We’ve Got Chemistry

David Leach ’16 always loved his science classes in school. Once he got to Trinity, he discovered he had a true passion for chemistry.

"In my chemistry class, I felt I was solving real problems. I was solving puzzles about how a given reaction works,” Leach explains. “Seeing how chemicals interact, it’s a puzzle to get the right things to fit together. You have to think things through, and I loved that intellectual challenge."

However, Leach’s chemistry career nearly took a completely different path, as he almost did not attend Trinity. He was torn between Trinity and Rice University, leaning towards attending the latter as decision day approached.

What swayed Leach to attend Trinity was the prestigious Semmes Distinguished Scholars in Science program. The program offers a full-tuition scholarship and research stipend and is only given to two or three incoming first-years who display outstanding aptitude in the sciences. In addition, it provides students with streamlined access to faculty and networking opportunities with other endowed scholars studying at Trinity.

"I don't know if I would have come to Trinity without that scholarship, but I'm so glad I did because it was clearly a better and healthier place for me," Leach recalls. "Trinity welcomed me. It gave me the space to grow and fail and succeed over time.”

And succeed he did. As an undergraduate, Leach took on projects of his own in chemistry professor Adam Urbach’s research lab studying peptide synthesis and its applications. "As an undergraduate researcher at Trinity, you're in charge of your project. You're getting great mentorship from your principal investigator, but I had to fail and succeed often by myself since there are no graduate students,” explains Leach. “It let me do independent research and think about things on my own, and that's super valuable to being a scientist."

During his time at Trinity, Leach also received close and personal mentorship from faculty. “The conversations I had with Dr. Urbach helped me realize chemistry was my passion,” Leach says. “Chemistry gives you the tools to solve real-world problems."

It was in Urbach’s lab, working on a project that involved designing his own protein the summer after his first year at Trinity, that Leach realized he wanted to pursue a career as a scientist. His project required that he create a new and original protein, starting with the base DNA sequence, and then express it. While he spent most of the summer struggling to make the process work, he eventually found success after much perseverance. 

"When I saw that it was the correct sequence, and we had made what we wanted to make, it was amazing to me since it was completely new and had never existed in the world before. Knowing that I had made that sequence, I couldn't get over how cool that was,” Leach shares. “After all the failure, there was this tangible success right in front of my eyes, and we did that with science. Despite the fact that science is really hard, you are often doing something that the world has never done before."

This revelation inspired Leach to pursue industry internships to supplement his research experience. Using his Semmes stipend, he interned at Huntsman Corporation, a chemicals manufacturing company in Houston, which then helped catapult him into his desired Ph.D. program and career.

Leach recently completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at Rice University. There, he worked in Jeffrey Hartgerink’s lab on projects that incorporated chemistry, biology, and bioengineering as he researched and developed peptide hydrogels. Leach’s project specifically examined whether these biocompatible hydrogels can be loaded with cancer drugs that can be slowly released over time to create long-term cancer treatments. Last summer, he interned at Chevron Corporation, where he is now working full-time as a research scientist.

David Leach ‘16 with members of Jeffrey Hartgerink’s lab at Rice (bottom) and with Chevron colleagues (top)

 

Leach never imagined that he would one day be working at an oil and gas company, but his job at Chevron has offered him the opportunity to use his chemistry skills to solve big problems, just as Urbach had promised.

At Chevron, Leach’s interdisciplinary background allows him to work on Chevron’s production chemistry team, where he is using molecular techniques to study the bacteria growing in oil reservoirs and develop chemical methods to control microbial growth.

Thus far in his career, Leach has been able to work on projects that seek to solve a wide range of problems using the toolbox of chemistry skills he developed at Trinity and in graduate school. And while he might not know where his current projects may lead in the future, he knows he will enjoy whatever comes next. "The science I'm doing has evolved in different ways over time,” Leach shares. “But I love science in general, so it's always fun to work on different problems and learn about the different ways the world works."