To start season 2, Paolo talks with Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez about his amazing and inspirational journey of personal and professional growth. The conversation touches on topics as varied as the challenges of progressing academically as an undocumented immigrant, to the use iron and other less traditional catalysts, to the use of computational chemistry to further chemical understanding and bring innovation to modern organic synthesis.
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There are exciting stories of life-changing experiences thanks to science, or through science. And then there is Osvaldo’s story. Osvaldo Gutierrez, now assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at University of Maryland, could not really foresee his future as an award-winning chemist when, as a child, he left Mexico to move to the United States.
This episode tells an inspiring story of personal development through hard work, perseverance and talent – a real and modern American dream. But it’s not just a tale of a kid from humble origins becoming an accomplished chemist and a role model for the younger generations, this is also a story of scientific excellence. Paolo and Osvaldo discuss the present and future of catalysis, how base metals such as iron could displace precious metals but also offer novel options for synthetic organic chemists and how combining computational and experimental chemistry is a promising way to gain the fundamental understanding necessary to introduce some much-needed innovations in modern organic synthesis.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 0:06
I have a feeling that computational chemistry is here to stay in the long run, I think we're already seeing a lot of productive results coming in that area and it could only get stronger.
Paolo 0:17
As a kid growing up in Mexico, Osvaldo Gutierrez dreamed of becoming a professional boxer. But after moving to the United States, he fell in love with science. Today, he's working at the forefront of catalysis and computational chemistry research and acting as a powerful role model for younger generations. To kick off season two of Bringing Chemistry to Life, we speak with one of Chemical and Engineering News' 2020 Talented Twelve about their work and trends in their field. I'm your host, Paulo Braiuca from Thermo Fisher Scientific. We began by asking Dr. Gutierrez about the start of his journey into chemistry into the United States.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 0:59
It started basically my pathway as an undocumented immigrant, like many other immigrants that come to this country. My kids, my family was moving away from Mexico and we landed in Sacramento, California. As soon as we crossed the border, my mentality was, I'm going to be the best that I can be in the United States. And that was to become a medical doctor, but not just a medical doctor, I want to become a neurosurgeon, because to me that that seemed very complicated seemed to me that that would be the ultimate kind of goal to achieve as the American dream. The reason why I decided to go into chemistry, I got out it was in Sacramento City College. It was the first science course that I got a C on , I got to C in chemistry. And for me, kind of pushed me that was like, you know, I think I could do this, I think I want to basically adapt and change my mentality, change my major, and I want to do chemistry as my major. So I was driven by the challenge. As far as trying to get into chemistry, I apply for many different chemistry research labs as an intern. But one that responded, Ken Hauk, which is very surprising to me at this moment, because at that time he had a very large group. And he had no undergraduates. So it was kind of strange that he actually decided to take a chance on me. And he's the one that responded said, "Yeah, when you arrive to UCLA, we can discuss it," and we could go from there. So for me, that's how I got into computational chemistry research. And then for me, slowly, I was really trying to impress them so much that I decided to stay longer and try to get excited about the project. Two things happened, during the process of applying to medical school, I realized that no medical school is going to accept me because of my undocumented status, so I needed to provide, basically, they said, the only way that we can see this work and is that if you come up with a bank account that has enough funds to support you, throughout the whole medical careers. My family does not have 200 $300,000, in their bank account, my dad was making $4.25 an hour that there was no way that we had that money. But then I started thinking, "Wait a minute, so why not this other career?" with a goal that maybe could change later on if the immigration status changed, but I was like, I think that will still be considered a doctor, I will still be a doctor in the United States. So that's why I switched into into chemical research for the PhD.
