Assistant Professor of Chemistry and nanotechnology researcher Christina Bauer is the first one in her family to graduate from college. Growing up with a father who was a skilled mechanic and carpenter, she was very interested in being able to build or make things just like him. Notorious for her storytelling in tough courses such as physical chemistry and senior research seminars, and mentoring her research assistants, Bauer shares more about her journey into the world of chemistry as a researcher in a national laboratory and eventually into academia in a liberal arts college.
How did you become interested in science and specifically in chemistry?
I grew up in a blue-collar family, where my parents did not stress the importance of education, as it was unfamiliar to them. I very interested in science and mathematics and did well in these subjects in school. As I got older, I started to notice the connection between science and engineering and both carpentry and auto mechanic work such as my father’s. Ultimately, I became a physical chemist as this provided me with the tools to both make fundamental or complex materials and study them mathematically. Interestingly, this came full-circle in my Science in Society course, where I taught the students the thermodynamics of internal combustion engines, demonstrated how a piston cycle works, and discussed the chemistry of the combustion process.
Your expertise is in nanotechnology. Tell us more about your professional background in the area.
Nanotechnology involves materials that are very small, with dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers in size, or less than 0.0000001 meters. This means the substance is typically made up of 10 to 10,000 atoms. Previously, atoms or large collections of atoms (i.e., in bulk) were studied. Atoms behave differently when in a large group compared to when they are on their own or in small quantities, and often do not develop their bulk properties that we regularly observe until they pass the nano- size regime.
I began working with nanotechnology as a graduate student in the year 2000 when the field was just coming out of its infancy. I began working with silver, gold, and copper nanoparticles, attaching fluorescent dyes to them and studying their spectroscopy.
Then, I worked for a biotechnology company, where I made quantum dots (semiconductor nanoparticles), labeled them with antibodies, and used them to stain tissue to enable quick screening for multiple diseases/cancers at the same time.
Later on, I worked for a government laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, where I began making structured, nanoporous materials. One project that had the largest impact involved metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These are structured materials where you can arrange atoms and molecules, somewhat akin to Legos, to attain a structure with a certain shape and holes of a particular size within the crystals. We utilized them for sensing, controlling solid state light emission color, and detection of radiation.
After this, I received a National Science Foundation grant and became a Discovery Corps Fellow at UCLA, where I first taught my own courses. At this point, I decided I wanted to teach, continue research, and have closer relationships with my students and accepted a faculty position at Whittier College.
You’re known for “story time” in your classes. Tell us more about your approach to teaching.
Generally, I spend a lot of time providing context for why students should care, which includes telling varied stories from my research background (either something I did or a colleague did) that relates to the material so that I can explain how important science is, how fun a science career can be, particularly in chemistry, and that even the basic concepts they are learning in undergraduate courses apply. Often, I teach the essential amount of material to give them enough terminology to understand the story, provide a story, and then teach the concept further in relation to the story. This also provides a tool for them to recall the information later. Nanotechnology involves a compilation of many topics within chemistry, and I often use that as a contemporary tool to describe and demonstrate the topics at hand, more so in the upper division courses.
Describe your current research.
I am working in several projects and I’m also branching out into other fields that might be impactful as well. For instance, I have three intertwined projects related to MOFs. Two involve making new structures with tunable optical properties via new methods, while a third involves making a subset of MOFs, known as zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (or ZIFs), to create membranes for fuel cells. This is a high risk, high impact project which involves my research students. We are also starting to include computational techniques into my work to support description of our experimental data, which we hope will take our work in new directions.
Another group of student researchers are working on forming luminescent glass nanoparticles by embedding fluorescent dyes within them. The method we use is a mild, bio-inspired procedure that allows for quick, non-toxic synthetic routes. Bio-inspired refers to diatoms, a species of unicellular algae. Diatoms are able to reproduce intricate cell walls with significant detailed nanostructure, the like of which no scientist can create in a laboratory, with the use of various polypeptides and polyamines. We utilize a polyamine that resembles one used by diatoms to make our nanoparticles in solution.
I also began a project within my physical chemistry laboratory course. We made quantum dots, studied their structure and formation, and then ultimately made solar cells with them. Some of what we did was scientifically novel, and applying this fully-integrated project to a research laboratory is new. A student who is interested in chemistry education was in this course and became very inspired by the educational and research portions of this project. He is now working on this project, improving the procedures and helping to develop a manuscript that can be used in future labs and published in an education journal.
What is the impact of your research in your field of study?
My research often involves methods to make new structures, but also careful analysis and study of the structures to describe their optical properties. This has made my work relevant, and generally highly cited, because I am one of the few physical chemists focused on these types of materials. Essentially, I found a gap in the literature a few years ago and concentrated my research there.
How important are your students in your research?
My students are integral to my work. They are given direction, training, and projects to do, but I also ask them to think and propose their own ideas. I ask them to do some of the tough, but necessary portions, such as literature searching and trying to describe or explain an unusual result. I believe this allows the students to feel a connection and ownership of a project and thus far, this has been a good strategy for our group. Students also help in the everyday lab situations, such as setting up, maintaining, and fixing equipment, so that they have a realistic view of what research looks like.
