PFW's 14th Center of Excellence grew from a surprising start

A few weeks ago, the FIRST Molecules Research Center in the College of Science received noteworthy recognition when it became the 14th Center of Excellence at Purdue University Fort Wayne. However, the story behind the Fullertube Interdisciplinary Research Science and Technology—FIRST for short—Molecules Research Center that dates back to 2017 is even more remarkable.

Ryan Koenig was a 17-year-old junior at Concordia Lutheran High School who had just passed his Advanced Placement chemistry course when his teacher, Kyle Jane, received an email from PFW. The university was offering high school students an opportunity to take part in an intern program.

“I think at that point, I had decided I wanted to try chemistry in college,” Koenig said. “I hadn’t applied to colleges yet, so this would be a good way to figure out if I really wanted to do this—and the experience might help me with my applications. I didn’t know what to expect.”

That’s how Koenig met Steven Stevenson, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Was Koenig interested in a glorified job shadow, or did he want to be treated like a regular undergrad student and try his own research project? Koenig immediately wanted the latter, and Stevenson assigned him the task of trying to isolate C60 molecules from carbon soot.  

“I just threw him in the swimming pool,” said Stevenson. “I no longer looked at him as a high school student compared to a college student. I wanted him to have a good positive experience and have a sample of what research is like. Let’s see what he can do, and maybe he’ll like it a lot.”

Students often don’t start similar research until their junior or senior year of college, usually with plans to continue on to graduate school. Koenig discovered natural gifts and blew past the perceived limits and expectations of someone his age to accomplish something no one else ever had.

By using chemistry, Koenig was able to separate “the small balls from the big balls” in the carbon soot. With Stevenson’s help and mass spectrometry, he identified three mysterious contaminates scientists had been speculating about for decades.

“People had thought mathematically that they should exist, and mathematically you should be able to come up with the shapes on paper, but can you make them in a lab setting?” Stevenson said. “Ryan launched an experimental discovery that yes, they do exist,  and they exist as a family. As a high school student, Ryan isolated molecules that no one had ever made before; no one had ever seen before.”

Keonig and Stevenson named the elements “fullertubes” as a combination of fullerenes and nanotubes. In 2020, after more definitive research, Koenig was the lead author in the landmark publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a rare accomplishment for undergraduate students.

Between the initial experiments and publishing the paper, Koenig attended Purdue University West Lafayette for a year before deciding to transfer to PFW where he could immediately be a leader in specialized research instead of waiting until he was a junior or a senior.

Koenig, B.A. ‘22, continued expanding on his research until he graduated and moved on to UC Irvine  where he’s in the third of a five-year doctorate program. As he studies biomaterials and bioengineering, he regularly communicates with Stevenson.

“There’s a certain list of traits that I want all of my students to have, characteristics like intelligence, humility, passion, curiosity, kindness, and tenacity—and Ryan has all of those things,” Stevenson said. “When curiosity meets intelligence meets passion, you can really do some good things. He has a genuine passion and love for science.”

With Stevenson’s guidance, Koenig has made 14 academic presentations and written six published research papers. Their work led to two National Science Foundation grants, worldwide collaborations, and founding of the PFW’s most recent center of excellence.

Uniquely, Koenig never took a chemistry class from Stevenson, but he did take a full year of French as a PFW senior so he could have his mentor as a teacher. After graduation, Koenig’s family visited France and he was the only one who could understand the language.

“There’s only one Ryan,” Stevenson said. “It was a miracle. How often in life do you get a chance to discover a molecule and then get to name it?

“My experience with Ryan was life-changing. He collided with my world and I collided with his and now we’re in two different places. Together, we did something that apart we never could have done.”