scientist, he analyzed the weather patterns from the UK and Victoria and it rains the same. It just rains. In winter in Victoria and then the summer time is like just sunshine and actually nice weather, um, which is something that’s quite rare for me, but I really enjoy.

Okay, I’m gonna ask you questions about moving to Victoria because I’m convinced. I’m looking for a [00:25:00] place which is close to the beach, which has Decent work life balance. Um Everything your your victoria is just ticking all the boxes for me. I I I need to look into the migration part of Of that for sure.

All right, that’s awesome So it’s it’s it’s I mean it sounds like your research experience has been wonderful. I mean Your research took you from the UK to Victoria to this dreamland. In my head, it is a dreamland. However, if you have to improve, if you would like to improve your research experience, uh, research experience, and you had three wishes to improve your research experience, what would you ask for?

And I’m not promising anything here. Okay. I think, um, Yeah, the first thing is to have streamlined the way people get funding to do science, because I think this is one of the most fundamental problems, is that there’s only so many opportunities, and this happens at every stage that you do science, so whether you’re like a PhD student, a postdoc, a young academic, or a senior academic, or you always have to compete for the same fellowships and funding opportunities, and They are so like in demand.

The chances of success is [00:26:00] really, really low. And what this means is that ultimately, like you have a situation and the amount of work required to get them is significant. There’s a lot of work that goes into, especially to have like an application that stands a chance of being successful in such a competitive environment requires weeks or months of your time.

And you have a situation where like the success rate is below 1 percent or something. Um, so you think about like, you have thousands of scientists. It’s just a monumental waste of time and money and you think about what those thousands of scientists could do with several months of time if they didn’t spend it like wasting it writing applications.

I think that’s one area and I think actually, I think I saw something, I read something a while ago about, um, I think it was like in Australia. They did a study and they found out that the amount of, it costs more money to administer that like Australian grant [00:27:00] system than it, than the money they were giving out.

So like, there was actually like, it would have been better for them to just, you know, Give the money out randomly to people or whatever. Cause they would have had more money. The taxpayers would have had more money left in the bank afterwards, which is like a pretty crazy situation. So that’s one thing I would definitely like to change.

Better, better funding system, recent grants and funding system. Yeah. Definitely. Okay. Two more go. And then the second one is, I think, um, a better, this is sort of, it doesn’t immediately sound like it’s related to research, but I think it is. And it’s, um, to get people to understand chemistry and like science better.

Because I think a lot of. Normally when you say you’re a chemist to people, they have the same, there’s a couple of reactions that you get and the first one is just a look of confusion and then like visible pain on their face and then they just say, oh, I was never any good at chemistry or like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t like chemistry at school or something.

And like, they, they just glaze over as they relive the horrors of like, they’re like, like high school or secondary school, like science. Um, and, but it’s a really important. Discipline that is has like there’s lots of problems the world faces today that are in the realms of chemistry that need to be solved and um, and it impacts people that study chemistry further.

So I think it’s [00:28:00] kind of misunderstood and that’s why people don’t study it more, which impacts, for example, they, because they don’t study it as an undergraduate, they don’t study it for a PhD, which means that they don’t go on to be a postdoc. They don’t go on to become like a faculty. And I think it means that sort of like chemistry is lacking a diversity of people that have been turned away from chemistry.

Science, so I think it would be nice to correct that and have the public understand the chemistry a bit better and have a more diverse representative group of people doing science, that’d be number two. Yeah, yeah, that would that that that makes sense. Did breaking bad help? So I think it did because honestly it made chemistry seem cool and people like like now they like they appreciate it a lot more So I think it did it is good.

It’s good The side effect is that everybody thinks now as chemists we’re like in the desert in a Winnebago like cooking crystal meth or something

Isn’t that what you’re doing on all those ferry rides that you go on? So many ferry rides. All right. That’s, that’s a [00:29:00] fair wish. Yeah. That’s number two. Last one. The last one is, uh, that like, I would like a better quality of life for scientists in academia. So, um, academia normally has less money than for example, industry and other business and other, especially under other industries.

