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I’m a Solver – Chris Wilmer

Chris Wilmer has been awarded for two Challenges – Synthetic DNA Management Software and Water Problems Affecting People in Developing Countries.

Chris Wilmer

Science is a noble pursuit, and I would pay to be a scientist if I had to. You can imagine how lucky I feel then, that the payment works the other way around.

Designing porous materials for carbon dioxide capture and hydrogen storage is my Ph.D. research at Northwestern University in the department of Chemical & Biological Engineering. My advisor, Professor Randall Q. Snurr, has helped me tremendously to become a specialist in molecular simulations and a super-computer systems administrator. These skills, simulations, programming and systems architecture, have been invaluable when approaching InnoCentive Challenges. As the speed of computers increases, there are fewer and fewer materials science and chemistry problems that cannot be better understood by a properly designed computer simulation.

While my current research is in Chicago, I was born in Canada, and I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering science from the University of Toronto. Biology and bioengineering are my hobby sciences, which I pursue (or just read about) in my spare time. Greater exposure to these fields is one of the benefits that draws me to InnoCentive.

I have been participating regularly in humanitarian and bio-related InnoCentive challenges since August, 2009. It is enlightening to read about contemporary problems in the variety of industries to which InnoCentive caters (which as far as I can tell, is every conceivable industry short of the military), and it is also fun to attempt to solve them! I have found that, while it is difficult to come up with a great idea, it is usually easy to make a half-decent suggestion… and sometimes that’s enough!

I would like to see InnoCentive provide additional services to help Solvers and ultimately lead to better solutions for the Seekers (e.g., providing mock solutions to the Solver community that preserved the average number of typographical errors of actual winning solutions). I’m glad that InnoCentive is so successful already, and I’m sure that as it evolves it will become much more successful in the future!

If you are a would-be Solver but are unsure of how to go about it, please feel free to send me an e-mail. I have a wide variety of interests, and am always excited to collaborate on a project!

Best regards and good luck

-Chris

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  • http://N/a Robert(Robin) H Davis

    Mate (oh scheisse that’s Aussie) I am an old USN NUKE who remembers HMCSS Grilse wilslt in the Navy.
    Wanted to be a biologist but wound in a world structured around the ‘nam. Have a rep for solving problems in low alloy stainless steels in high pressure high temp H Environments. Entered the fray for a buck($1US). Used to call Canadians canucks until I was corrected by a friend it not it is not knuckles it is canooks. And once upon a time in Mexico I proposed Estados de Los Norte Amercas(Mexico,us and (y’all)
    Last thing I heard we were all working on not fufilling the Psycology Today experiment where (where a herd of ratones of the same familia were turned loose on opposite ends of a warehousees filled with bread they observed proper hygenie until they met and then war and reproduction (of the species) to it’s end.

  • http://blog.innocentive.com/2011/10/26/im-a-solver-patrick-fuller/ Perspectives on Innovation » Blog Archive » I’m a Solver: Patrick Fuller

    [...] learned about InnoCentive through Chris Wilmer, another Ph.D candidate in my department. Come to think of it, this all probably started because [...]