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Our guest today is Stephen Steiner. 

Stephen is President, CEO, and founder of Aerogel Technologies, a company based outside of Boston. Stephen has a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Chemistry and Engineering which he completed in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Master’s Degree in Materials Science and Engineering, also from MIT. 

And prior to graduate school, Stephen got his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and that is actually how I know Stephen! I was in the graduate program in chemistry and a lab teaching assistant one summer — I think it was the summer of 2001 — and Stephen was working at the stockroom window where undergrads needed to get various supplies for completing their lab projects.

Stephen has such an interesting story of really falling in love with science at a young age and doing so many interesting things on both the discovery side and the business side of science, focused on aerogels. 

In this MINI episode, Stephen talks to us about the invention of aerogels, and how the process of making them defies the ideal gas law, PV = nRT, and how we see that by the formation of a critical fluid. Tune in on Thursday for the full-length interview!

Highlights of the episode:

*Susan introduces Stephen and today’s topic [0:56];

*Stephen tells us what aerogels are [3:02];

*Stephen describes the invention of aerogels [3:38];

*Stephen talks about why the ideal gas law no longer holds in the formation of aerogels [6:26].

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