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I had an excellent chemistry teacher in high school. The idea that chemists could create molecules and materials that never existed before appealed to me.

A key mentor in my career was Professor Samuel Danishefsky, who lived (and lives) to do chemistry and make the next very challenging molecule. From him, I learnt that it is all about science, but most of all, it is about the people. The young colleagues we work with are most likely our biggest contribution.

Later, Professor Khorana was a major influence as a colleague at MIT. He was already 75 years old when I first met him. He was unassuming, he was sharp, and he was really focused on the research on hand. Again, a nice human being with an immense drive who worked on very different areas of chemistry and biology.

I want to make the lives of people better. It is my belief that progress in human societies depends very much on science and technology. As chemists, we have the opportunity to make a major impact in medicine by understanding biological processes and, in turn, create vaccines, drugs and diagnostics.

Do what excites you and what you like. Always make sure that you have more options after your next step than you have now.

The discovery of the chemistry that allowed us to automate the assembly of oligo- and, later, polysaccharides in 2000. This was the basis for all our other work, which resulted in diagnostics, vaccines and drugs, but being able to make the complex molecules quickly and reliably changed everything.

Being obsessed with chemistry biology in general and with the project on hand is helpful – at the same time, that can become a challenge in balancing work and a life outside chemistry.

For me, there are a couple of simple rules: 1) Everybody has to benefit – the students and the advisors want to do good chemistry, so we work together, not "for" one another. Exploiting people is totally unacceptable. 2) I'm intolerant towards intolerance. It does not matter where people come from, what they look like, or what their religious and other preferences are – in the end, it is about science and about learning. It is like in sports – in the end, the performance counts.

97% of all products are made of chemicals or treated with chemicals, so that answers part of the question. At the same time, due to that fact, chemistry has created a lot of problems concerning the environment. This is why we need a total transformation of the chemical industry to a circular economy. No more use of fossil materials and complete recycling. This is a huge generational task that can only be solved by gigantic chemical and engineering advances. I am completely convinced that chemists can meet that challenge.

One single person can have a great idea and can make a major breakthrough, but the challenges we have to address require expertise from many different fields. So the really big problems can only be solved by teams.