Profile story
Professor Ryabov, a life of science and joy.
By Elisa Nuñez Acosta
Professor Ryabov welcomed me from his sunny terrace at his house in Pittsburgh to have an interview by Zoom. Behind him a grape vine grows in meandering directions and with tendrils pending from its leaves. It is summer and he is refreshed after an early tennis session sitting in a garden chair and wearing a fresh green shirt.
He has shaped a solid scientific career while developing pleasurable hobbies that became his foundation to face life through his career path.
He has worked at the Carnegie Mellon University developing green chemistry. He takes advantage of the apple tree behind him to colorfully explain what this kind of chemistry is. Imagine you want to grow apples and to sell them to make money. You will then need to add some chemicals, which are pollutants, to improve the color and size of your fruit, as well as avoiding any plagues. Otherwise, you will have apples that look like mine from my tree, that are not as pretty as those in the store. Thus, green chemistry may help to destroy such pollutants from crop practice.
How did Ryabov start his career as a young scientist in Russia? He was born and raised in Russia where he attended college. He remembers being an enthusiastic and devoted young scientist spending hours and hours in the laboratory where he used to work overnight. One of his scientific publications from those times, published in Chemical Reviews, currently has about one thousand cites, which in its field means this work has made great impact in science.
Transitioning his career from Russia to the U.S. was smooth but hard work. He says, “[at the beginning] you have to read, read, read, learn, learn, and learn until you start to understand something.” Then you begin to do experiments to realize that doing research is very different from your expectations as a young scientist. “You realized pretty soon about an important thing, that you have to work, work and work to achieve.”
Through such a chain of efforts, Ryabov was integrated into a team of scientists and entrepreneurs that have brought their outcomes to commercialization. For instance, they are working on water purification projects using some of their new designed molecules to clean water.
He says that green chemistry “should not pollute the planet Earth anymore.” He also explains that it is not only about cleaning the environment of pollutants, but green chemistry is also about creating new processes in chemistry to be more environmentally friendly. “Green chemistry is a sustainable chemistry,” he insists.
His career path has brought enjoyable things. He reflects, “I like finding solutions to problems that are not obvious. You are rapt by the problem, and you then find the solution. It is very challenging, interesting and motivating.” However, science has some challenges as well. He explains that to be competitive you have to follow some rules that you may like or dislike, so that you have to work on projects that are not only interesting for you but for someone else as well. And current science is dictated for social pressure such as the measurable impact of your research.
In parallel to his scientific life, Ryabov has been known to cultivate some life passions such as playing tennis, soccer, ice hockey, badminton, and gardening. He feels that gardening is driving him closer to his first love, biology, he tells me while adding a home-made iron solution to make his lemon tree greener. In high school the first science class was biology, and it hooked him, but when the chemistry class came later he then knew he would be a chemist.
He thinks that to find a foundation that keeps you standing through life, you have to think about what you like and enjoy doing different things. He explains, “you cannot be motivated with running the same thing all your life. Life is so huge, immeasurably broad and there are so many things.” He builds on, “there are good times and bad times. If you feel bad today, you should feel much better tomorrow. It is normal, there are ups and downs, it is never a straight horizontal line.”
He goes on saying “and if you feel really bad you should exhaust yourself with exercise […] then your brain will stop thinking about bad things.”
Ryabov is now close to his retirement, and he thinks that after many prolific years and hard work you can find delight doing diverse things. This is how Ryabov, merging science and his excitement for other passions, has made his path in life as a scientist.
