Nina Zhao in safety glasses and a blue lab coat smiles while holding a box of samples in a lab aisle lined with shelves of supplies.

‘We live in a chemical world’

Profile

Nina Zhao is working to map the drugs, pesticides, and pollutants we encounter in daily life – often unknowingly – and to understand how they shape human and ecosystem health.
A firefly with a glowing yellow-green tail rests on a curved blade of grass in the dark.

Chemists find a new path to luminescence

Research

The molecule behind the glow of fireflies and plankton breaks apart in an unexpected order under force – a discovery that could lead to better stress sensors and help illuminate some mysteries of the natural world.