So this means that like you, you look at your friends and. Okay, like they’re doing other things like they might have, they might have, for example, I considered computer science. They might have actually gone on to study computer science and they have things like private health care, like their work is like a nice building that’s modern.

They have like spaces to relax and socialize. They have complimentary tea and coffee and drinks and like snacks and like they might have a gym membership included in their like work and like all these kinds of things. Like, Missing in academia. Academia is sort of like a building that was built in the 60s with like equipment that varies depending on exactly where you’re studying it.

And there’s not normally any of these sort of like nice to have. So I think it would just be, it would be nice if academia was more like a Silicon Valley tech startup or something where there was like cool stuff happening that made like [00:30:00] your life at work more enjoyable. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that that makes sense.

I mean, you did mention the word that you do have work life balance, but. It is nothing compared to a job at corporate. It is amazing compared to other academia jobs or other situations, whatever, but it’s nothing compared to, uh, to, to a Silicon Valley startup. So I, I totally am with you. Like you put it exactly like perfectly like building for a built in the 16th, maybe some equipment here or there.

And, uh, But yeah, it would definitely it I think it’s important to make research and academia more lucrative so that also to attract more bright minds. I mean, duh, I, I agree. I agree. But hey, all three of your wishes, at least the second one, which is that people understand chemistry better. Um, you’re already doing that.

You’re a part of this. Uh, you are taking over Twitter account and you are on the on the podcast and I hope even If it inspires one person to be like, oh yeah, chemistry is actually really cool and next time I’m gonna maybe pursue chemistry or encourage someone else to pursue chemistry, I think our job is done.

And [00:31:00] yeah, with number one, like with the research funding process, I mean, all I can say is that I’m glad we have people like you who have identified, uh, who are not denying it. Things need to change. You are not in denial, but you are in the process. Let let’s put it like you are, you’re thinking about it.

You’re actively, you don’t have answers right now, but, uh, first step towards solving a problem is to, uh, acknowledge that there is a problem. So, um, I think, I think next time when you’re on the podcast, hopefully things are, Slightly better. So let’s go from 1 percent or 2 percent or well, fuck it. Let’s go to 50%.

Uh, University of Victoria starts giving out gym membership or at least free coffee and Very important. I mean I don’t know where science will be. I mean, come on. This is like basics. Absolutely. I agree. Well, I hope all your wishes come true. I really, really hope so. And this has been a [00:32:00] wonderful Steve. But before I let you go.

What can the followers expect when you’re taking over the real scientist? Nano Twitter account. Okay, that’s a good question. So I think I want to sort of introduce myself and the decisions I made to get me where to where I am today to hopefully help people with, um, yeah, their own whatever stage of their own careers and decisions they’re making about they can hopefully, you know, get a diversity of, like, experiences from other people.

I want to sort of introduce my research area more generally and why it’s important, like, why we should care about nanomaterials and, um, the, the challenge, where the field is at, like, the challenges and the opportunities in nanomedicine and with nanomaterials. And then talk about, like, my own research a bit and sort of how that fits in.

Hopefully fits into the addressing the challenges and, uh, trying to optimize the opportunities that are available. And then I was thinking about doing maybe like a question and answer session towards the end where people could sort of like ask any questions that they wanted. And then I could, yeah, give them like an, an honest answer.

Yeah. And then maybe just sort of some future, what do I think the future holds for like myself and for the field and that sort of thing. Uh huh. Okay. And, uh, a nice mixture of beach. Pictures and campus pictures and, um, [00:33:00] attracting more tourists to Victoria and pictures and all of that as well. I hope. Yeah, definitely.

I’m definitely going to weave in some, uh, yeah, photos of Victoria, British Columbia and, um, my day to day life as we, as we go throughout the, um, the week. Okay, perfect. Perfect. That sounds great. Thank you very much, Steve. This has been wonderful and really excited and looking forward to having you on Real Scientists Nano.

Thank you for speaking with me. Awesome. Thanks for having me.