Helen Tran

Abstract

For the longest time, Helen Tran didn’t feel a strong pull toward chemistry. Art was her passion. She even remembers how in middle school, she was a teaching assistant for a chemistry class, but she always tried to finish her grading early so she could go work in the art studio next door. The turning point was her first undergraduate organic chemistry course. The material spoke to Tran’s instinct for visualization. Then a polymer chemistry class appealed to her love for building things. Those courses solidified her path in chemistry. Now she calls herself a molecular architect: she designs and makes stretchable, biodegradable electronic materials with her group at the University of Toronto. “She really wants to work at this interface of disciplines between chemistry, polymer science, biology, and materials,” says polymer chemist Ron Zuckermann of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Tran worked before starting her PhD. Tran’s group in