Amar Flood

Amar spoke of the many great teachers and great classmates who contributed to who he is today. He believes learning a range of subjects at Colenso helped him become a more balanced person. He always remembers Colenso as a school that gave him free range and a wide berth to explore everything that he wanted to.  

Amar believes that hard work, exercise and travel have been his strongest influences in life which have led him to become a scientist. He teaches chemistry and is now a Professor at Indiana University (located in mid-west America, 4 hours drive from Chicago.) He works with a group of scientists-in-training doing cutting edge research. They are trying to help clean up water by making molecular ‘donuts’ that catch salt, and to create new materials that can capture light and use it to make new technology like solar cells. He also has recently co-founded a small business based on the light-capture materials and they are in the early days of making medical lasers.

Amar enjoyed all sciences at Colenso  and he kept pursuing this at Otago University. He  acheived a BSc and PhD which allowed him to gain the position at Indiana University. Scientists and inventors that he learnt about when he was younger inspired him to be interested and involved with this sort of work. 

He thoroughly enjoys this work because it gives him the freedom to work on almost anything. He is driven to identify why the molecules he creates and studies could be useful  in society.

Amar is extremely proud to be able to create molecules that force everyone to change the way they see the world.  He has made a lot of ‘donuts’ and while they are not edible and too small to eat, they capture salt in ways that might change the world one day. 

During his spare time, Amar enjoys mountain biking and doing many things with his family. This photo  is taken in Arches National Park, Utah with the Delicate Arch in the background.