Kelsey Sakimoto

My teaching focuses on bridging classroom/laboratory instruction to practical, employable skills in industry and academia. I firmly believe that careers in STEM are a major force of social mobility and seek to extend community, opportunity and support to all that ask. At the same time, Chemistry is full of an ageless "magic" and I think we should all have a little more fun with it...

My research develops new (and rediscovers old) methods to produce the essential organic molecules that allow modern society to thrive. Since most of these "poisons" (pharmaceuticals), pigments and perfumes conventionally derive from non-renewable petrochemicals and fragile global trade networks, I use advanced spectroscopy (e.g. near infrared spectroscopy) to survey the local, natural environment for alternative starting materials. As a practitioner of green chemistry, I also develop new methods (e.g. organic electrosynthesis) to pioneer better synthetic routes to the same chemical compounds.

I have spent many years in Boston biotech running industrial research labs, founding companies, commercializing new discoveries, and training junior scientists and engineers for careers outside of academia. I am always eager to impart my knowledge and experience not just in chemistry and chemical engineering, but in entrepreneurship, patents/intellectual property, technoeconomics, science communication, and more.

If time and money were limitless, I would probably spend more of it playing Dungeons & Dragons. 

Education

• B.S., Yale University
• Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley