March Madness 😱

Bacteria to produce xylose, ionic conductivity of batteries and Modern Monkey advice

Running 🏃

Whenever I’m going on long runs (say 15 to 20 km) after around the 15 km mark, my legs start to have a jolt of terrible pain, and my whole body starts to scream “STOP”. It’s those moments where I have the decision to either stop running or to keep running faster, that are the hardest.

The decision is always clear to me though, keep moving forward. Sometime after, my breath will get more relaxed and there’s a sense of peace, it’s not that the pain hasn’t gone away, I’ve just learned how to deal with it.

This March was full of pain, struggle and existential anxiety, but through all of it, I kept moving forward, and I learned how to love the struggle.

Using bacteria to produce xylose 🦠

During the last few months, I’ve been working on decarbonizing planes. This ambitious goal of mine led me to look into Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). A process where you take any type of feedstock (usually biomass such as corn) and you make aviation fuel out of it. This could, in theory, replace all of the normal aviation fuel made today from petroleum.

After writing an article and video on some of the processes that can convert biomass to kerosene (aviation fuel). I decided to focus my attention on processes that don’t use hydrogen (since green hydrogen is currently very costly and inefficient).

There are a few processes I’ve been looking at, the first one is Catalytic conversion of sugars and the second is Biological conversion of sugars.

Both of these processes use the same pretreatment step to convert biomass to glucose and then convert that glucose into hydrocarbon fuel ⛽️. I decided to see if there was any way to reduce the cost of these processes by getting rid of the pretreatment step and getting directly to glucose.

I didn’t find any process or organism that can get me directly to glucose but I found a lead with some bacteria being able to produce xylose (another carbohydrate). I’ll be looking deeply into this lead during the month of April.

Ionic conductivity of batteries 🔋

Most of you who have been following this newsletter for a while will know that since the start of March, I’ve been working at a lab, part-time, researching batteries. It’s been fun, but research is hard. Here’s what I’ve learned about my Ph.D. mentor’s project.

She’s trying to improve the ionic conductivity of certain electrodes by providing electrons to an electrode. Thereby the electrode will perform a redox reaction (a reaction atoms lose and gain electrons) on its own and we can measure its ionic conductivity at the micro-scale.

I still have so much to learn about this project and how I can make an impact here, I expect that in April there will be more exciting research to come.

Modern Monkey advice 🙉

This month I had an existential crisis. I know, fun right? The problem was I didn’t know what the point of having an impact was. To me, impact means creating a positive change in people’s lives. But with all the changes that are happening in the world, is it actually good to enhance them?

Take Steve Jobs for example, he is someone who has impacted many people with the iPhone, a lot of the change was good no doubt, but a lot of it gave rise to massive social problems that are happening in the world today. I’m not blaming Steve Jobs for this, it just makes me think about whether it’s even good to have an “impact”, would I even be making things better? Does what I do even matter in the grand scheme of things?

All of these are questions I’m sure many people before and after me will ask themselves, but I needed an answer to stay motivated. I decided to call up a friend. Introducing the Modern Monkey 🙊 (this is where the story gets interesting).

My friend Aatik runs a podcast called Modern Monk.ey. He’s a super spiritual guy, but for drama’s sake let’s just act like he’s Master Oogway on top of a hill.

His main advice to me was to do whatever you're passionate about. If you are passionate about climate change, then do that, if you are passionate about space then do that.

If you are doing whatever that makes you “come alive” then that will inspire others to do the same, you can’t go wrong when everyone is working on things they love and that makes them get up in the morning screaming “Hell Yeah”.

He left me with this quote:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman

My talk with him redefined what success looked like to me. My image of a successful person was someone like Elon Musk, a guy who’s literally shot his own car up into space 🚀.

But now my image of success for myself has shifted to what do I really want? Is it shooting rockets into space? Hard to say. But as I learn more I will understand my interests better and create the change I want to see in the world.

What’s next?

Things are changing fast, I don’t even know what opportunities I may or may not have. What’s for sure is that I’m going to…

• Keep researching my bacteria to xylose project

• Keep doing research at UQAM battery labs

• Speak at Web Summit Rio (if my trip doesn’t get canceled)

• Keep contemplating philosophy

• Look into A.I. and how it’s going to change the world 🤖

Thanks for reading through, and I’ll see you next month!