What if you could create any material you wanted or even invent new materials by building

them one particle at a time? Chad Merton has spent his career not only making this possible,

but also exploring ways these tiny creations can transform research, healthcare, and technology.

This year, he received the Cavley Prize in nanoscience

with Robert Langer and Paul Olivasados

for building materials from the bottom up.

Scientific American Custom Media, in partnership with the Cavley Prize,

spoke with Chad to learn about his journey as a scientist

and the future of this work.

Chad Merkin likes to say he became a chemist by default.

You go to college, you're young, you don't really know what you want to do.

Your mother says, you know, go out and be a rich doctor, become a rich lawyer, or become a businessman.

Nobody says go out and be a scientist, right?

At least they didn't in my family.

And so I went to school thinking, oh, I'm going to be a doctor.

He was well on his way toward using his chemistry degree to prepare for medical school when he sat in on a surgery.

And I thought it was the most boring, most repulsive thing I'd ever seen. And I had a crisis. I said,

I can't do this. There's no way I can do this for the rest of my life.

Chad Merkin quickly pivoted to a career in research and never looked back. He studied chemistry

at Dickinson College and went on to receive a PhD from Penn State. He then did a postdoc at

MIT, where he worked with Mark Wrighton,

a chemist who was studying the consequences of miniaturization.

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