Paolo 3:20
And very successful indeed, I do say. You seem like a fearless researcher. You seem to be going in directions that are pretty challenging. What drives you? Where do you find inspiration?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 3:31
I think we have to find inspiration simply by the needs or societal needs., and exciting projects at the same time. So sometimes, oftentimes, and experimental chemists that we meet via another colleague or a conference, they said, you know, you do computations, we have this problem. And I get, I tend to get very excited about my projects. And then I tell my students, "You know what this will be a very cool project. It is not maybe using iron chemistry, but is using this other copper or is using this palladium," and so on. But I think this is a very exciting project that it could perhaps change the way we think about chemistry. The thing that makes our group unique right now that I have owned this kind of identity is that we're able to do both a computation and experiments. In experiments, we focus exclusively only doing iron chemistry, whether this Iron Cross coupling reactions. Early on, we started doing C-H oxidation. But eventually we found that the three coupling radical cross couplings with iron were more successful. So we decided to pursue those projects. And we have a lot of exciting results that we hope that to submit in the next couple of weeks and whatnot. In the computational part, we're afraid to explore anything, whether it's the iron chemistry, palladium chemistry, ruthenium, and so on and we just driven by curiosity.
Paolo 4:45
Do you think chemists in general give up too quickly? In terms of trying to understand the fundamentals of what's happening, the reaction. And they just very pragmatically look at what products they can get out of it and they just live with that.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 5:00
I think so. I think in general, a lot of both in the computation experiments, we give up too quickly on certain projects, and it's up to the PI to the, or to the graduate students who say, "What is the ultimate goal of this project?" and again, is to gain mechanistic understanding. If we focus on that aspect, then every experiment that you do to try to gain any mechanistic understanding, it will be helpful. And we include that on the paper. And it'll also be good training for yourself. I think we're so focused, and we're so pressured to publish, get grants, and they want results, they want an end product, and the tenure clock is clicking, and so on that you're like, we have no time to characterize all those compounds. If it's going to take you one month to identify all those, that's not going to be practical. But for me, it is practical. For me, it's actually very useful. I know, that's our role, we're a mechanistic chemistry group and our role is to identify things. And that's our focus, our focus is not we're not a synthetic group, our focus is not just to deliver methods, and for one particular focus in experiment or in computation, but rather to provide mechanistic insight. So yes, you should go. And it's going to take you one month or two months, but you should go and identify all those products that you may characterize every single product that you made. And then the next reaction before you do the next screening, we'll see what how the ligand not only changes the product that we want, but also the product distribution of all the other stuff that we don't want. And then we collaborate and do internally to do modeling on those reactions. So that's our mentality. And oftentimes, though, I have a postdoc I have now three postdocs that are doing synthetic chemistry. And their mentality is more of, we're going to do screening, we're going to focus on this particular product. I think they get frustrated, but I needed to instill that early on that, remember that you're here in this group to do mechanistic studies. So it's not just about getting this particular product, it's to get that product and what other ones are you getting. And that could be very instructive in terms of designing new reactions. And I think now the community is really moving towards that kind of, they've started to appreciate in terms of publications, mechanistic studies, more in general, that it is not always about oh this method is not 99% anti selective and is, you still have only 50% yields. I mean, some groups published papers with 35% yields, because they see that as an innovative method, as something unique that we never thought about. That maybe 25 years ago, that would be a no go. Basically, if you have 25% of one product, you're not going to go publish that result. But I think now the community, like you mentioned, is becoming more interdisciplinary, and is becoming more accepting towards mechanistic studies, both in the computation and experimental.
Paolo 7:37
I'm interested in your thinking process. Are you excited by the intellectual challenge of getting the fundamental understanding? Or are you excited about what this understanding this fundamental understanding can lead to in terms of real world applications? Is it more finding it out? Or what can happen when you find out?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 7:58
It's more, it's more about finding out what could happen after you find out. Basically to validate, that's what's really exciting. That if we kind of go through all this trouble to identify all these many products on this particular reaction. And if we do all the computations that follow up on this project, maybe a year, we have one project that took us three years in computational time to kind of try using using computational chemistry to try to understand. But that led us into a model that before we publish, we started thinking, Wait a minute, if we're really going to have faith on our own calculations, there was this was a non collaborative project, then we should be able to start proposing reactions are asked how are we going to sell this? How is the community really going to believe that we're able to do both? If we can't even believe ourselves this, this computation? So not only do they need to kind of correlate what experimental evidence, but we always look for it, I think it's really exciting for me and for the group that if this is really true, the mechanistic pathway that this follows, then let's propose something that would not be the first thing that you will try in a synthetic lab and see if this reaction works. So for me, that potential that it has of doing the mechanistic studies, validating those is very exciting to me.
