Professor James McCusker

That's an easy one. My first chemistry class when I was a sophomore in high school. My teacher was Dr. Valerio Moretti, who used to tell me in his wonderful Italian accent, "You should major in chemistry!". We got to the chapter in the book on the electronic structure of the atom, at which point I immediately knew that I wanted to get my PhD in chemistry and become a professor at a university. In fact, it's fair to say, given that the work we're doing in my lab deals with the influence of electronic structure on the photo-induced properties of molecules, you can draw a straight line from that day in my 10th grade chemistry class to this award.

I'll answer this question in a slightly different way. When I was interviewing for my Assistant Professor position at UC-Berkeley, Professor Andy Streitwieser caught me off-guard with the following question: Who are your heroes in science? But I was able to answer him quickly. Two persons: (1) Harry Gray, for his infectious enthusiasm for science, his decades of seminal contributions to chemistry (his 1962 paper in Inorganic Chemistry on a vanadium complex was the first journal article I ever read), and his deep-seated care and concern for young scientists; and (2) Hans Gudel, an inorganic spectroscopist at the University of Bern (now retired). Hans never published many papers in any given year, but every one of them reveals science that is impeccably done, never overinterpreted, and never compromising on the importance of fundamental research. I sometime use his papers as an example to my students for what we should be striving to achieve.

Two things: (1) The realization of a vision related to a scientific goal in the research programme, particularly when the path to that goal wasn't the way we started off. When this happens, it tells me that we let the data show us the way forward; and (2) Seeing my students achieve their goals and the feeling that I may have had a small role in contributing to their success.

Follow your passion about what it is you want to work on. It's the same thing I tell students wanting to join my group. To be successful, you need to (a) be excited about what you're working on, (b) be willing to work hard, and (c) keep an open mind and be willing to learn. I truly believe if you have those three things working in your favour, everything else will follow suit – and sometimes in ways you could have never imagined.

I think our recent paper in Nature illustrating how one can use the phenomenon of quantum coherence to teach us new approaches to molecular design for tailoring the photophysical properties of molecules presents exciting new possibilities moving forward. We also have another paper in preparation showing how one can use spin to control excited-state reactivity – pretty excited about that as well.

Iron, of course: it's been very good to me in my career! A friend of mine once introduced me before a seminar I was about to give at their university as Iron Man...but without the suit. I think that's a bit of a stretch.