The paths of Dr. Nimrat Obhi and Dr. Jonathon Moir barely crossed when they were studying chemistry at the University of Toronto. Obhi, a 2020 graduate, was just beginning their PhD as a member of the Seferos Group in 2014 as Moir--who studied in the Ozin Group--was wrapping up his studies to graduate in 2016. Their sole point of contact? They recall speaking once at a ChemClub dinner.
It was when the two joined Beyond Benign—both eventually coming to work as specialists in the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community--that they became first colleagues and then friends. Working together triggered the realization that they had a lot in common... including a shared interest in downhill skiing!
In this Department of Chemistry Alumni profile, the pair reflects on the irony of failing to connect while living in the same city, the challenges of graduate school and the research process, and how it took a completely remote job to connect them—while living across the country from one another.
Bios:
Dr. Nimrat Obhi (they/them) is from Ottawa, Canada and obtained their HBSc in Biomedical Sciences (Medicinal Chemistry) at the University of Ottawa in 2014. They completed their PhD in chemistry at the University of Toronto in 2020, with research focused on the synthesis and investigation of carbon-based semiconducting polymers with complex architectures for electronic applications. While at U of T, Nimrat also completed a Chemistry Teaching Fellowship Award to design and implement a green chemistry course module into an upper-year chemistry course at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Jonathon Moir (he/him) of the Ozin group received his BScH from Queen’s University in 2010 and his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2016 in Inorganic Chemistry with a focus on Nanomaterials and Electrochemistry. During his doctoral studies, Jonathon was a founding member of the Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI), a group of graduate students dedicated to promoting green chemistry principles and practices within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. He currently lives in Vancouver and enjoys sports of all kinds including swimming, skiing, rowing, cycling and weightlifting.
We asked:
Can you each tell me a little bit about what sparked your interest in Chemistry?
Jonathon: My parents had a big influence on me since they both did doctoral degrees in chemistry (organic chemistry and biochemistry, respectively). They helped to ignite that passion for discovery about how the physical world works. Going to the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa where I grew up was a formative experience; the staff would run demonstrations with liquid nitrogen (freezing and then breaking bananas or muffins) and a Van de Graaff generator (getting kids to come up and have their hair stand on end). It was always great fun.
The museum continues to have fantastic exhibits. My parents now take my 2-year old nephew on a regular basis and he loves it. I also loved and excelled in math as a kid and chemistry provided ample opportunity to problem-solve and conceptualize.
Nimrat: I would say it was a combination of my upbringing and my experiences at school. Both my parents were the first in their families to go to university and both studied science, so as a kid I was exposed to a lot of scientific hobbies. For example, I loved animals and would go on “expeditions” to categorize the bugs, birds, and small mammals in my neighbourhood. Throughout school I really engaged with scientific subjects and loved chemistry for its emphasis on applying basic concepts to unfamiliar and increasingly complicated situations. Addressing challenges using this problem-solving approach set chemistry apart from other subjects that felt more memorization-based.
I did a pre-medicine undergrad degree that was interdisciplinary and had a course track that exposed me to medicinal and organic chemistry. I am extremely curious and I love solving difficult challenges (I also tend to get bored easily). Chemistry research was especially engaging because it moved fast and required a lot of creativity and flexibility.
What was your time at UofT like? Who did you work with and what did you study?
Nimrat: I learned an incredible amount about more than just chemistry at U of T. My PhD is in polymer and materials chemistry, and I worked in Prof. Dwight Seferos's group conducting research on the synthesis of semiconducting polymers with complex architectures for optoelectronic applications. There was a good opportunity for me to have creative liberty with my projects. At the same time, research could feel isolating and if I wanted to actively collaborate with others in the group on projects, I had to very intentionally build that into the project design stage.
Collaboration and working with others on my research projects was a huge highlight in my research life – the diversity of thought and experiences on even a small team leads you to think differently and approach problems from all angles. The grad school environment in chemistry teaches you to build your own skillset and work independently, but you need to find and pursue opportunities to work in team environments as much as possible.
I found a lot of this team-based work outside of my research life too. The WICTO team was started in 2014 and I remember attending the first meeting and finding a sense of community in those discussions. I ended up being co-chair of WICTO in 2016 and during that year our team set up a national conference (the LOGIC Retreat) designed to support those of us in chemistry who are traditionally underrepresented and to find ways to cultivate a sense of belonging for ourselves and each other in the field.
