Episode 25: Dr. Russ Algar on Luminescent Materials and your Potential to Work with Them

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to the Kentop podcast. I'm Nguyen Hose, it's at the Law of the Quarry. I'm Ria Jen, I'm Nam Siya. We recently interviewed Dr. Rest Alger, associate professor of chemistry at University of British Columbia. Dr. Alger earned his PhD at the University of Toronto and currently researches Liminance and Material and photo-Liminance and, so it is research group at EBC. Today, we will be breaking down his interview from the early days of his career to his current research. We hope you enjoy. - Today, we're interviewing Dr. Russ Alger and he's gonna talk to us a little bit about his research and his education and how he got to where he is. So, Dr. Alger. - Hello, great to be here. I did my undergrad at the University of Toronto and then I liked it so much. I stayed for a Master's in a PhD. Both in analytical chemistry and then after that, I went to do a postdoc in the United States at the US Naval Research Fund. They're Center for Bio-Mlike and Science and Engineering and then from there, I moved to EBC where I'm currently a professor of chemistry. - I actually found a really interesting learn that Dr. Alger loved his experience as an undergraduate summer. I had decided to stay for his Master's in PhD too. - I know that his experience at university must have been quite awesome for him to stay. - Definitely and he currently does research at EBC with students from all levels of study and researches, luminescent materials and their properties. Photo-lumin essence is an amazing phenomenon where a molecule is able to emit light. We asked Dr. Alger what bio-lumin essence really is. - So, in order to have luminescence, at least photo-lumin essence, it has to be able to absorb light to start with. So, we need a molecule that can absorb light. In many cases, if you see something colored, it has the potential to absorb light. And then when it absorbs that light, most molecules wanna get rid of that energy and return to a lower energy state. And the majority of them will do that by what we'd call in fancy words, serenalization, which is just give off heat to the surroundings. But certain molecules don't do this very efficiently. Instead, they get rid of some of that energy by emitting a different color of light and that's the idea behind the photo-lumin essence. - Okay, so the molecule absorbs light and then emits it. - Well, it's something like that. From speaking with Dr. Alger and also doing some reading on his website, the basis of what he researches is fluorescence. Fluorescence is the property and material due to which it is able to emit light when it is excited or simply hit with energy by using x-rays, electrons or other particles. And it's very widely used to analyze different types of molecules and is a staple in analytical chemistry. It's really wonderful how Dr. Alger studies it. - Considering he's been a fanatic of an analytical chemistry ever since high school. - Yeah, that is so cool. - Yeah, totally. But what about wavelength? I've studied at school how light has different wavelengths and that affects its reflective properties. - Oh, yeah, true. I've studied about how the wavelength of light is what decides its colors. Doesn't maybe affect your lessons too. - Yeah, it definitely factors it. The molecule actually absorbs light of one wavelength and emits it to another. In fact, it forms a basis of fluorescence spectroscopy. The technique that Dr. Alger uses to study these materials, he talks about it in a bit in her interview. - Basically measuring something is a function of the energy. In many cases, that's gonna be in terms of light energy. And so in fluorescence spectroscopy, for example, which is a type of photo luminescence, you're gonna often look at, well, what wavelengths that you shot in on your sample are going to induce fluorescence and then what wavelengths or colors of fluorescence come out when you put those different wavelengths of light onto that sample. - Okay, and going to need some explaining here. - What exactly is spectroscopy? - Well, it sounds complex, but it's actually really simple. So spectroscopy is a method that scientists use to study matter that is too small to be seen with the naked eye, like atoms. They basically shine light on what they need to observe and it helps them know about different properties like composition and behavior. - It's like shining a flashlight on something to see what the object looks like, but the light is invisible to us. - Yes, exactly. It's basically about studying the kind of light that the matter absorbs and the kind of the mitts in terms of the wavelength of frequency of light. - That sounds so interesting. So it's this technique that Dr. Olga uses to study as my teeth. - Yep, he makes use of a type of spectroscopy called fluorescence spectroscopy. - You mentioned that before. How exactly does that differ from that regular spectroscopy? - Well, it doesn't exactly differ. It's just the method of spectroscopy being used to study fluorescence and fluorescent materials. - Yeah, Dr. Olga also talked about how he tries to measure different properties of the emitted light, like intensity and color in order to get more information about this sample. It's honestly so amazing that fluorescent