"Seaweed is renewable, time is not" with Dr. Victoria Piunova

The Fancy Labcoat Guild

Dr. Victoria Piunova is a world-class polymer chemist with a boatload of accomplishments. As CTO at her current company Loliware, she’s disrupting the plastic industry with her seaweed-derived plastic analogues. Loliware has engineered a new category of high-performance products designed to disappear and be carbon negative at scale. By using seaweed to replace plastic at scale, Loliware is tapping into the power of seaweed to regenerate our ocean and contribute to the decarbonization of our planet. The status quo that single-use products should be ‘built to last’ is destroying our planet and Victoria is taking matters into her own hands in weaning us off of this toxic material dependence.
She’s got her Ph.D. from USC, and completed her postdoc at CalTech, and has had an illustrious career at IBM Research where holds the prestigious title of “master inventor”. She’s also the recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Young Investigator and Young Industrial Polymer Scientist awards for her outstanding contributions to industrial innovation.

Episode Breakdown
0:00-11:20 Growing up in Russia as a sportswoman and a budding scientist
11:20-25:05 Ph.D. in the City of Angels, Materials Science, and Experimentalism.
25:05-49:00 PostDoc at CalTech, "Polymers as Ballet", "The real world", IBM Research, and the Struggles of Research
49:00-52:00 Becoming a Master Inventor and charting the path as a woman in science,
52:00-1:07:55 What is Loliware?, Converting Seaweed to Plastic, Playing with Straws!, Struggles of a Startup, Being a Leader and Mentor.
1:07:55-1:20:39 What is IP in Chemistry? Frustrations with Patents and Protecting your Molecules.
1:20:39-1:35:47 Keep on Kicking but be cautiously optimistic, "Seaweed is Renewable, Time is not"
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This episode is sponsored by Sci Find–the scientific collaboration network (www.scifind.net)