Paolo 9:11
And I think that we need a little bit of innovation in the reaction designs. And if I look at the, the current landscape. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, you see a lot of repeating patterns. And it is largely because of the extreme use or even abuse over a relatively low number of reactions that are actually very effective. Right? Do you see the field evolving at all?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 9:40
Yes, I think ultimately, the way we see that we're going to change the pharmaceutical industry is that I don't think they will have a problem with adapting a new method, if it was scalable, if they could do it in a large scale. And if it was not going to be a trial and error method, right? That is that they see that it's very clear that let's say we do a reaction in the kilogram scale. We're going to reproduce this reaction, is it going to be selective or not? We can deal with the selectivity. But what if it doesn't work for this other particular substrate that we need to tune it?Then do we completely restart this whole process, okay, and we stick with this type of method, and tune it. And that's what we're looking for. If you really want to tune it at that large scale, you will have no time for trial and error. They really want to tell me what exactly you need to do to the ligand, to the catalyst, or to the substrate or the region, that is not going to be a trial and error. And that's when we're trying to sell ourselves that is, if we do all this mechanistic studies on a smaller scale, and we do all this computational studies, then we can pinpoint at, you know, this reaction, if he is to do this, this should be transferable to the large scale. Ultimately, I think they will not have a problem if it was really if the reaction of the small scale was transferable to a large scale. And then in terms of industry, large scale applications. And in academia, we hardly ever have an opportunity to do a large scale reaction. So we have no idea, a lot of the graduate students have no idea is, can this reaction work if you try to make multiple kilograms of this? Besides, rather than saying, I'm going to run the reaction in milligram scale, is it really going to scale to that degree? At best, you do gram scale. And then that's all almost rare. In some cases, some labs can only do that. But the idea is that, let's say they do that in gram scale, and it doesn't work. And what you don't want at that moment is to do a screening again, because then that's going to be a very tedious process. And this is going to lose faith in what we're doing again, and they're going to go back to the same old reactions that are very robust at that at that time. But if we do mechanistic, so we say, "No, no, wait, wait, I think we understand what we need to do at this system". Because we did some mechanistic studies, and computational studies, and you need to just simply do this other change. And I think that that will be more trustworthy, I guess, or more reliable, in a way or industry will be more accepting towards new methods, if we're able to pinpoint things that they should do at a large scale to make this reaction work. I just don't think that they want trial and error at a large scale, because then that will be very costly. So they go back to their traditional methods instead, even if they're more longer or slightly more expensive, with the metals and so on.
Paolo 12:24
You're absolutely right. I agree 100%. And groups like yours are gonna are going to be key right in, in in leading us to the next generation of chemical reactions. And we, you know, can't wait for. Speaking about next generation chemical reactions, among the different things that you you study and you publish on, I was particularly interested in attracted by, you know, what you mentioned before, you know, is the radical carbon cross coupling. To me, it's a beautiful innovation it's a nice way to introduce SB3 carbon functionalities in molecules, right, something that can't be that easily done with other methods. And, again, we can we go a little bit into that? Can you describe what you have done there? Can you describe it? Can you tell us why this is important, you know, what, what excites your the field, etc?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 13:14
Yeah, on that reaction you're talking about, we use iron, a very simple ligand. And we combine three components at the moment, eventually want to combine more components. And in a very predictable manner, we know how they kind of combine or glue together. And I think that becomes crucial, like I said, with the potential applications later on, can this method be something that industry can use? And the answer is yes, because the metals are very cheap, the ligands are very common. There's nothing special about the ligands, we try to design new ligands. But right now, it's very things that you could buy so that there's nothing special about this once a year. Or I think those kind of specialists, the mechanism that this reaction we think that is going through. And I think that's where we spend, basically, when I started my independent position, to understand the two component cross coupling with iron. I basically spent all my funds that I had allocated for the whole five years on computational time on this particular project. And the reason why we did that, and I'm glad that we did that, is because we want to really understand what are the potential alternative pathways this reaction go. How viable they are. And from from there, we're able to kind of come up with