Going where the imagination goes Creative thinking has guided Mitch Zakin’s career from conducting experiments at the dining room table to managing chemistry programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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ike a jigsaw puzzle, the individual bits of Mitch Zakin’s career show no pattern. But put all the pieces together, and a picture emerges of a man who has cut a creative career path that includes his current stint as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When he joined DARPA in 2005, Zakin says, “I believe I was DARPA’s only chemist.” It was a far cry from the times “when the world’s leaders in chemistry and soft materials science were intimately tied with DARPA,” says Zakin. That earlier relationship had petered out, and Zakin wanted to revive it. During his DARPA tenure, Zakin has kicked off programs that revolve around chemistry. “One of my motivations to go to DARPA was not only to bring chemistry back but to show it could be used in very radical Mitch Zakin has revived chemistry’s presence at DARPA. ways and [to] come up with extensions of chemistry people hadn’t thought of before,” he says. screening assay for the side effects of antihisThe latest example of this attitude is the tamines. “On my dining room table, I deinfochemistry project, which combines the veloped a simple microscope-based screen powers of chemistry and information techwith a specific microorganism where you nology. The concept came from Zakin’s gave it a drug in the medium and measured conversations with George Whitesides at how fast it moved.” Harvard University. DARPA program manThe competition whetted Zakin’s apagers can have different styles, Whitesides petite for science. He went to the City notes: “they can be scientific conductors for College of New York to attend a six-year a multidisciplinary technical orchestra, joint B.S.⫺M.D. program that guaranteed coaches, cheerleaders, or salespeople. But entry into medical school. But in college, the best of themOand Mitch Zakin falls in Zakin got drawn from medicine into that groupOare true collaborators in the chemistry. He wrote a thesis on the theory creation of new fields.” of how atomic energy levels change under pressure. The thesis was disseminated amongst graduate schools and much to From dining table to laboratory Zakin’s surprise, triggered recruitment A certificate of merit in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now the Intel Science calls. “I got accepted by Harvard,” he Talent Search) during high school got Zakin says. “How could I not go?” At Harvard, Zakin joined the laborato seriously consider a scientific career. For tory of Dudley Herschbach. In the the competition, Zakin had tackled a drugANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY /
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1980s, Herschbach was an Exxon faculty fellow and regularly visited the company’s Corporate Research Laboratory (now ExxonMobil Research & Engineering). Zakin’s thesis project focused on the intermolecular forces in liquids, and the expensive equipment he needed for experiments was readily available at the Exxon site in Annandale, N.J. Herschbach got permission for Zakin to do the experiments there, and Zakin has fond memories of driving between Cambridge and Annandale with his Ph.D. mentor, talking about research, and later playing chess through the night. At Exxon, Zakin met Andrew Kaldor, whose group was studying metallic clusters. In the 1980s, groups like Kaldor’s and Richard Smalley’s of Rice University were building metal clusters one atom at a time and investigating their properties. From conversations with Kaldor and his group, Zakin was hooked. He joined the Kaldor group as a post-doctoral fellow. “It was an incredibly productive time,” he recalls. “We studied all kinds of chemistry of these clusters for catalytic purposes.”
Entry into industry In 1986, Zakin was ready to step out on his own. He took a position with Spectral Sciences, Inc., where he entered the world of small business innovation research (SBIR) grants. “I’m an ideas guy,” says Zakin. “I started looking at the SBIR solicitations and thought, ‘I could solve those [problems]. ’ I started writing grants, winning them, and having a nice research program in a variety of different areas.” He also landed a consulting gig at Polymer Technology Corp., a Bausch & Lomb subsidiary that developed and manufactured rigid, gas-permeable contact lenses and lenscare systems. When Zakin came on board, Polymer Technology was grappling with a problem.
10.1021/AC9013513 2009 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Published on Web 07/06/2009
COURTESY OF MITCH ZAKIN
“The contact lens solutions were the backbone of what they were doing, but they didn’t fully understand the science,” says Zakin. “They were coming up on some patent expirations and asked me to help figure out what made the solutions work.” Zakin got cracking and soon “they had answers that helped them file new patents.” In 1997, Zakin joined Physical Sciences, Inc. (PSI). The company had a broad portfolio, ranging from aerospace engineering to development of new batteries. But PSI was going in a new direction of detection systems for chemical and biological agents, and ZakinOwhose research interests by now were polymers and their applicationsOwas asked to help. PSI “gave me startup funds for almost six months to see what I could do,” Zakin says. He started writing grant proposals in areas such as biomaterials, clinical assays, and warfare-agent detection, and eventu- Zakin dons a chef’s hat and rises to the challenge at a ally established the life-sciences business DARPA cooking contest. area at PSI. “It was a place where I could his experience as a parent came together. use my creativity,” he says. “There was no Diapers are made of superabsorbent polylimit to what I could work on as long as I mers, which, as Zakin recalled, have some could bring in the money.” strange properties. After digging through the literature, Zakin and a team of researchThe move to DARPA ers at PSI showed that “with just a few “When I first went to PSI, I wasn’t sure I had even heard of DARPA,” says Zakin. But building blocks, we could build every kind of gel. We could build superabsorbents like the founder of PSI, Robert Weiss, took diapers, ion exchange resins for water filtraZakin to DARPA in the late 1990s to see if the agency wanted to back his work on poly- tion systems, and even polyampholyte-based ion retardation resins.” meric sensors for warfare agents. “But when Zakin’s group developed a polymeric I went, they weren’t interested in that,” says sponge that pulled desalinated water out of Zakin. “They were interested in the materiseawater. “The hard part was how to get the als I was using for artificial muscles!” water out. Remember, if your kid pees in a Artificial muscles remain a holy grail in bioengineering, but with DARPA’s funding, diaper, those polymers are designed to hold the liquid,” explains Zakin. The answer was Zakin designed polymers that could extend to incorporate a chemical switch into the and contract under dry conditions. The polymers. The water that came out had a polymers also behaved as drug delivery vesalinity “like Gatorade,” Zakin adds. hicles. That was the first of seven DARPA The water project is one that people projects for Zakin. at DARPA still talk about, says Zakin. Another project sought to get drinking “It was a real chemistry tour de force for water from seawater without electricity. DARPA.” Here, Zakin’s knowledge of polymers and
Weiss says he knew Zakin would be a good fit “intellectually and programmatically to DARPA’s mission: to do highrisk, high-payoff technologies. ... Not everyone can deal with the demands made by DARPA for risky but wellthought-out projects with revolutionary (or almost revolutionary) advances in science and engineering.” In 2004, Zakin was approached to be a program manager at DARPA. “I had never thought about it,” he says. But he knew he couldn’t turn it down. “I had been deeply affected by 9/11,” he says. “I grew up in New York City. My uncle had a jewelry store in one of the towers, which he, amazingly enough, had sold just two years before 9/11. I worked in one of the towers. I had friends who worked there.” Zakin wanted to serve his country, and when the program manager suggestion came, “it all gelled for me,” he says.
After DARPA As a program manager at DARPA, Zakin’s portfolio, much like his career, has covered a wide range of topics. Infochemistry is a field Zakin is working to establish. Other projects include chemical robots and programmable matter that reversibly assembles into complex 3D objects on command. When Zakin’s tenure at DARPA ends next year, his career will take another turnOthough he’s not sure which one. Academia is one option. Venture capitalism is another. Zakin has launched so many basic science research projects that have the potential of becoming commercial products that he says, “it’s almost a sin not to look at all that from the other side.” Given the trajectory of his career so far, Zakin seems assured that the adventures won’t stop. He says, “It’s been quite a ride.” —Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay
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