From the May 2025 issue of Toronto Life
The Magic Lab
Alán Aspuru-Guzik and his multinational team of mad scientists are combining chemistry, robotics and AI to fight climate change, streamline organ transplants and supercharge the scientific method. How did their lab end up at the University of Toronto? In a word: Trump
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, Alán Aspuru-Guzik woke up, shook off his sorrow and went for a run. Striding across the grounds of Harvard University, he tried to imagine what life might soon be like for him, a Mexican American professor of chemistry and computer science and a self-described “pinko commie guy at heart.” What kind of future did he have in a country run by Donald Trump, an anti-science nationalist who’d called Mexicans criminals and rapists and promised to build a wall to keep them out of America? As he was jogging, Aspuru-Guzik spotted a man in a red MAGA cap confidently strolling through campus. “I had never seen anyone at Harvard doing this MAGA shit before,” he says. To him, it was an omen: even in the ivory tower, he wouldn’t be safe.
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