a model system that maybe it is true that that's the true mechanism or not. We can never prove a mechanism, but at least give us a model system that now we're able to quickly expand from two components to three components. Same thing as nickel has recently been doing. So we're now with our conversations that we have with our our nickel colleagues. And they're doing a lot of three component reactions to thinking "Why can I not do these reactions?" And the answer is yes, iron could do those reactions as well. And I think we could do them a lot faster. So now all our reactions are done within one hour. So that's something that I use for to attract graduate students like you'll be done in one hour with this reaction, we don't have to wait 24 hours or include many different additives. This is no additives added as he is very simple three components, the iron, the catalyst in the reaction goes sometimes in the absence of solvents or use one of the components as solvent. So, that part I think we're very excited because of that complexity, how predicted could it could be, and now we're seeing that it actually is very robust, and it worked for a wide range of compounds. So we're very excited that and I hope that the community pays attention to those methods and starts adapting more of the iron chemistry. Because to me there is very, is actually one reaction that industry quickly just pick up and using their labs right away. And it's very predictable.
Paolo 15:48
We hope you're enjoying this episode of Bringing Chemistry to Life. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for information on how to access content recommendations from our guests, as well as information on how to register for a free Bringing Chemistry to Life t-shirt. And now back to our conversation.
You mentioned the, you know, the excitement about understanding the mechanistic aspects of the reaction, can you, I know it's difficult on an audio format without any visual help? Can you can you describe the mechanism a little bit?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 16:20
Yeah, in this mechanism, what we think is going on you have you have the precatalyst, that's the thing that you buy from a company. You reduce this one to definitely change the oxidation state to make the active catalysts. We're learning more about that. What is the nature of that active catalyst? What is complicated about iron is that you have to worry not only about the coordination, not only about the oxidation, but also the spin state. So you have multiple different parameters that we need to explore computationally and experimentally as well. So how do we determine all those things? And from there, what we think is what's going on is that this act of catalyst, the first step that it does is rips apart a carbon halogen bond. So just grabs so it's very selective for carbon halogen bonds. And we have a ranking of what follows, which one's faster, which one's slower. So it rips apart the carbon halogen bond and regenerates a radical. And now the key thing is to control whether the radical rebounds to the higher or does the radical dissociates from the solvent cage and react with something else undergoes a radical cascade transformation? And there's multiple radical cascades in inorganic chemistry. So we're thinking, "Why can we just couple both a radical cascade with iron chemistry?" So let's have this radical dissociate from this all in case that's what we want, undergo a radical cascade, while somehow tuned this iron to still remain active. At that, after the end product of the radical k cascade, now, that's the one that rebounds to the iron and undergoes that selective final carbon carbon bond formation. And we're able to show that we're able to couple a cross coupling cycle and a radical cascading cycle together. And I think that does what we think is that the mechanism, we're collaborating with other spectroscopies, inorganic spectroscopies right now, to understand what is that really identity or that iron species? Because I think if we're able to understand that identity, iron species and understand what are the factors that control the lifetime of this species, then we're able to spend basically, the radical cascades to longer more complex radical, basically, systems. And not just this kind of simple systems that we have right now. So understanding the lifetime of those is going to become crucial down the road. And the only way that we're going to achieve that is through mechanistic understanding, because you're not going to get an idea of a lifetime by simply trial and error. And this reacts, because all reactions are done within one hour. So you have the kinetics experiments become very challenging to do in detecting this intermediate becomes challenging detecting whether the oxidations visit becomes too complex, that you really have to go beyond our expertise. And now we're excited about that other part, maybe now we start integrating more spectroscopy experiments in our in our chemistry, I'm learning about those. But I'm not afraid of going into those and say, "The next five years of my life, I think I'm going to spend more learning about spectroscopy". So now in our move to Texas A&M, that was it was clear that that would be one of the focuses that I want to go to is like, we need all this resources, we need more spectroscopy methods, because I really care about this identity, this highly reactive species. And if we understand that, then those principles can be applicable to a wide range of different reactions, not just the ones that we're studying.
