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Profile of Cynthia Friend PROFILE PROFILE Profile of Cynthia Friend Farooq Ahmed, Science Writer In 2015, the United Nations released Sustainable De- velopment Goals aimed at improving the environment and supporting vulnerable populations around the globe (1). Among the goals are those intended to re- duce energy consumption and invest in clean energy, to encourage innovation in industry and develop effi- cient production methods, and to promote gender equality. Over the course of her career, Cynthia Friend, the Theodore Williams Richards professor of chemistry and professor of materials science at Har- vard University, has engaged in efforts that directly address these goals and several others. The first fe- male full professor of chemistry at Harvard, Friend studies the surface chemistry of heterogeneous cata- lysts. Her research could help increase the efficiency of many industrial processes while decreasing the pro- duction of wasteful and harmful byproducts. With nearly one-quarter of worldwide energy use attributed to the synthesis of chemicals and fuel, her work may have a lasting impact on humans’ ability to conserve the planet’s natural resources. In her Inaugural Article (2), Friend, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019, describes the development of a highly selective catalyst that uses palladium and silver to promote hydrogenation, a key industrial reaction Cynthia Friend. Image credit: Robert J. Madix that typically occurs at extremely high temperatures. (photographer). Golf Lessons says golf gives her an outlet from scientific research, The daughter of World War II veterans, Friend was boosts her confidence, and has taught her how to re- born and raised in southern Nebraska. Her parents supported her curiosity, and her father, while working spond to failure. on the family’s cars and home, taught her basic elec- After completing high school, Friend left for the West trical and mechanical engineering. Friend says this Coast, encouraged by a family friend, and studied early training “turned out to be really important as I chemistry at the University of California, Davis. Later, she started my career in the physical sciences.” She credits attended the University of California, Berkeley, where the space race of the midtwentieth century, as well as her undergraduate advisor, physical chemist Peter Rock, her high school’s flexible scheduling, which allowed had completed his doctorate. At the time, University of her to pursue an independent study project, with California, Berkeley “was a powerhouse in physical sustaining her interest in science. chemistry. It was absolutely my first choice,” she says. Friend developed an early interest in golf, playing on a cow pasture together with her family—an expe- Parallel Chemistry rience that gave her some of her fondest memories. At Berkeley, Friend was one of just four women in a “Walking around, hitting golf balls, and seeing the class of around 100 chemistry graduate students. She cattle out there—it was fantastic,” she says. These days, studied with inorganic chemist Earl Muetterties, who Friend sometimes competes in golf tournaments. She greatly influenced her trajectory as a chemist. Published under the PNAS license. This is a Profile of a member of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Inaugural Article, 10.1073/pnas.2010413117. First published September 11, 2020. 24010–24012 | PNAS | September 29, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 39 www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017461117 Downloaded by guest on September 30, 2021 “He was able to draw parallels between chemistry electrolyte in rechargeable batteries, including solid- on the surfaces of metals and in organometallic com- state lithium−ion batteries for electric vehicles. pounds. That was very pivotal in my thinking, because In addition to molybdenum, the precious metals one of the aspects of my work that’s a bit different gold and silver have emerged as important elements from others is that I think in terms of localized bonding in industrial catalysts. The key, Friend says, is that they and coordination chemistry—and then I map that onto are intrinsically unreactive across a range of temper- solids,” she explains. Coordination complexes contain atures and pressures. “You can control the density of metal atom centers bound to ligands that are often their active sites and, thus, their selectivity.” Her work organic molecules, and Friend’s graduate research on methanol oxidation conducted on nanoporous explored the coordination chemistry of nickel sur- gold surfaces demonstrated that the reaction can oc- faces, among others (3). cur at low temperatures and ambient conditions. The Friend says her graduate advisor, Muetterties, work has implications for the sustainable synthesis of helped her connect experimental work to theoretical esters used in fragrances, flavorings, and insulation (8). chemistry. “At that time, it wasn’t possible to do Additionally, one of the reactions she began powerful electronic structure calculations like you can studying while at Harvard was the removal of sulfur from now. But you could get qualitative information about organic compounds. Desulfurization is critical to many bonding.” This led to a productive collaboration on industries, including in petrochemical processes and hydrodesulfurization of cyclic sulfides with theoretical environmental remediation, because sulfur can inacti- chemist Roald Hoffmann, who won the Nobel Prize in vate catalysts and can be toxic to the environment. chemistry in 1981 (4). Friend’s work helped establish a model of how molecular structure affects the reaction Sustainable Catalysts mechanisms of different catalysts, focusing on com- To advance the study of catalysts, Friend helped found the Center for Integrated Mesoscale Architec- mercially widespread molybdenum catalysts (5). tures for Sustainable Catalysis in 2014 and serves as its Changing Field director. Funded by the US Department of Energy, the center, she says, “brings together people with expertise After graduating from Berkeley in 1981, Friend com- at Harvard and six partner institutions from across the US pleted a brief postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford to transform how catalysts are designed.” University before joining Harvard as an assistant pro- Inspiration for the center was rooted in the long fessor of chemistry. collaboration with her husband, chemical engineer When she started at Harvard, Friend was one of Robert J. Madix, who was on the faculty at Stanford two female chemists in the department. In 1989, University until he joined Harvard in 2005. “We com- Friend became Harvard’s first female full professor of muted between the two institutions for 17 years,” she chemistry as well as the first assistant professor in says. In addition to experimental chemists, the center chemistry to receive a promotion in two decades. draws on expertise from multiple disciplines, including Friend points out that small administrative changes chemical engineers, theoreticians, nanotechnologists, can have large impacts on the career development physicists, and computer scientists. and retention of junior faculty. It is partly why she feels Collaboration has been important to Friend, es- strongly that professors should serve in administrative pecially as her work has delved into the mechanisms of “ ” roles. Leadership really matters, she says. heterogeneous catalysis. Complex materials that in- Friend arrived in Cambridge, MA at the dawn of teract with reactants in different phases, heterogeneous the personal computer era. She recalled receiving an catalysts often restructure under reaction conditions. early IBM computer with floppy drives and no hard “We can take our fundamental understanding of a re- drive. Access to computers made data collection action mechanism and, based on that, we can actually easier, even if chemists had to write their own pro- predict catalytic behavior and fundamental chemical grams back then, and experimental tools like photo- steps,” she explains. electron spectroscopy began to reveal deeper In a recent review article, Friend and coworkers (9) molecular structural detail. Machine learning algo- described the many ways metallic gold catalyzes the rithms and X-ray scattering techniques have since oxygenation of alcohols and amides, with an emphasis taken over, and Friend says the combination of so- on gas-phase and liquid-phase systems. The resultant phisticated electronic structure calculations with im- products of these reactions have uses in the food in- proved experimental methods has been a boon for dustry, cosmetics, textiles, and pharmaceutical syn- physical chemistry and materials science. Spectro- thesis. Friend points out that almost 16% of medicinal scopic advances, in particular, allowed Friend and col- chemistry reactions are acylations, used to produce leagues to describe general mechanisms for a range of amines and esters, making it the most common reac- complex surface interactions, including alkyl oxidation tion in that field. and alcohol chemistry on metal surfaces (6). Although her research may have implications for This progress also helped Friend and collaborators industrial chemistry, she says, “Our dream would be develop and examine novel materials, such as tita- to take our ideas and make a smaller-scale process nium sulfide nanocrystals, which they deposited on a from them—not something on a huge commodity surface of gold (7). Because of its high electrical con- scale.” Her laboratory is also working on fundamental ductivity, titanium sulfide has
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