I came to Boston almost three years ago to work on a very interesting project. The project was to figure out how to use natrual self-assembly by atomic/molecular forces to assemble a battery. The theory had been developed, but the experimental verficiation of the theory was elusive. Young-Kyu Cho and I worked on identifying the appropriate system, doing the calculations, taking measurements on the atomic force microscope and doing the proof-of-concept experiments. We did it, we figured it out, how? We devised a path, worked through obstacles, communicated about the issues and ran the experiments. That was the most important thing, being the catalyst to run the experiments, to get out of the head and calculations and measurements of the thing and go ahead and make the thing.

Now, our work has just been published in a scientific journal called Advanced Functional Materials and we got the cover. This is the first time that a complete functional system that does something (it stores and delivers energy, i.e., its a battery) has been assembled by natural forces alone (by current culture). If you want to know more details about how it works, drop me a line. Aside from that, the subtext message which is quite clear in the tone and words is that the first step to manifestation is catalyzing the process by starting it.