Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The World at MIT: Moungi Bawendi”.
I ended up growing up in the outskirts of Paris until I was seven. And then we moved to Tunis for a couple years.. Then we moved to Nice for a year.. Then we moved to West Lafayette Indiana. When I was ten., Then we moved back to Paris when I was a freshman in high school. And then we moved back to West Lafayette Indiana.. I always felt a little bit like an outsider, going back and forth between different places.. I think I developed this sort of self reliance.. Maybe that’s why I became an introvert..
My father was a mathematician, so he was a professor. Being a Tunisian in France at the time was not easy.. You couldn’t have a permanent job as a professor. And, being you know, half French and half Tunisian also at the time you know, I felt that a little bit., So I never felt like I belonged really either in France or in Tunisia or even in the US.. I came as a 10 year old, essentially without knowing a word of English., But after six months when you’re ten, you know you become fluent.. I think I was always interested in science – broadly, not mathematics., That I’m sure I was never interested in mathematics.. So at the time you know you could buy science kits with stuff in them that today you wouldn’t be able to sell.. So I got you know a chemistry kit and I got a physics kit and you start learning about hooking circuits together and elements or molecules together to form new things.. They change color you crystallize things., Then I started taking uh science courses in junior high school. In high school. I had a great chemistry teacher.. You know I want to credit him..
I think he made a huge difference. And then, when I came to college at Harvard my freshman chemistry, professor, was also an amazing professor.. So that combination – you know, led me in my path., Because when I came to Harvard also I had the same problem of feeling like I was an outsider.. But chemistry was something that I liked and I could do and forged ahead, and I really liked physics., And so I sort of got into the physics realm a little bit and you know became a physical chemist..
Then I went to visit MIT and that was a really great experience. And I was so surprised that there was this other university just down the street.. I realized it’s a really unique place., So quantum dots are small. Nanoparticles made out of semiconductors. They’re small enough that uh, when you put an electron in them, that electron no longer behaves like a little particle moving in a circuit, but it behaves like a wave like a quantum mechanical object.. It asks the question: What is this transition between an atom and a bulk material? The discovery of quantum dots happened in the Soviet Union and in the U. S., simultaneously by my post, doc, mentor Louis Brus in the early 1980s and by Alexey Ekimov in Leningrad. At the time also late, 70s early 1980s., I went to do a post doc with Louis Brus, and that’s where I learned about quantum dots as a thing.. At the time, the materials property of quantum dots was rather poor.. That was my project basically coming at MIT. As an assistant, professor again, I was an outsider. You know it was an outsider.
Coming into this field of chemistry, of synthetic chemistry that I really didn’t know much about.. We ended up developing a way to make these quantum dots to be of quite high quality. High quality enough that we could start to do the basic experiments.
Within five years of me, starting here and making progress in making these new materials, it started being clear that there were interesting uses for them beyond studying them for their fundamental properties.. It’S important to really work on what you want to work on what you believe in and to have the confidence that, if you think it’s interesting, then it is interesting.. Mit is a great environment.. It’S very collegial., Very collaborative and the setup of the buildings really encouraged. That., The interdisciplinarity is really important and unique.. It helped to advance my career, make it more rewarding for me, because I’m constantly learning new things and the field itself really benefited from that..
Not only is MIT a unique place because of this interdisciplinary, but as a result, we also have amazing students.. I couldn’t have done my first three years here, which eventually got the Nobel Prize without having really bold, smart and adventurous graduate students., It’s not just the physical environment, but it’s also the people .