As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
From about 7 years old, I was always taking stuff apart to build new things like lasers and computers, but they never worked. I wanted to know why, so I dreamed of being a scientist.
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Were you good at science at school?
I wanted to be, but I struggled to concentrate and messed around a lot.
Explain what you do in one paragraph.
I鈥檓 a chemistry professor who loves inventing stuff to understand things. Right now, we are trying to build an alien life form, to control chemistry with computers and to see if we can make a chemical computer and perhaps even a brain.
And in one sentence?
My entire life, I鈥檝e been looking for patterns in nature and to understand why life exists and how chemistry makes information 鈥� that dream follows me around in everything I do.
What does a typical day involve?
There鈥檚 no typical day, but when I鈥檓 not travelling, I spend a lot of time talking with my team, dreaming up new experiments, writing manuscripts and applying for funding. In the evening, I go for a run and spend time with my family, and I鈥檓 often in my home laboratory/workshop building stuff.
What do you love most about what you do? And what鈥檚 the worst part?
I love dreaming up new ideas for experiments and making new discoveries. There is no worst part, but I often find it hard to express new ideas in a way that anybody can understand.
What鈥檚 the most exciting thing you鈥檙e working on right now?
We鈥檙e building a modular chemical robot called the chemputer, inspired by the scale of the Large Hadron Collider, but exploring chemistry and the origin of life instead. We鈥檝e already used it to make important molecules like drugs automatically just from computer code and chemicals.
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
I鈥檇 reassure myself that feeling stupid is OK and that I should enjoy my confusion more.
鈥淚鈥檇 reassure my childhood self that feeling stupid is OK鈥�
What scientific development do you hope to see in your lifetime?
I鈥檇 love it if we discovered a new type of life elsewhere in the universe.
Which discovery do you wish you鈥檇 made yourself?
The transistor.
What鈥檚 the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
Seek criticism widely and address it all.
What鈥檚 the best thing you鈥檝e read or seen in the past 12 months?
Superheavy by Kit Chapman. I love all science but I am a chemist at heart. Reading this book about making the heavy elements was inspirational.
If you could have a long conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be?
I would love to get computing pioneer John von Neumann and synthetic chemist Ben Feringa together to discuss how to make molecular self-constructing machines.
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
I might be able to build computers or lasers that work, finally.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds鈥�
I鈥檝e invented a theory that might be able to help us identify alien signatures, those of life forms in the lab, in the solar system and on exoplanets. This theory might also unlock how we build new life in the lab and explain the origin of life.
Lee Cronin is Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, UK
