MY VISION
I like to describe my research as the response to a 2016 Nature Nanotechnology editorial article where the journal advocated for a “new generation of physical chemists” able “to connect supramolecular chemistry to the out-of-equilibrium thermodynamic concepts being developed by theoretical physicists”, thus providing “a firm grasp of the physical chemistry of out-of-equilibrium systems”.
In recent years, experiments in supramolecular chemistry, photochemistry and electrochemistry demonstrated that, by opening synthetic systems to matter and/or energy exchanges with the environment, artificial systems with life-like behaviours can be realized and used to convert energy inputs of different nature into work at both the nanoscopic and the macroscopic level. As steam engines inspired 19th Century physicists to develop classical thermodynamics, such chemical engines are now challenging our understanding of how energy and information are processed at small scales. Their relevance for science and technology has been recognized by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to some of the experimental pioneers in the field. On the one hand, chemical engines are building blocks for new active materials engineered at the nanoscale to sense and react as biological structures do. On the other hand, they have been transforming the knowledge of molecular-level dynamic systems. They are advantageous, simplified model systems helping to unveil the working mechanisms of their much more complex biological counterparts found in every cell.
The leitmotif of my research is developing theoretical and computational approaches to systematically understand and anticipate the behavior of chemical systems out of equilibrium, leading to novel and systematic design strategies. To do so, I believe the dialogue with experimentalists is the best way to identify the theoretical questions that are worth answering.