Some of the other initiatives I was involved with were setting up a mentorship program with the CIC Toronto Chapter, helping to run a seminar series (where we collaborated with the GCI a few times!), inviting diverse leaders in the field to the department for Lunch and Learns, being involved with a mental health taskforce, and being an executive member of the CSC Working Group for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (CSC WIDE). I also completed a Chemistry Teaching Fellowship Program (CTFP) award with Prof. Andy Dicks and Prof. Sophie Rousseaux where we developed a green chemistry module for a third-year organic chemistry course. These experiences together taught me so much and were additionally very strong assets for grad school awards and for my current position at Beyond Benign.
Jonathon: I’ve come to learn that graduate students can have wildly varying experiences during their studies and often the biggest factor is their relationship with their supervisor and their research group colleagues. I was fortunate enough to have a fantastic experience on both ends. My supervisor (Prof. Geoff Ozin) was extremely supportive. He gave me a lot of time and space to do the research I was interested in and encouraged me to “follow my nose” and be curious and explore new avenues for the work we were doing. He cares deeply about his students and works very hard to give them every opportunity to succeed and go on to have great careers.
My work focused on the electrochemical and photoelectrochemical oxidation of water using nanostructured metal oxide semiconductors.
I enjoyed working independently and Geoff took a more hands-off approach with my projects. This doesn’t work for everyone, and it is a double-edged sword. Having space and time to do research is great, but as you go down an independent path you may (for better or worse) become an expert in a new area. Troubleshooting can become difficult when you’re the only one working in that space, so having mentors and networking with others in the field outside your university may become more necessary.
My colleagues in Geoff’s group were fantastic and many of us stay in touch and get together on occasion to this day, despite being in so many different places. We bonded incredibly well and I am forever grateful to have made such amazing friendships. It was through that group of colleagues and friends that we were able to found the Green Chemistry Initiative (GCI) back in 2012. A lot of the work we did through the GCI helped to shape my interests in education and sustainability that led me to my current role.
Sometimes on a graduate school journey, people also hit low points. Barriers and setbacks are normal... did you have any struggles along the way?
Jonathon: Research can be a tough slog at times and my journey certainly wasn’t without issues. On one particular project, I had just published an article after having spent the better part of a year fine-tuning the methodology. I had looked at every possible control variable I could think of (temperature, gas flow rate, gas composition, etc.). I had done a ton of control tests, trying to find the optimal method, and everything was working consistently.
Then one day I came into lab and found that the tube furnace I had been using had broken and had been replaced with an identical one. I went to run my usual methodology and lo and behold, it no longer worked. Despite my best efforts to monitor and control every possible variable, there was still yet another variable at play (one I wouldn’t have thought would have mattered) that turned out to be critical.
I did manage to get it working again, but an important lesson in graduate school and research is that you need resilience, tenacity, resourcefulness, and acceptance. Science will throw you a curveball, and you’ll need to figure out how to pivot.
Understanding when a project is worth pursuing or not, which problems to work on and which ones to work around, is not something that is really taught at the undergraduate level (with the exception of some research courses). These skills are critical when you move into the workforce regardless of your field or sector. This is also where mentorship and peer-to-peer learning and support is absolutely critical, not only with your research supervisor but your colleagues and other mentors and peers in your field. Relying on others can be a great strength to help troubleshoot and move forward.
Nimrat: I agree with Jon about being flexible in your research life. My research projects were very synthetically challenging at times and my experiences in the lab could be described as 99% failure (a fairly universal grad school experience). Learning to be creative and flexible in my approach let me successfully finish my projects in a way that I could be truly proud of – even if the results were different than I wanted.
The third year of my PhD was particularly difficult, as I was struggling with my mental and physical health on top of my research challenges. Honestly, what helped was going to therapy – U of T Health Services had psychologists and as a student I could access those resources for free.
I am also not going to shy away from saying that it was (and still is) difficult to be a person who is a minority in chemistry as well – there were not many queer South Asian graduate students nor professors in the department during my PhD. Systemic discrimination and bias are very real and left me feeling isolated at times, which is unfortunately a common experience amongst those of us who are marginalized in some way. It was part of the reason that I joined WICTO and CSC WIDE, so we could start inviting diverse role models to the department and the CSC conference to connect with students who were feeling isolated in similar ways.
