Michael Serpe nets Petro-Canada Young Innovator's Award

Michael Serpe, professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award.

Sandy Robertson - 19 April 2013

Science is its own kind of revolution and Dr. Michael Serpe takes his role as a disruptor seriously. Serpe, a young research scientist and an assistant professor in chemistry, freely admits he's set on solving the world's problems. As a winner of the Petro-Canada Young Innovator's Award and also of a coveted Grand Challenges Canada, Canada's Rising Stars in Global Health grant last year, Serpe and his students will be even busier in the days ahead.

"I like to think about universal problems and believe the breakthroughs we've made in refining the delicate chemical composition of our polymers is allowing us to address so many problems using low cost sensors-and this is a game changer," he says.

Serpe, who describes his hard-working polymers as a bit like the bubbles in a bubble tea-at a micro or nano scale-adds, "These polymers can recognize and interact with specific compounds in the body and in the environment so they can absorb things like heavy metals or organic contaminants in water, or cause devices made from our polymers to change color in the company of bacteria or other toxins."

With the innovations coming out of the Serpe Lab at the U of A, it comes as no surprise he brings some unusual perspectives to his work. A native of New Port Richey, Florida, he was heavily influenced by his father who worked with the New York Police Department. As formative experiences go, he made his way effortlessly into forensics as his first inroad into science; but with a persistent interest in platforms that can address more than one problem, he turned decisively to chemistry with some big plans.

"I plan to change things on many different fronts," Serpe asserts. "The polymers will help us alleviate water problems here in Alberta, but the applications are much broader than that." He's already putting his sensors to work in an environmental monitoring project that is tracking pH levels in the tropical dry forests of Brazil, with his colleague in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa.

Becoming an innovator and disruptor is about having a big plan that is not resistant to serendipity. In keeping with his successful path, he'll continue to work with as many people as he can to partner and marry-up ideas from fields that see possibilities in his polymers that he never could.

*This story originally appeared in Faculty of Science News.