spectroscopy makes that possible. - I know, right? Wabelength is also a big thing that is studied in spectroscopy. But talking about that actually, there are many advantages of using the method over others available. Dr. Olga explains it a bit. - Yeah, so I'll be diplomatic and say that there's a good time in a place for every analytical technique, but that's for us since there are a lot of advantages. And I can give you a few just off hand, one of which is the idea that you could call it a non-contact or a non-invasive method. All you really need to do to be a good dude is get light in and out of your sample. There's many different ways to do that. And so that's great for something biological where you maybe don't want to stab a cell or a tissue. You just want to shine light on and look at the light coming back. You can also combine it with my cross-to-be so if you're looking at tiny things as one tends to do the biological research, it's a great tool for that. And in fact, it's been incredibly important for the development of biological life sciences as well. Another thing that we just mentioned, there's many different ways to measure whether it's tensiny, color or wavelength, or time-based response, a polarization concept. There's many ways to measure it. It's also really nicely sensitive. You can actually detect fluorescence emitted from a single molecule. So you could literally count molecules one at a time with the right side of its parent. And so it's beautifully sensitive and has a whole bunch of other advantages. - Man, it's so good I aborted to work with that school stuff. We don't have access to all of this in high school. Actually, I don't think I've ever used spectroscopy before. - Here's the holding out for college, I guess. - Trust me, you won't be saying that actually learn anymore. It's interesting how CM mentioned access, although Dr. Alger talked about how scientific innovation in general needs to be made more accessible outside of research and development labs. - Yeah, for sure, imagine that this technology was available to more scientists or maybe if it was made simpler to use and handle. - Wait, it's so crazy, that not even all scientists can access this. - I know, it's definitely a real problem. I feel like it suppresses experimentation in a way too. If you think about it, 'cause a very less number of researchers are able to work with updated equipment. I think that's something that people have discussed at Camp Talkalore too, the accessibility and STEM and the importance of technological development. - Definitely, and as a student too, I feel it would be so much more beneficial if you were working with newer and more relevant students. - Exactly, that would Dr. Alger emphasizes on like how we need to be using these newer technologies more, how we need to increase their accessibility and distribution and also how we need to make our materials better to have them do what we want them to do. - So what kind of materials does he use in his lab? - I remember talking about traditional materials and how he proposed to work instead with different ones. - Yeah, he talks about how he uses non-traditional materials for his research. Let's look from to him and talk about it. - So the traditional ones are what you would call fluorescent dies. So these are small molecules that will absorb in a mid-light or fluorescent proteins, which are basically proteins that have a small molecule like that at their core. And so these have been used for decades. They're wonderful in many applications. But they're the historical norm. And so most of our work is done with what we call emerging or non-traditional materials, things like different types of luminousin nanoparticles, some types of lanthanide complexes. And these will absorb and emit different colors of light much like a fluorescent dye or fluorescent protein, but they do so with different properties. So there's something about the nature of the color of the light or how long that light lasts or other properties of the light that makes them advantageous versus fluorescent dies and fluorescent proteins in certain applications. And so for a lot of the research we do, we're trying to match the special properties of these unique materials with an application. So we can do something that wasn't possible with fluorescent dies and fluorescent proteins. - Wait, so essentially non-traditional materials are improvement on existing ones, right? - Well, yes, but they're also different materials altogether with different properties. Traditional materials would be dies and proteins, which show fluorescence, while non-traditional ones would be something like luminousin nanoparticles. - Exactly, they function completely differently and allow for much more room in terms of usage and application. - Speaking of application, I actually loved how Dr. Ralker talked about extending this technology into rural areas in third world country while accesses may be relatively limited. - You're talking about the phone, right? - Yeah, exactly, like wow, that's possible. I don't know, but, Lars, what are you guys talking about again? Okay, okay. So, see, imagine a phone capable of medical diagnosis. What now? Like, I know it's so damn cool. Dr. Algo told us about how he's working on this mobile that could actually diagnose people's diseases and then help them