Nano hockey sticks to win over diseases ft. Steve Streets

In this episode

• Why everything at the nanoscale wants to be a sphere, and how Steve makes polymer nanofibres, or tiny sticks, instead
• The difference between top-down and bottom-up nanomaterials, explained with stone and clay
• His path from a most improved student award and a job testing soil for pesticides to a PhD on sugar-based anti-cancer compounds in Bristol, then a move to the University of Victoria
• Why getting medicines to the right place in the body, such as the brain, is so hard
• The project he is proudest of: nanofibres that carry DNA on the outside, like hair caught in a hairbrush, tested by making brain cancer cells glow
• His three wishes: a less wasteful funding system, a public that understands chemistry better, and a better quality of life for scientists in academia

Key Takeaways

• Postdoc at University of Victoria making precision non-spherical nanomaterials (10 nm–10 µm), because at the nanoscale everything wants to be a sphere.
• Career built on taking opportunities: a ‘most improved chemistry student’ award led to an industry job, then a Bristol CDT PhD where students pick their own project.
• Shifted from small-molecule anti-cancer sugars to polymer drug delivery because getting medicine to the right place (e.g. the brain) is the real bottleneck.
• Values the mental workout, freedom to choose directions, and better work-life balance in his group.
• Three wishes: a streamlined funding system, better public understanding of chemistry, and Silicon-Valley-style quality of life in academia.

Listen on

About the guest

Steve Streets is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Victoria in Canada, where he works on precision nanomaterials: making non-spherical nanomaterials to find out how changing their shape affects their properties and their interactions with biology.

Steve Streets curated the Real Scientists Nano Twitter account (@RealSci_Nano) from May 1 to May 10 2023. Read all of Steve’s tweets from that week.