Paolo 19:29
So these iron systems are going to become your main line of research, you're going for a problem, there.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 19:34
Yes, I think that's going to be the main line or research but it'll be on the synthetic side. But we of course, in the computational side, we have many different directions that we're tackling that we're super excited about all those directions.
Paolo 19:47
And the beauty is that you can collaborate with you know, a lot of different groups to combine the experimental and computational parts together.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 19:54
Exactly. And in a lot of times we just interested. We see a paper that grabs their attention, the students really excited, they do all the computations. And I told them, we're going to contact the the person that wrote this paper and say if they want to collaborate, if they don't, then we do and do all the validations in house. So in a way, we always seek for for experimental validation. And I think the advantage that we have is that oftentimes, maybe the collaborators like, I already went through that area of research, I'm not as interested anymore. And first of all, we're going to do the experiments ourselves. And we're going to the lab and do those experiments to validate that we have the resources. And I think we're given the expertise on those areas that we go and validated. And I think the community in general will benefit more.
Paolo 20:37
Yeah, this type of reaction is really, really interesting. I mean, I've read a few pieces of very interesting pieces of work on on people, very often combining photocatalysis and nickel catalysis, right to generate the radical. And then sort of confers specificity to the reaction, which is kind of counterintuitive in my mind, because once you generate a radical because you have a highly reactive species in your mixture, and you're controlling it will potentially be a nightmare. But we discussed with Katelyn Billings in in a, you know, just just a few weeks ago, just in interviewing her for the podcast. And this these types of radical couplings are even using, you know, in in DNA on DNA tagged molecules, so an extremely multifunctional molecule is there and yet you still have specificity in the reaction. It's surprising. It's amazing. And I know you've worked on something kind of similar, right on this sort of system as well.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 21:33
Yes, yes. So I guess what's kind of different. Without our iron system, we also collaborate with a lot of experimentals Gary Molander, Donald Watson,Tom Braun, a lot of the people, the leaders of the field working on nickel catalysis, where they combine the radicals, and I think in that case, what they're taking advantages of slowly generating these radicals, and therefore you have a low concentration of these radicals. Now you take advantage of basically a small concentration and in how this is going to affect the reactivity. When we take advantage of not only slow generation or the radicals, but also the extremely fast kinetics of the final step or the cross coupling step. So that's oftentimes that the main differentiating factor between these two to two types of chemistry and both could be widely applicable to different things. Sometimes you don't want a reaction to happen so fast. Sometimes you want the reaction to slowly progress and not be as as as fast as the ones with iron. But oh, they both have advantage. But yes, it's kind of surprising to me that, as I was an undergraduate learning about radical chemistry, every time you see radicals, it was almost like Carbo cations, I was like, those are great species for mechanisms. But not something that are applicable to really designing new systems or new materials and whatnot is like, most likely, they won't be as applicable. There's, there's some applications, but they're not as accepted, they always think they're highly reactive species and controlling those highly reactive species could be a nightmare, right? We introduced that right away in organic chemistry, when we use radical chemistry, in halogenation, is like there's going to be a nightmare of we have some predictive reactivity, but you always going to get a nightmare of different products and selectivity is going to be an issue. But now it's kind of amazing where the field is going and where it has been in the last 10 years in terms of combining multiple ways to generate radicals and controlling radicals.
