Emanuel and Elma Carrilho are back in Boston, spending a sabbatical year with George Whitesides. Emanuel received his Ph.D. from Prof. Karger in 1997; Elma studied humic acids with Geoff Davies.

Emanuel is currently an Associate Professor in the Institute of Chemistry, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He leads a group of 10 students and postdocs in a remarkable diversity of bioanalytical projects, which span analysis of DNA, metabolites, and proteins.

When Emmo came to the Institute in 1993 he joined the DNA sequencing project, with Jan Berka and Carol Warner, contributing his expertise and knowledge of the chemistry of separations. Together, they achieved the milestone of sequencing 1000 bases in 1 hour, which they published in 1996 introducing the replaceable linear polyacrylamide later used in the human genome project,. "When we took apart a high throughput sequencing machine recently, I recognized a lot of little refinements we had worked very hard to figure out. It was gratifying."

Prior to joining the Institute, Emmo had a teaching position at the University in Sao Paulo. With his doctorate, he returned on the tenure track and, 3 years ago, about the time that Lorena was born, was promoted to Assistant Professor.

In his sabbatical with Whitesides, Emanuel is working on microfluidic devices which could be applied in remote field settings, such as third world medicine. "Paper-based diagnostics that are as simple to use as the pregnancy test kits you can get here. You can print microfluidic circuits on transparencies using an ordinary laser printer - the toner is only 5 µm thick, but it's enough."

Asked what advice he would have for prospective students Emanuel suggests the most important thing is to look at the track record of a Professor, his history, to see where his is going.

Emmo's philosophy of science reflects that of the Institute. Although you need deep expertise in critical fields, you also have to have the big picture of chemical science as a whole, and also the applications you are working towards. You are an interpreter between the basic science that both enables and limits what you can do, for the the non-scientists developing the device, and even the end-user in the field.

(28 September 2007)