Ashwin Gopinath: Merging top-down and bottom-up synthesis

The molpigs Podcast

On this episode, the molpigs team talks with Ashwin Gopinath about bridging size scales in nanomaterial size scales. We explore his journey from optical physics to learning DNA nanotechnology in the Rothemund lab and his current projects and vision for highly multiplexed molecular measurements. Ashwin's career path has been quite the adventure, starting in academia, working for Google and then starting and later selling his own company. Finally, we turn to ways that AI is going to change research and the impending death of the current grant-funding structure. His excitement for scientific progress, perspective on different work environments and creativity in research is always inspiring for scientists young and old.

The paper Ashwin mentions on developing new AI capabilities can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11366

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Ashwin received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Boston University, working on devices for detecting and characterizing single biomolecules. Challenges he encountered during this motivated him to switch focus from optical physics to DNA nanotechnology, leading to a postdoc under Paul Rothemund at Caltech. After working briefly for Google X, he is now an Assistant Professor at MIT. He has received the Robert Dirks Molecular Programming Prize for his work combining DNA nanotechnology with conventional micro-fabrication.

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Find more information at the episode page here:
https://podcast.molpi.gs/media/gopinath-a-e8cafaf0680033a7/