Paolo 23:21
Yeah, it's, it's, in my opinion, one of the most exciting area of innovation in mechanistic chemistry, really. And some people have the perception that there isn't much innovation in chemistry anymore. But but this is a brilliant example of why that is not true. Right?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 23:36
Yeah, it's not only a brilliant example, that it's not true. But I think it also is a great training for changing the mentality of students. Like you said, now is changing the mindset that radicals, this highly reactive species, what we thought are highly reactive, now we're able to control them. And that goes a long ways, right? It goes a long ways. In terms of let's say, for me, I can relate it to you more general area that having the African American president, now it inspires a lot of people saying "I could do that". So now in this present organic chemistry, this radical chemistry soon showing that these radicals that we thought that were not going to be as selective that nobody will really do anything practical there, they have limited applications. Now we have shown that a lot of people work in this area that you could control this radicals. And that changes your mindset. It's like, why can we go to other those other reactive species that we thought carbines, carbocations, and so on and so forth. And now we are we should be able to control those because we have shown that for radical chemistry, we can do that. So now it opens up a lot of space where we can go with like, there's no reactive intermediate anymore that we cannot control. And I think that could change it's just about do you have the energy to go in and try to control those intermediates. But I think now what he kind of inspire a lot of new generations, like wait a minute, if they could do that, for radical chemistry, we could do that with any other reactive, highly reactive species now.
Paolo 25:05
Do you think organic synthesis will look different 10 years from now?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 25:09
I think so I think organic synthesis is going to look very different than what it is now. Because I think it's going to be, you have to be more conscious about why exactly you're trying to make this product. And the tools are going to be more. So identifying how you use those tools, and why are you using those tools, I think ultimately is going to come down to not just a novelty, that's maybe for a publication, but in practical sense that you really have to worry about the cost of these compounds, right, the catalyst. And there's going to be if you have multiple ways, and now you're able to decide, wait a minute, this reaction doesn't work but I want to use these particular catalysts. Can we make it work? Can we make this catalyst, and I think, in 10 years, computational chemistry is going to be a dominant force, whether it's machine learning, where there's transition state calculation, and so on, where neither going to become very practical, where it's going to become between a choice between if I order these chemicals then arrive in a week, versus I could easily go and do all this computations. And maybe that will say, you know, you should not order this chemical order this other one is that, because this is the one that would be more useful, so I think we can become more selective. And in terms of designing chemical, basically system, so I have a feeling that computational chemistry is here to stay in the long run. I think we're always seeing a lot of a lot of productive results coming in that area, and it could only get stronger. So it's not, it's not something that we're, it's going to fade any anytime soon. So that the faster that we implement computational modeling in our undergraduate curriculum, expose students to some of those aspects, that the better we're going to be.
Paolo 26:48
And it has to be this new, more modern type of computational chemistry, right? Not an elitist group of chemists who are just fighting for, for a fraction of an angle in a chemical bond, or right? It is someone who is actually looking at the practical application and what the fundamental understanding you get from that means for the actual organic synthesis that, you know, lives in the real world.
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 27:14
Exactly. I think we'd all been given approximations. I mean, whenever I give a seminar, you always have people from the very fear theoreticians. And they say, well, this method has been shown to have several different drawbacks and but at the same time, we're trying to build a model, which ultimately, our goal is really to, can we able to capture, given that complexity that goes in a chemical system, even with two different reagents only? How complex it really is with a solvent? How complex complex that is. Take that very complex system get an a working model that then we can use to predict new things and not get lost in the little details. So do you really have three molecules surrounding this core? Do you have four molecules? Or maybe, or what is the lifetime? What is that equilibrium thing? We're not going to get into those details, I think we could get lost in those details. And there's a lot of people that their fascination a to understand those, those that equilibrium and whatnot, but for us is, we cannot get lost in those. So we're able to live by a certain aspect, a certain and certainly a certain error, as long as we're able to design an experiment. And then we do invalidate, and we go back and we work in that loop. But we have to be okay of saying we're okay if there's barriers not as predicted as with experiment, as long as we're able to design the next one, that is going to be faster or slower. And that's all we care about. We care about trends, making things faster, making things slower, making things more selective, less selective, not necessarily by a huge amount, and, and so on, and not necessarily understanding all the intricacies and things that go on because we understand that we also know that the chemical system is very complex, and there's many different things that go on. I mean, we get lost in understanding the phases of water. And that's been studied for years and years and understanding all the different phases and confirmations and and we get lost.
