When we tell people that we are chemists, they occasionally crinkle their noses in a subtle but unmistakable expression of pain. Often this is followed by a retelling of the time they almost caused a fire or explosion when attempting to make soap, aspirin, or other products in chem lab.

Many factors go into chemical reactions, opening up many avenues for things to go wrong. On the other hand, myriad possible chemical reactions exist to synthesize new commercial and industrial compounds, from shampoo to silicon chips. Many potential reactions have still not been discovered.

It is big business and a major source of innovation to find new chemical reactions (or refine old ones) that combine different compounds with various catalysts at different temperatures to produce different amounts and assortments of products at different rates. Synthesizing chemicals is essential for a wide range of multibillion-dollar industries, from cosmetics to energy technology and pharmaceuticals. More than half of all new drugs developed over the last 30 years were synthesized in the laboratory. There’s a lot of money to be made or saved by inventing new chemical reactions or improving old ones to make exactly what you want in faster, better, cheaper, and greener ways.