transfer their information to their doctor. Damn, and this works on the principle of fluorescence as well. Yep, specifically it makes use of something called flow cytometry. Let's hear him talk about it a bit. In this research, we're really trying to do, I think, three major things. One of which I already mentioned is this idea of translating lab-based methods that are actually expensive or very sophisticated technology or require a highly trained person to run onto platforms like smart phones that can be used outside of a lab. So, you know, it's great if you live in a city with lots of resources where you can go, you know, a short walk or drive or transit trip to find something like a what to make sure that healthy, healthy diagnosis disease. But there are plenty of rural and remote communities in Canada and the United States where that's not an option. They have to travel for hours and hours to go to a lab facility that's capable of doing these things. There's lots of faces around the world that have similar issues with resources where they don't have lab facilities for a lot of least tests that we take for granted. In contrast, some of the little smartphones is highly ubiquitous around the world. There's a variety of disturbing stats about how, you know, smartphones are more accessible than clean water in some places or, you know, sanitary plumbing and things like that. And so they're out there. So, let's use them to try and bring the lab to people where they have the need for lab capabilities. So, trying to do medical diagnostics detect biomarkers so molecules that indicate healthy disease. On a smartphone using fluorescence enabled by these non-traditional fluorescent materials. So, one of the recent things he did with this was to do a very weird, a mentry level of what's called flow cytometry on a smartphone. And so, flow cytometry is a lab based technique, typically. It's got a big giant instrument that costs anywhere from 100,000 up to millions of dollars depending on the features you have on. It's got a pre-skilled operator to run. And it basically gets a cell to line up single file and then analyzes them by fluorescence. One by one looking at the colors of fluorescence given off from one intensity. And that tells scientists about what molecules are associated with those cells because we can label them with the colors of fluorescence. And then we can look at that and say that's a healthy cell. That's a disease style. This is one type of cell. This is a different type of cell. And so, we'd actually been able to do this on a smartphone now. Now, we're not quite at the level of these million dollar fluorescence almerists, but we actually can do flow cytometry on a smartphone. So, this would be an incredible technique for bringing to rural or remote communities or low resource communities around the world where you can start to do things like diagnosis and immune disorders. You can start to look at potentially early detection of cancer through circulating tumor cells, you can look at fetal injury. There's a variety of things you can do with this as a technology that doesn't have to be in a lab with highly trained people anymore with high cost and everything else. So, that's one area of research for sure. So, he basically uses this flow cytometric to think we need to make medical diagnosis. Yeah, exactly. And this works on fluorescence too. Yeah. As Dr. Algorithic explains, it's basically a technique that is used to analyze chemical properties of cells. It can give you information about the cells, interior, its size, structure, stuff like that. This helps us identify different types of diseases. Yeah, exactly. While the process is a bit complicated, what essentially happens in flow cytometry is that a sample of cells is suspended in a fluid, which is then injected into an instrument called a flow cytometer. Wow, you know, it's actually so cool to be able to see a real life application of a concept based on chemistry. Like, it's amazing how even the basic concept like fluorescence can have like such a big impact on the medical fee. I agree. I mean, in university, you're learning about these complex methods and techniques a lot. So, it's really kind of motivating when you get to talk people who are actually applying them to make such an impact or even day-to-day normal life products. Okay, like, I wonder though, would it have been possible for Dr. Algoritha to find this out through a theoretical way? Was it necessary to perform a lot of experiments? Because those sound kind of expensive. Dr. Algoritha specializes in analytical chemistry, which is basically all about experiment. There's something he emphasis on a lot too, hands-on work. In the interview, he talked about how it was really only after his first lab experience during his undergrad that he realized he wanted to pursue a career in research. Let's hear him talk about it. And you're working, Red. So many students do think that the premise of analytical chemistry tends to maybe seem daunting because I know like a lot of us like in high school or maybe even college, they tend to think about it as really mathematically. So, and computational. So, how do you navigate that? How do you kind of dissipate the fear around how many techic chemistry? Yeah, at the graduate level, it's a bit of self-selection. So, the people that I