Paolo 29:05
Yeah, a very pragmatic, Osvaldo, and impactful way of looking at it. And that's what I believe more and more groups should should focus on and we have seen actually more more group following suit. And in many ways your team is leading the way obviously, you're made the most out of your personal and professional path so far, and you have achieved a lot and, and and your bright future in front of you. But you're also getting involved with we try and help other people who like you, my face some hurdles, right in getting getting some success in their career. And so can you talk a little bit about your involvement in initiatives to facilitate access to STEM education?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 29:55
Yeah, yeah. So I'mapproaching this issue. in a holistic way. So one thing that I'm very involved in is I'm part of the Alliance for Diversity in Science and Engineering-- ADSE. We build chapters all over the United States is a graduate student run organization, with aim of targeting community college students like myself that I was. And the reason why we're targeting community college students is because in those community college, actually you don't have under representation of people of color. Something is they're over represented, but we lose them, we lose a lot of those students as they go into the four years, so they're not transferring. So why not target those already college students. And then if we're able to get the majority of them to transfer to four year universities, we might be able to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the sciences. So I'm heavily involved in that. I established one at the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoc, and I established one in Maryland, now I'm helping other other universities establish similar programs, because it's been very successful. In addition, now I have the opportunity to write grants and propose fun things like, you know, I think I want to have three students this summer, it takes me a day to write all this proposal whatnot. But most of the I think the community is very accepting towards providing opportunities, and usually gets funded. And I bring two or three community college students from underrepresented backgrounds and in my lab they're exposed to the chemical environment as I was, and then we're more involved in providing mentorship, basically, advise moving forward, and they actually see that you can get paid to do this cool stuff, right? You if they were fascinated about science, like you could be here all day, we have all these chemicals, there's so much unknowns, that you can create, create an impact. And if you're able to develop a method, it might be the cure for cancer, it might be the cure for different diseases. So you can be very impactful, you have to be able and as in all the way to communicate that was like, this is not just theoretical work, that is never going to be practical. I think we're developing things that eventually somebody can use to make the next molecule that can help in different ways. And we're doing a lot of initiatives in that and also participate every opportunity that I have to speak to students, high school students, and community college students, I take that opportunity as because I was looking for those as I was growing up. I think having somebody that is there that is approachable, that tells you about what could be one strategy and connecting with other people. I think that becomes very important, I think we should be doing our job and in providing those and rather than waiting for those students to come and reach to us, we should really, really be doing our part and reaching to them. And we'll kind of find a common ground eventually.
Paolo 32:41
That is absolutely great. Congratulations. And thanks for for, for all your work. This is really going to make a difference for a lot of people and and I'm sure makes you proud. There is there is one final question I always like to ask for closing our interviews, and there's no better person than you to ask it. Is what was one piece of advice you would pass on to a young scientists or students just starting their own career based on your own experience?
Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez 33:11
I think one of them is to own your identity, wherever you are, you're, don't try to follow the same paths that other people follow they if you want to become a professor, if you want to become a scientist, if you want to become a politician, it whatever you want. Don't follow the path that somebody already has taken to get there. Don't be afraid of owning your own path and your own background, those experiences because that's going to make you unique, then don't be afraid of maybe this is the wrong step. I got a lot of criticism as I was making my moves. Whether that was the best move, whether that was the best school where it was, that was the best PI and so on, it's like, but as long as you own that and make it and you own that you're going to be become very unique. And therefore you're going to have a unique perspective, you might change the way we do science. So I actually say don't follow any pathway is follow your own pathway, create your own pathway. And as long as you have a goal of where you want to be, I think you're going to be okay.
Paolo 34:16
That was Dr. Osvaldo Gutierrez, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Maryland, and one of the Chemical and Engineering News' Talented 12. Thanks for joining us for the start of season two of Bringing Chemistry to Life and keep an ear out for more. If you enjoy this conversation, you're sure to enjoy Dr. Gutierrez book, video, podcasts and other content recommendations. Visit thermofisher.com/BCTL to access these recommendations, and register for a free Bringing Chemistry to Life t-shirt. You will find the link in the Episode Notes on your app or browser. This episode was produced by Matt Ferris, Matthew Stock, and Emma-Jean Weinstein.