Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College - #567

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges and realities of the academic system in producing scientists, featuring insights from Professor Lipomi on mentorship and the impact of nanotechnology.

The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation. Lipomi is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester and the author of Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research. His lab works on organic electronics, materials science, recyclable polymers, and the science of human touch. He trained under George Whitesides at Harvard, one of the most cited chemists who has never won the Nobel Prize. The conversation covers the H-index, what elite mentorship actually looks like when your advisor writes “This is illiterate” in blue ink on your outline, and what the future of academic research versus industry careers looks like in an era of AI, demographic headwinds, and graduate school debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. We also get into homochirality, OLED displays, and why Lipomi thinks the nanotechnology revolution already happened, we just didn’t call it that. What you’ll hear: -Whether the academic system is…

People in this episode

Host: Brian Keating

Guest: Lipomi

Topics covered

• academic system
• mentorship
• nanotechnology
• organic electronics
• cancer drug delivery
• graduate school debt

Keywords

• H-index
• Baumol’s cost disease
• OLED displays
• homochirality
• AI in research
• recyclable polymers

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Rochester, Harvard

Books & works: Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research

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