Christopher Soles Credit:
Courtesy of Christopher Soles
My journey with international collaborations began in 1993 as a senior at the University of Michigan. I had just made the decision to decline a job offer with Ford Motor Company. At the time, I was doing undergraduate research on polymers with Albert Yee and loving it. In lieu of industry, I decided to expand upon my undergrad experience and pursue a PhD. I vividly recall sitting in class one morning when the department secretary came to get me, saying there was a call for me. I was perplexed. When I picked up the phone, it was Professor Yee. He was at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland and had decided to establish an international collaboration with a professor there. He asked if I’d be interested in being the face of it and said I’d need to spend half my time in Lausanne and half in Ann Arbor. Without hesitation, I said, “Sign me up!” Having never set foot outside the US, I was so excited!
My international studies started with a bang. Although I was working with people who had similar degrees, I found that the way they approached their work was different, which was enlightening. It was eye opening and I loved my new situation. But in 1993, international communications were difficult. Emails had a 1-day response time. Back then, you picked up the phone only if it was very urgent. I remember sitting in front of a Unix terminal using the Internet Relay Chat, but that communication method was not practical for lab work. After 6 months, the communication challenges had the two sides of the project moving in different directions, and the collaboration ultimately folded. I returned to Michigan to finish my PhD. But the international experience planted a seed that flourished over the next 30-plus years of my career.
Today the world is much flatter. Collaboration overseas is easier; if there was one benefit of COVID-19, it was that it’s now trivial to jump on a Zoom call and work in real time with collaborators around the world. Through my own labs, my colleagues and I have established exchange agreements to bring non-US associates into our labs. Their “foreign” perspectives significantly enrich our own work. We travel overseas regularly to use experimental facilities that are not available in the US.
International outreach has also grown as a focus for the American Chemical Society. I am a member of the Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE). For more than a decade, PMSE has realized the power of international collaborations. To facilitate these exchanges, PMSE actively supports bilateral symposia with polymer societies in Israel, Germany, India, Brazil, China, and more. I have represented PMSE at meetings in Chengdu, China; São Paulo; and later this year, in Busan, South Korea, where the Polymer Society of Korea will celebrate its 50th anniversary. And PMSE just celebrated its 100th, and ACS is celebrating its 150th, it will be a generational birthday party! I have witnessed firsthand how spending a few days with a small cadre of polymer scientists in a different country leads to strong connections that have sustaining career impacts. Later this year, I will receive the International Award from the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, PMSE’s sister society in the Pacific.
No one would argue that the world has become flatter over the past decade in terms of initiating and maintaining international collaborations. Recently, though, the international landscape has become more jagged, and the barriers are appearing. For the first time in a long time, it is becoming more difficult to work internationally. My hope is that as scientists, a global community has become our norm. I am optimistic that this community is ingrained in the way we do our science and that we can be a global force for tamping back these barriers—working together to preserve what we have accomplished.
Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of C&EN or the American Chemical Society.
