by Laura Boschis
Why did I become a chemist? Because I wanted to understand how things are made and how they can be transformed since I was a child. I sincerely believe that science is the key to a better world. My dream is to make people passionate about science and technology, many people think it is something complex or boring, but in reality, it isn’t. Impossible not to let be enchanted under the sky covered with stars, in front of a flower, or when you witness natural phenomena such as thunderstorms, burning fire or snowfall.
The next step is to be able to understand how and why these happen. What is the difference between a pencil lead and a diamond? Why do we fall madly in love with someone and not with another? What mechanism pushes birds to migrate and bears to sleep during winter? It is impossible to go deeply into everything. Still, anything can be explained to us in outline to satisfy our curiosity.
We are not all the same. Luckily, we can say how boring the world would be otherwise. Not everyone loves formulas, but the explanation of any concept must be given by right to anyone measured within their cultural level and nature.
If I can still take some time in my raving, I would like to tell a personal episode to better explain what I mean by individual differences.
Some years ago, I brought two little nieces, Beatrice and Vittorio, some soap bubbles at the time of 2 years each. Both were surprised and enthusiastic, but while Beatrice looked fascinated at the bubbles trying to grab them and laughing when they burst, Vittorio tried to look inside the tube and touch the soapy water to understand. Years have passed, and Beatrice is now an architect and Vittorio, guess what, is a materials engineer!
I have touched on many topics in my long career. I dreamed of synthesizing molecules, but then I ended up working in the Italian national telecommunication research centre. For years I have been involved in technologies for the construction of optoelectronic devices, those used to send words and images from one end of the world to another. So much effort to make teenagers dance now on TikTok…
Through some fortuitous circumstances, after some years, I ended up working at the Polytechnic of Turin on projects in the field of proteomics and genomics diagnostics. People realized that engineers may work on biotechnology, probably underlining the technology side of the word.
The technologies used in my devices were also suitable for making sensors of various parameters. After all, it is always the same story. When you send an electron in an excitation band, it returns to you either as an electron or as a photon you readily collect to understand what it has encountered in this jump. (N.B. I consider electrons as males, I don’t know why, but in my mind, they are men.) After some time, another opportunity led me to found a company, Trustech, with the idea of developing something new in the field of sensors. So, here am I today.
Laura Boschis is Master in Chemistry, CEO of Trustech Srl. Ms. Boschis has worked as a researcher for ten years in the field of optoelectronics telecommunication devices at CSELT, the Italian National Research Center for Telecom. She has been working for four years at Agilent Technologies dealing, where she has developed different knowledge of materials and micro processing techniques. From 2005 to 2011 she collaborated with the Politecnico di Torino as research projects manager in nanotechnology especially for biology applications, and dealing with technology transfer for the same themes. She collaborates with government agencies as a consultant and has participated in several Italian delegations to exchange programs with other countries. In 2008 she founded together with other partners Trustech and since 2011, with the acquisition of a cleanroom laboratory, she has become Trustech CEO. In the last years she maturated experience in strategic market on bio and chemical sensors partecipating to international fairs (“Medica”,“Analytica”, ”BioEurope”). In Flamin-go project, she acts as project manager and technological supervisor.