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Our Mission
Everything we do starts with our Mission: to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.
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Our Mission
Everything we do starts with our Mission: to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.
Read More -
Our Mission
Everything we do starts with our Mission: to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.
Read More-
- Customer Stories
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- Second shot at life
- Removing the word serial with rapid DNA
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- 2022
- Mission in a Minute
- Creating Empowerment Opportunities in the Veterinary Sciences
- Building hope and affordable homes in Michigan
- Preeclampsia
- This Girl is On Fire
- Counting on You
- Allergy Diagnostic Tests Help Ambitious Tennis Player Get Back in the Game
- Tackling Crime by Trading Punishment for Treatment
- POWER Act Aims to Fund Science-based Technology to Address Opioid Crisis
- Supporting connections that lead to life-saving medical care
- Microbiologist's near-fatal battle with sepsis highlights urgent need for awareness and better treatment protocols
- An Icelandic volcano expedition exploring newly formed lava tubes uncovers insights into Earth's origins.
- How Thermo Fisher Scientific colleagues partner with Ronald McDonald House to support families of pediatric patients
- Survivor of domestic violence finds new hope with prosthetic hand
- Thermo Fisher colleagues’ passion to advance HIV clinical trials help make lifesaving therapies a reality
- Clean the World and Thermo Fisher volunteers support communities hard hit by natural disaster
- Thermo Fisher volunteers assemble birthing kits to support underserved mothers and babies
- Life-saving allergy treatment
- Water wise
- Better texture for better batteries
- Lab automation goes viral in honeybee disease research
- Made in America, Trusted on the Front Lines
- How NIH funding transforms organ transplantation
- Confidence in American Innovation
- Thermo Fisher Scientific launches state-of-the-art Advanced Therapies Collaboration Center
- Discovery opens doors for cheaper and quicker battery manufacturing
- Tufts Center study shows integrated drug development services could speed delivery of new therapies to patients up to 3 years faster
- Thermo Fisher opens the Centre for Advanced Training and Innovative Research to build the next generation of scientists in South Africa
- Thermo Fisher collaboration with Project HOPE helps create opportunities for Nigerian youth
Episode Summary
In this episode of Science with a Twist, host Terri Somers speaks with Kat Knauer, Ph.D., Senior Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Chief Technology Officer of the BOTTLE Consortium. They delve into both the value of plastics and the pervasive issue of plastic pollution and its impact on the environment. Kat shares insights on the role scientific research and industries play in addressing plastic waste and promoting sustainability.
Kat’s expertise offers listeners a deeper understanding of the complexities of plastic pollution and the collective effort needed to forge a sustainable future, including:
- An overview of some innovative solutions for recycling and the development of new, more sustainable plastics.
- The importance of reducing single-use plastics in our daily lives, as well as in research labs and the broader biotech field.
- Kat also shines a spotlight on a couple of collaborations with Amazon and Patagonia, each of which aims to create a more circular economy for plastics.
Kat has a concise call to action for listeners, as individuals and as professionals in the life sciences: make the effort to reduce plastics usage and improve recycling habits.
"Moving towards more reduction and reuse principles in the laboratory space. It's going to be painful. There's going to be growing pains in the beginning. There's going to be some things that don't work, but I really hope to see more labs push for this and bring in more programs such as tip washing, glove recycling, other types of reuse mechanisms to reduce their impact in terms of single-use waste."
Kat Knauer, PhD
Senior Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Chief Technology Officer of The BOTTLE Consortium
Guest Profiles
Kat Knauer, PhD
What she does: Senior Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Chief Technology Officer of The BOTTLE Consortium
Company: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Noteworthy: Dr. Kat Knauer: Polymer Chemist Tackling Plastic Waste at NREL