Name: Kevin Theisen
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Major(s) and Minor: Major in Chemistry, Minor in Computer Science
Year: 2008
Why did you choose chemistry as your major?
I enjoyed sciences growing up and chemistry resonated the most with me in high school. It was the science that made the most sense to me. So when I matriculated at Rutgers University, I immediately declared chemistry as my major.
What did you like most about it?
The best part about studying chemistry is learning and interacting with the parts of the world you cannot see with your eyes. Biology can be observed with your eyes and physics models how the universe works, but in chemistry you are trying to understand the building blocks around you. What are atoms? What do molecules look like? What can we do with them? I was incredibly curious to know, and the Rutgers chemistry department provided many ways to investigate. Rutgers provides students with access to many analytical and spectroscopic methods, my favorite being nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The ability to “see” the atoms and molecules and the chemistry around me shaped my entire career.
What is your current position, what do you do, and what do you enjoy most about it?
I am the President of iChemLabs. We create software that facilitates the communication of complex scientific information between scientists and between scientists and computers. The freedom of running my own company provides me the luxury of pursuing the interesting projects I want to and when I want to, and that is what I enjoy most about it.
What was your first job after Rutgers and how did you get it?
Kevin Theisen Linkedin
I started iChemLabs as an undergraduate at Rutgers University. Now iChemLabs is a successful company with clients all around the world.
If you are interested in doing something similar, I recommend that students interested in programming check out our open source ChemDoodle Web Components. This Javascript library allows you to quickly build scientific programs on both desktop and mobile devices. I would love to see what you create with it.
Looking back, what classes or experiences at Rutgers would you point to as contributing to your successes?
I started in organic chemistry courses my freshman year, so I was immediately introduced to spectroscopy, which was very interesting to me. It was trying to reverse engineer the spectra and create algorithms to simulate them that ultimately led me down my path.
The most significant contribution to my success from Rutgers was the support of the faculty. The chemistry department is large and many talented scientists are there to help students. Having been to many institutions, I can say that students aren’t always the first priority when research is concerned, but at Rutgers, there is a real concern for the success of the students. Faculty members like Dr. Heinz Roth, Dr. Roger Jones and Dr. Karsten Krogh-Jespersen must have wasted hours entertaining my personal programming projects. Their support encouraged me to continue.
What advice do you have for our current Arts and Sciences students?
Know the difference between pursuing knowledge for the sake of reaching a goal and pursuing knowledge because you enjoy it and are curious. It may take a while to fully discover who you are and what your interests are, but that is part of what college is about. The most successful individuals are masters at what they do. This is because they worked tirelessly to expand their knowledge and have significantly more experience than anyone else. This drive comes from a true passion to learn more about what interests you and to find answers to questions that no one else has yet answered. Rutgers is a great place to discover that passion.
Kevin created ChemDoodle, a computer software tool for drawing chemical structures, becoming director of his own company at 27 years old.
Kevin developed his flagship chemistry software, ChemDoodle, while he was still an undergraduate at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Now, at the age of 27, he is the director of his own company, iChemLabs, and is using his experience to help foster interest in chemical programming and encourage young people to engage with chemistry in new and exciting ways.
A love of chemistry and computer programming
Kevin always had an interest in chemistry, but as an undergraduate he struggled to see how he could apply his interest in a meaningful way. It was only once he discovered a talent for computer programming that he was finally able to “interface and experiment with chemistry in ways that were incredibly rewarding”.
Kevin’s first foray into the world of chemistry programming was through creating programs to predict relationships between structures and NMR spectra. He was surprised to find that these programs could do a better job than him, even after only a few months of development, and he began to wonder what else he could “get a computer to discover”.
Teaching himself
From there, Kevin worked hard to combine his two great interests, and has had great success with ChemDoodle, an affordable software package that allows users to draw chemical structures and predict their spectra, all through an intuitive, attractive user interface. But the route to Kevin’s success wasn’t simple, and he highlights a lack of academic programmes that focus on chemistry and programming as a major hurdle.
“A large part of my development involved researching topics on my own and teaching myself how to work with chemistry on computers. Most of the time I did my best to creatively build solutions; there were no answer sheets or faculty to consult with about how to solve these problems.”
Kevin sees chemistry as “one of the harder areas to find your niche.”
“When we think of chemistry, we think about huge laboratories and beakers with liquid in them, but the fact is there are so many ways to engage chemistry beyond this stereotype.”
Kevin’s own story is proof that in today’s world, a career in chemistry definitely doesn’t always mean a life spent in the lab.
For students who aren’t sure how they can participate in chemistry, Kevin’s advice is to consider how chemistry fits with their other interests, as he did with programming. Not only will this provide exciting opportunities for students, but it will also be a great benefit to the chemical community.
“The more diversity we have in the people that choose to stay in chemistry, the better off we all are as there will be more creative ideas and solutions.”
Kevin Theisen Gladbeck
Support for others
These days, Kevin’s work varies from managing his team of 10 experts from around the world, to promoting his products at conferences, while still finding time to program. Recently, iChemLabs have begun to fund a monetary award at Rutgers University for “excellence in chemical programming”, an opportunity which Kevin hopes to expand to other universities and students who share the interests of him and his team.
Kevin Theisen Obituary
Words by Elizabeth McLoughlin
Images courtesy of Kevin Theisen
Published October 2013