Towards the end of my PhD my dad was diagnosed with a terminal disease, and so I ended up traveling for hours every weekend to go see him. Obviously, this impacted my research (it took me an extra year to finish). I would recommend to anyone going through something similar that it’s incredibly important to have realistic conversations with your supervisor about the impacts to your time and energy. Equally important is making sure you have a community that can anchor you and remind you that you are more than just your research – whether that’s friends, a therapist, mentors, or teams you work on outside of lab.
Ultimately what I took away from all these experiences is a sense of how to navigate adversity: being able to fall flat on your face and pick yourself up laughing feels much better and will help you recover faster than falling down and staying demoralized.
Jon, you mentioned the Green Chemistry Initiative. Can you tell me a little more?
Jonathon: I was part of the original group that founded the GCI. As I recall, it started as a conversation in the office one day between two of my colleagues (Laura Hoch and Melanie Mastronardi). There was an interest in bringing more green chemistry into the department. After reaching out to a few other graduate students and friends from other research groups, we had an initial meeting, brainstorming activities, starting work on a group constitution and funding... and before long the GCI was born.
We were extremely fortunate to have a department that was very supportive of this work and even provided regular funding for our programming. I think the Department of Chemistry saw not only great benefit in supporting the students in this way but also a lot of potential benefit (by improving safety, decreasing costs associated with waste disposal, decreasing energy use, etc.). It was a win-win.
How did you get from Chemistry here in Toronto to Beyond Benign?
Jonathon: After finishing graduate school, I was considering several different options for career paths (I had an offer for an Associate Editor position in Germany, another for a policy position with the federal government, and a third for a position with a non-profit based in Toronto focused on interdisciplinary research, which I ended up accepting).
The pandemic threw some of those plans into a tailspin. This gave me a chance to think carefully about what I cared about most in science: education and sustainability. I had remembered a presentation that Dr. Amy Cannon (now my boss) gave at U of T as part of our GCI programming, and that Dr. Natalie O’Neil (a connection I had made at the 2016 ACS Green and Sustainable Chemistry Summer School) was now working at Beyond Benign.
I reached out to Natalie to ask if I could volunteer with some of their programs. Eventually she shared that a position had become available and I was thrilled to be able to apply and have now been working there since early 2021.
Nimrat: Although I had graduated and moved back to Ottawa, I was still receiving emails from the Department of Chemistry and saw that an open position at Beyond Benign was being circulated. At the time, I was applying for jobs centred around policy positions with the federal government or Ottawa-based non-profits and wasn’t seriously considering the educational sector. However, I realized the position aligned nicely with some of the work I had done already (most notably my CTFP project and my social justice work) and so I applied. This was the height of the pandemic, so the remote work policy was especially appealing!
I started working with the Higher Education team in early 2021 and switched over to working on the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTLC) team earlier this year.
How have you maintained your relationship with the Department of Chemistry?
Jonathon: I don’t personally come back to the department often, but I work closely with many of the fantastic teaching faculty from the department and get to spend time with them at a lot of the education-focused conferences each summer. I’m thrilled to now be a member of the executive committee for the CIC’s new Green Division along with Prof. Barb Morra (who also serves as a member of one of our advisory committees here at Beyond Benign), and I work closely with Prof. John De Backere who has done a lot of work with our programs over the past few years. I frequently see Prof. Andy Dicks at summer conferences and am looking forward to seeing many of them at the CSC meeting in Ottawa next summer as well as the ACS Green Chemistry & Engineering conference.
Nimrat: Beyond Benign has an existing relationship with the department through our Green Chemistry Commitment Program – U of T was the first Canadian institution to join! As a result, and as Jon mentioned, we do collaborate with department members (faculty and students) to support people in their green chemistry educational and research initiatives. Maintaining relationships with these fantastic colleagues has been very important for me throughout my work, in addition to keeping connected with some of my former colleagues! Logistically speaking, it’s an easy trip from Ottawa to Toronto and I have family here that I’m always happy to see, so travel-wise it’s not hard for me to visit pretty often either.
Thank you both for sharing your memories and insights!
To learn more about Beyond Benign and their work in the green chemistry space, visit their website at https://www.beyondbenign.org/. Dr. Nimrat Obhi will also be one of a number of contributors to an upcoming article about WICTO’s 10th anniversary.
Related Article: Chemistry faculty and alumnus join inaugural executive of new CIC Green Division