tend to contact me tend to have a show in some level of interest in the research step we do, whether that's from the analytical side, physical chemistry side, of the materials chemistry side. You know, there's some natural interest there. At the undergraduate level, I know exactly where you're coming from, the analytical. Sometimes has a bad rap. Honestly, I think it's because it needs to be taught a little bit differently in the introductory analytical course. It's, you know, it's about measuring molecules and atoms. What type are there and how many are there? And there's not one branched on science that doesn't be to do that at some level. And so it should be a course that everyone's excited about. It sees the immediately usefulness for that. But unfortunately, you know, it's almost taught like a history curriculum where your first analytical course is like the classical volumetric method of analysis. And you're looking at that and saying this is boring. And I can't lie and disagree. And you're seeing it in this very narrow scope and you're not really getting the impact of, well, how is this impacting multidisciplinary science? How is this being used in real world? How is this impact on society? And so, yeah, you get this bad reputation. And I think if we could just jump to what's typically the second course in our chemistry where you start to see all the technology that from then and how that can be used for so many different applications of how so many different branches of science leverage that technology that will get students more excited. You know, chemistry, they say as a central science will analytical is the central science of the central science. It's like you bring in an organic and bring in an organic and bring in physical chemistry, you bring in the physics of biology and the engineering to make things work. So you can basically do the possible task of figuring out how many molecules and atoms and what type are there. And so I think there's better ways to teach it. And I think that would help students get excited about it. And with the math, you know, I got to say that high school me would probably just destroy me, per me on any math tests. So the math, I don't think is that bad, but I think we need to find good ways to teach it so that it links up with a qualitative concept. Because you just think of the math as a way of quantifying a concept, it's much easier to establish a link and work through it than if you think of it as something separate from the concept. I think we need better ways to teach it at that introductory levels. Get people excited and to see that it's really just chemistry and science like any other course that they're excited about. It doesn't need to be scared. See exactly. Like I agree on how it's really important to get as much lab work as you can. I relate to that. Like my favorite part of chem class in high school is definitely doing all those experiments. I think it really helps you see chemistry in real life outside just a theory part of it. Yeah, I agree with you, but all those napriputs. Yeah, I know. But imagine trying to make a lot of soda without knowing about what carbonated water is or how to flavor it. You see what I mean? Yeah, I get that, but I feel most students may be shy of me from analytical chemistry due to this as well. Like I know some classmates who please the need to round off our conclusions to match what's when they're dead in the theory. Oh yeah, like I get that completely. I think sometimes we focus on the theory so much that we get anxious about the results of our experiments in the cases when they aren't exactly what's written in the textbooks. Yeah, that's what is so scary about chem's and times. Like all the numbers are the need to be so precise and accurate. Well, yeah, fortunately, there's not formal lab reports that you're being graded on in the real world, but Ken Fobia definitely does exist. That's the fear of chemistry. Wow, it doesn't actually don't correct? Well, yeah, but that's what's so interesting about analytical chemistry. Like what adopted August studies? Like in our discussion with them, he told us about how it mainly revolves around doing experiments. So students need to be encouraged to learn the subject by experimenting around themselves rather than with the textbook. In our chem talk, we work towards basiting such misconceptions as well. Yes, it was so inspiring to hear about how he developed his passion for analytical chemistry. In our school, the Amit Haskell right now too and was so good to Do you have artists experience? is it's going on how it shaped him, I've it was really hit. Yeah, and I feel like on that topic, he gives really good advice to high school students as well in the interview. Let's hear and talk about it. You know, I think it's a lot about keeping an open mind because you can be interested in something and you can get a teacher and you know, they can maybe not be the best teacher in the world or it can be taught in a really challenging way. I don't like this or I'm not going to this and you sort of forget about it. Likewise, you can not be interested in something where you think you're not interested in something then you get a really inspiring teacher and you say, oh, wow, it was really open my eyes to something. So I think trying to keep an open mind as long as possible