Energy harvesting and self-sustainable greenhouses

Bringing Chemistry to Life

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While most love adventure, it still takes courage and determination to go find it and commit to it. Dr. Derya Baran, a Turkish native, who studied in Austria, Germany, and the UK before now working in Saudi Arabia, has ample courage and determination that have provided a life of adventure!

This is one of our best explorations of the link between the person and the science. Derya, an academic researcher and entrepreneur, that can’t stop thinking about how her work can benefit people’s lives. She develops smart and functional materials for energy harvesting and conversion. Specifically, innovative organic materials with photovoltaic properties that can be used in challenging (hot and/or humid) environments and present unique properties of transparency, color, and ease of manufacturing, relative to traditional silica-based technologies. Her materials are enabling incredible concepts, such as self-sustainable greenhouses that can generate all the energy they need to enable agriculture in inhospitable environments.

There is a lot to like here… great science that promises to address very important global issues and the personal story of a smart, determined, woman, full of unlikely, brave choices.

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About Your Host

Paolo Braiuca grew up in the North-East of Italy and holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from nearby esteemed University of Trieste, Italy. He developed expertise in biocatalysis during his years of post-doctoral research in Italy and the UK, where he co-founded a startup company. With this new venture, Paolo’s career shifted from R&D to business development, taking on roles in commercial, product management, and marketing. He has worked in the specialty chemicals, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical markets in Germany and the UK, where he presently resides.

He is currently the Director of Global Market Development in the Laboratory Chemicals Division at Thermo Fisher Scientific™ which put him in the host chair of the Bringing Chemistry to Life podcast. A busy father of four, in what little free time he has, you’ll find him inventing electronic devices with the help of his loyal 3D-printer and soldering iron. And if you ask him, he’ll call himself a “maker” at heart.