Fixing the Chemical Industry’s Sustainability Problem

The most honest and inadvertently funny marketing message I ever saw was at a gas station that was closed for remodeling; it had been an Amaco station before that company was bought by BP. The sign said, “Rebranding, to serve you better.” 

I’m afraid we’re a bit guilty of that here at Spectrum. This is the 30th episode of IEEE Spectrum’s relaunched podcast series, but the first under a new name, “Fixing the Future.” 

We’ve changed the name partly for marketing and searchability reasons. But it also signals our intention to focus more intently on ways that technology is being deployed to improve our lives, specifically in three—to be sure overlapping—areas: climate change; machine learning and other smart technologies; and the effects of automation on the nature of work and the future of jobs.

I’m hard-pressed to imagine a more on-point guest to help me usher in this change than Myriam Sbeiti. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Sunthetics, a startup that’s reinventing the industrial processes by which we make nylon by replacing a thermal operation with an electrical one, and has both grown that business and pivoted toward other industrial processes as well.

Fixing the Future is sponsored by COMSOL, makers of mathematical modeling software and a longtime supporter of IEEE Spectrum as a way to connect and communicate with engineers.