Nandini Ananth, , is a designer. Not of fashion, nor of interiors, but of molecules. Instead of creating a red-carpet gown or a luxe new dining room, Ananth conceives brand-new, ideal materials from the atoms-up, with ideal properties for making our lives easier. These theoretical designs provide blueprints for other scientists so they can synthesize new materials in the lab.
While that day is still a long way off, Ananth is taking the first steps toward making it a reality. “If I build my theories well enough, I could run a simple computer simulation and hand someone a blueprint for a material with the properties they seek,” she says. “That’s a really neat goal and very exciting. Of course we know it’s very difficult to do this—chemistry in real life has so many moving parts, it’s a very difficult process to model.”
