Fikile Brushett, an MIT associate professor of chemical engineering, had an unusual source of inspiration for his career in the chemical sciences: the character played by Nicolas Cage in the 1996 movie “The Rock.” In the film, Cage portrays an FBI chemist who hunts down a group of rogue U.S. soldiers who have commandeered chemical weapons and taken over the island of Alcatraz.
“For a really long time, I really wanted to be a chemist and work for the FBI with chemical warfare agents. That was the goal: to be Nick Cage,” recalls Brushett, who first saw the movie as a high school student living in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington.
Though he did not end up joining the FBI or working with chemical weapons — which he says is probably for the best — Brushett did pursue his love of chemistry. In his lab at MIT, Brushett leads a group dedicated to developing more efficient and sustainable ways to store energy, including batteries that could be used to store the...
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