In what I believe was our best academic / professional visit yet, today, we had the chance to visit the Institute of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry (IOCB) in Prague. This institute is well known all over the world and is famous for being the home to Antonín Holý, a prolific Czech scientist that played a pivotal role in the development of some of the first HIV related medications. During our time there we had the opportunity to listen to lectures given by some of the world’s best chemistry researchers, including Jiří Kaleta, who taught us about his current research into Molecular Rotors, Motors, and Switches.
In what was one of the best chemistry lectures I have ever received, Dr. Kaleta explained how there are certain compounds that will move when they are stimulated by either changes in heat or light. What particularly interested me was when Dr. Kaleta talked about molecular switches and how they were using light to toggle these switches and observe their states as on or off. Immediately after he said this, I made the connection back to bits in circuitry and began to think of the computing possibilities of physical chemical bits. While it seemed from his talk that the purpose of these bits may be limited due to the pristine environment needed to keep them in a specific state, there may still be many applications for a system of chemical RAM for example. All of this I hope to flesh out and more in my final project and more, and I plan to stay up to date on all of Dr. Kaleta’s work.
Swanson School of Engineering 