By Isabel Ovalle
Nobel laureate in Chemistry Dr Robert Grubbs is fascinated by it because it allows him to understand what happens at a molecular level with simple experiments. This branch of science faces the many challenges that come hand in hand with change, like that of finding better ways to use petroleum. The path to this and other discoveries is research, which the American professor is doing with Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) to develop plastic and elastomers with various applications.
The Nobel Prize winner is here to follow up on this research project on occasion of its one year anniversary. He will also take this opportunity to plan the next year of research, coinciding with the addition of a new member to his local team.
Grubbs stated that for researchers Qatar is a unique location: “It’s a very good time to come here because it’s growing very rapidly, there’s very good support for research and the economic situation is different. A process that’s not viable in the US could be viable here,” he highlighted.
Regarding the applications of his research at TAMUQ, he said that the two-person team based here is looking in particular at an elastamer that has shown great possibilities to make auto tires. “Now we have new catalysts and we’re going back to explore them in the light of the new information,” he added.
Professor Grubbs helped found a company, Materia Inc, which is commercialising the catalysts that hold his name (The Grubbs catalysts). This company is now in initial discussions with Qapco to establish a local joint venture to build on the available natural resources here.
At the most basic level, Materia catalysts allow carbon atoms to more easily swap places, delivering unique, structurally differentiated chemical compounds as well as more efficient pathways to established products.
Materia holds the exclusive license to the Nobel Prize-winning olefin metathesis catalyst technology developed by Grubbs at Caltech as well as complementary patents from the University of New Orleans, Boston College, the University of Kansas and the University of Calgary.
Because these catalysts can be easily used with standard industrial process equipment and given that carbon-carbon double bonds are found in traditional petrochemical and emerging renewable feedstocks, industries and customers use this technology to innovate and produce new products and enhance manufacturing operations.
In this context, the Nobel laureate envisions that having such a joint venture will bring Qatar to the map of the specialty chemicals producing countries. Such endeavor will also include a research and development platform that will be based in TAMUQ Chemistry laboratories.
In California, Grubbs works with a research group of about 20 people who investigate on a range of materials. “From making new catalysts, to developing new techniques to make pharmaceuticals, to making polymers, among a wide range of different projects,” he added.
The scientist won the Nobel in 2005 for his investigation on catalysts. “I wasn’t working to get the Nobel in the first place, so I haven’t changed too much afterwards. The most exciting thing for me is to solve a problem, what I really like to do is find solutions; so the prize was a very good thing but it didn’t change what I do,” he stated.
With this great achievement in the past, the expert is currently looking into his next challenge, after recently accomplishing one he thought would be impossible: making pheromones, or chemicals that insects use to communicate with each other. Controlling this process can have results as significant as that of reducing the population of insects, by preventing the male from detecting the pheromones the female releases to mate.
Among his upcoming projects in Qatar, Grubbs contemplates studying how to make pure sub polymers. For those uninformed about chemistry, he explained: “Polymers are long chains of atoms, and we want to make really long chains with the ends put together.”
Like any researcher, this expert has felt discouraged at times. “Part of the reason that I have many simultaneous projects is that usually they’re not all going bad at the same time,” he joked.
The Kentucky born scientist planned on being an agriculture major and discovered the branch of science that would become his life later on. “I always knew I liked to discover and develop things, but I had no idea it would be in chemistry,” he added.
Chemistry is field that offers many opportunities for students, said the Nobel laureate. However, he acknowledged that it’s a tough area and funding in the US is not as high as it used to be. On the other hand, he stated: “There are still plenty of jobs and students that are willing to dedicate themselves. In the next few years, chemistry will have to change a lot and, whenever there’s change, there are new things to do,” he predicted.
Among the tasks chemistry will have to take up, he pointed to addressing the future shortage of petroleum, source of most chemicals.