is good and also try to do as much research as you can early on about the different career paths you can think of because undergrad unfortunately is a time where you can actually start to close doors by making certain decisions about what courses you take or what experiences you do or do not engage in. And so you really want to be aware of the things you should be doing to keep doors open different careers earlier rather than later. So I think it's talking to as many people as you can whether they're more senior students, whether they're instructors, whether you have other support structures at your institution to help guide you, high school, your guidance counselors. It turned out it's great, something that the older generation didn't really have. Like you can start to look up a lot of the things that you would need to do for different careers and try and balance those as much as you can. That said, it's never really too late if you really like something and have the energy and drive. You can usually find your way into it eventually. But you can make it easier by doing some research ahead of time just to know what the expectations are for different eras. I completely agree with what he said. As a current senior in college about to graduate, there are a lot of things that I feel I wanted to do as a freshman that I definitely do not want to do anymore. So really just by taking classes and experiencing things, you know, talking to different people, things like that, I realized certain things worked for me and I also found my passion. Yeah, exactly. My high school journey was like that dude, you know, like trying to figure out what to do and I feel like taking courses and really diving into things that I thought I found interesting kind of helped clear out the road and made me decide what I wanted to do. Well, I spent my first few years of high school in the pandemic and bored it and miss out on a lot of term, but not in terms of such opportunities. I have to catch up on a lot of important concepts and experiments that I missed before my junior year and that too on my own. It's so stressful especially because I have to do all of this by mistake, but no access went out. Yeah, labs are super crucial. See, my friend, Noll from Ken Talk is a bio-con major and I remember her telling me that not having access to a lab during the pandemic was really detrimental to her education. Growing up as a dancer, she's a very visual and hands-on learner and not having that key educational learning environment made it more difficult to learn concepts for her. Online labs were in years instead and were intriguing. They did well to aid her in her studies. Yeah, I think I do kind of love that scientists, like at least nowadays, are focusing more on making the new technology cheaper and more accessible. I hope it allows students to keep up with the current technology and maybe use it more easily. Yeah, and that's just another reason I like working at Chem Talk. Although we can't do it a lot through our watching medium book chemistry, we offer tons of free resources, especially our interactive video art at the event that helps students that need us all over the world. Yeah, that may about it. Another major topic that Dr. Alger talked about throughout his interview was optimization, which is possibly the most crucial aspect of modern science. Well, that's interesting, but like in what sense are you referring to optimization? Optimization is the best way to do something or tackle a problem, especially when there's a lack of resources, time, or other such limitations. It involves evaluating various possibilities to find what works best and achieve certain objectives depending on the mode it, such as maximum profit and minimum expenditure on raw materials, etc. Yeah, it's often used in STEM to produce better methods and resources for research, along with finding the best method to adopt keeping funding in mind. Now, that makes sense. I like our scientists nowadays. They're more conscious about the environment and the resources we have left, as well as like they ensure that they come up with all the latest research that would be either accessible and affordable for people all around the world. Yeah, I feel like with the rise of globalization in these past years, people and science have also begun collaborating with other scientists from all over the world and it is accelerated development in science. So in essence, the collective motive to use what they have with optimization and ensure its accessibility has not only helped with sustainability, but also with collaboration and collective benefits are received from developing together in the end. So it's a win-win. That's actually a great way to look at it. I mean, science is becoming more and more accessible for people all around the world. Everything you want to learn is available on the internet and collaboration is actually encouraged. While some people might participate in optimization due to lack of resources or funds, it has definitely helped open numerous possibilities for others. While that brings us to the end of our conversation, Dr. Algar and his research in Vodaluma Science. We hope you've enjoyed today's podcast and I think that we all learned a lot in Dr. Algar. For chemistry help, please meet our website, www.chemistrytalk.org. Until next time, bye!