PRIVACY POLICY

Protecting your personal information is a priority. This Policy applies to https://chemistryshorts.org/ and Chemistry Shorts^TM and governs our data collection and usage.

Collection of your Personal Information

In order to better provide you with services, Chemistry Shorts may collect personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”), such as your:

First and Last Name
Mailing Address
E-mail Address
Phone Number
Employer or Business Information
Educational and Research-Related Information

You may be required to provide certain information to us when you elect to use certain services. This may include communicating with us or interacting with our programs.

Use of your Personal Information

Chemistry Shorts collects and uses your Personal Information to operate and deliver the services you have requested.

Chemistry Shorts may also use your Personal Information to inform you of other services available from Chemistry Shorts and any affiliates.

Sharing Information with Third Parties

Chemistry Shorts does not sell, rent or lease Personal Information to third parties.

Chemistry Shorts may share Personal Information with trusted service providers, including to send you email or postal mail, provide support, or otherwise support our programs and services. Chemistry Shorts may also share Personal Information with its affiliates and partner funding groups.

Chemistry Shorts may disclose your Personal Information, without notice, if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Chemistry Shorts; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Chemistry Shorts; and/or (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of Chemistry Shorts, or the public.

Tracking User Behavior

Chemistry Shorts may keep track of the websites and pages our users visit within our website, in order to determine what Chemistry Shorts content is the most popular. This data may be used to deliver customized content within Chemistry Shorts to visitors whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

Automatically Collected Information

Information about your computer hardware and software may be automatically collected by Chemistry Shorts. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses. This information is used for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of Chemistry Shorts website.

Use of Cookies

Chemistry Shorts website may use “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize Chemistry Shorts pages, or register with the Chemistry Shorts site or services, a cookie helps Chemistry Shorts to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your Personal Information. When you return to the same Chemistry Shorts website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use Chemistry Shorts features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Chemistry Shorts services or websites you visit.

Links

The website may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the content or privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of any other site that collects personally identifiable information.

Security of your Personal Information

We strive to take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or alteration of your Personal Information. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your Personal Information, there are security and privacy limitations inherent to the Internet which are beyond our control. The security, integrity, and privacy of any and all Personal Information and data exchanged between you and us cannot be guaranteed.

Data Rights

You may have the right to correct, view, or delete certain Personal Information relating to you in our possession. To enquire about these potential rights please contact us at [email protected].

Children Under Thirteen

Chemistry Shorts does not knowingly collect any information from children under the age of thirteen. If you are under the age of thirteen, you must ask your parent or guardian for permission to use this website. If you become aware that we may have collected data from children under age 13, please contact us at [email protected].

Email Communications

From time to time, Chemistry Shorts may contact you via email for the purpose of providing announcements, alerts, confirmations, and/or other general communication.

If you would like to stop receiving marketing or promotional communications via email from Chemistry, you may opt out of such communications by emailing [email protected] or following the opt-out instructions in the email.

External Data Storage Sites

We may store your data on servers provided by third party hosting vendors with whom we have contracted.

Changes to this Policy

Chemistry Shorts reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy from time to time. In the event of any changes, we will make the updated version of the Policy available on our website and may also notify you, at our discretion, through other reasonable means.

Contact Information

Chemistry Shorts welcomes your questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy. Please contact Chemistry Shorts at:

Chemistry Shorts
405 Lexington Avenue, Suite 909
New York, NY 10174

Email Address:
[email protected].

Effective as of January 1, 2023

Series Trailer

Driving Reactions

Like demolition derby cars continually upgrading to face greater and greater challenges, enzymes in the test tube can undergo modifications that make them better and better at solving problems in our everyday lives. But can we evolve them fast enough to clear some of our biggest obstacles?

Our world faces climate, economic, and sustainability challenges that we don’t yet have the tools to fix. "Driving Reactions," a nine-minute short film from Chemistry Shorts^TM, explores how directed evolution and the chemical sciences are creating some of these new tools.

"Driving Reactions" explores the power of harnessing nature’s own innovations to solve problems. Featured scientists Professor Hal Alper of the University of Texas at Austin and Nobel Laureate Professor Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology use directed evolution to design enzymes that work as molecular machines, helping create a more sustainable world using the power of chemistry. These new enzymes open the door of scientific progress, creating solutions for recycling waste, creating sustainable fuels, and more efficiently producing materials we use in our everyday lives. "Driving Reactions" focuses on Dr. Alper’s innovative work to design an enzyme that can efficiently degrade PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most common plastics found in water bottles and other everyday objects, into infinitely recyclable and reusable products.

"We have the ability to use the power of chemistry to find sustainable solutions for the future." - Hal Alper, "Driving Reactions"

"Driving Reactions" is aimed at high school to college students and can be used as a starting point for discussions around polymer chemistry, enzyme reactions, directed evolution, DNA, and plastic recycling.

Learn more about Professor Hal Alper’s work here: https://utw10252.utweb.utexas.edu/
Learn more about Professor Frances’ Arnold’s Nobel Prize-winning work here:
http://fhalab.caltech.edu/

Untapped Potential

Ensuring a safe water supply is one of the most compelling challenges humanity faces in the 21st century. The nine-minute film “Untapped Potential” highlights the game-changing solutions being developed in the chemical sciences.

"Untapped Potential" features environmental and chemical engineering experts who explore how modern chemistry, desalination, and advanced oxidation processes can be used to quell the growing problem of diminishing fresh water sources. Featured specialists include David L. Sedlak, PhD, Professor, University of California Berkeley, Meagan Mauter, PhD, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and William Tarpeh, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University.

"We are experiencing lots of change in our water supply. Our traditional sources are not only less available to us, but we’re demanding more and more of them. As the climate changes, we’re seeing longer periods of drought; and as it gets warmer, more water evaporates. Scarcity is one of our huge problems in the 21st century. We’ve got to look for new water sources – sources like brackish water, municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater – and figure out ways to treat that water to a quality that enables its reuse. When it comes to turning water that’s undrinkable into something that we can put in people’s taps…it's chemistry. That’s the key to solving our problems." –– from “Untapped Potential," fourth in the film series Chemistry Shorts^TM.

Learn more about Professor David L. Sedlak’s research at Sedlak Research Group.

Learn more about Professor Meagan Mauter’s research at WE3 Lab.

Learn more about Professor William Tarpeh’s research at Tarpeh Lab.

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Global climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time, and chemists and chemical engineers are at the forefront of this effort. One especially promising technology is through Direct Air Capture.

Direct Air Capture makes use of amines, which capture carbon dioxide out of the air through specific chemical bonding. The carbon dioxide is then sequestered by storing it underground so that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is reduced every year. Though repurposing is helpful, it is not a solution. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide every year through sequestration is the only real remedy.

Chemists and chemical engineers are working to scale up this technology to remove 10s of gigatons of carbon dioxide. Key challenges that lay ahead are to find ways to both reduce the cost of this procedure and make it more efficient.

In this film, experts from academia and industry discuss the science of Direct Air Capture and the opportunities it provides.

Additional Resources:

Christopher Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology Climeworks Carbon Engineering The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager Can Carbon Dioxide Removal Save the World? by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, November 13, 2017 One Man's Two-Decade Quest to Suck Greenhouse Gas Out of the Sky, by James Temple, MIT Technology Review, February 27, 2019 Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration, The National Academies Press (2019)