C&EN’s Talented 12 symposium showcased early-career stars from around the world

What a treat it was to attend C&EN’s Talented 12 symposium, our annual opportunity to learn more about the young visionaries and entrepreneurs who are tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems.

On Sept. 27-28, C&EN hosted a virtual event, during which the members of the class of 2021 described their lives, careers, and research areas. Their world-changing work includes efforts to remove pollutants from water, develop the next generation of chemical catalysts that spur on light-powered reactions, create materials for cheaper and more efficient photovoltaics, design drugs that break down badly behaving proteins, and make natural products combining chemistry and synthetic biology.

Their talks—moderated by C&EN executive editor for life sciences Lisa Jarvis and senior correspondent Bethany Halford—were kicked off by two of the most eloquent and inspiring speakers in the sciences today.

On the first day, we had Stanford University’s Carolyn Bertozzi, an inventor and serial entrepreneur who has been described as a “rock star chemist.” Bertozzi explained that early on she had wanted to become an athlete, then a sports broadcaster, a vet—and a rock star. That last ambition is the one that came closest to becoming a reality when, while an undergraduate at Harvard, she joined a band led by Tom Morello, who went on to create the rock group Rage Against the Machine. Although she became a chemist, Bertozzi still got to “feel a little of what being a rock star was all about.”

Bertozzi described some of the challenges she has faced as a gay person in the sciences and spoke of the importance of resilience throughout her career. That resilience became especially crucial in the mid-2000s, when she experienced huge professional success—she had a high-profile position at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—combined with considerable personal turmoil due to the legal challenges to same-sex marriage in the US and fear of what a permanent reversal of the state law allowing such weddings would do to her family.

On the second day, it was Boston University’s Malika Jeffries-EL’s turn to tell us about her journey in the chemical sciences. Jeffries-EL—a trailblazer, advocate, and role model doing cutting-edge research in the field of organic semiconductors—was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was the first in her immediate family to attend college. She acknowledged that, as a child, she was not afraid to start down a path that would prove challenging. She noted that while “talent is everywhere, opportunity is not,” as social and economic inequities reduce opportunities for success from the outset by, for example, denying access to good education.

Jeffries-EL illustrated her remarks with a graphic depicting the pipeline for Black chemists in academia while arguing for the use of “pathways” instead of “pipelines” as a metaphor. A pipeline, she said, suggests a single direction for travel, while a pathway is closer to the dynamic and complex reality that we need to understand if we are to catch people at different stages before they lose interest in our discipline.

Among other topics, Jeffries-EL spoke of the importance of mentoring and how a good mentor “can not only help you survive, but can help you thrive.” She also urged attendees to prioritize self-care, stating that “if you don’t take time for your wellness, you’ll take time for your illness.”

The symposium is now available for on-demand viewing at cenm.ag/t12day1 and cenm.ag/t12day2. And please note that we’re already soliciting nominations for the class of 2022, which you can enter at cenm.ag/t12nom2022. The nomination form will remain open until Jan. 17, 2022

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