Other members of the Bates College class of 2011 may have left for home or other locales this summer, but recent grad Cody Newman still has a job to do: help the world solve its energy problem.

For the past four summers, Newman has worked as a biofuels researcher at the college. Most recently he’s been looking into whether pyrolysis oil — a biofuel made from dried plant matter — can be modified to run in today’s vehicles. It’s all very technical, involving “planning catalyst syntheses” and “completing syntheses, as well as catalyst testing.” (More on that below.) But it all comes down to one thing.

Your car may someday run on discarded paper mill waste because of him.

Name: Cody Newman

Age: 21

Hometown: Montclair, N.J.

Current town: Lewiston

Job: Researcher

How did you get interested in chemistry? I was always interested in science growing up, but after taking classes from two amazing science teachers in high school I knew I wanted to study chemistry in college.

What intrigues you so about chemistry? For me, chemistry describes how things work. While biology is too pictorial and physics is all equations, chemistry finds a happy medium.

How did you get involved in biofuel research? During my freshman year at Bates, one of my professors (and current adviser) asked her class if they were interested in an open position as a biofuels researcher in one of her labs for the summer. I took the opportunity and have been working with her ever since.

Why work on biofuel and not other alternative energy sources? Biofuels are particularly attractive for two main reasons. They can be carbon neutral (meaning they emit no net carbon dioxide) and they have the potential to be used in our current infrastructure for transportation fuels without much modification.

Have you always been interested in alternative energy? Not always — it really started after my first summer working at Bates. The more I learned about it and why it is important, the more interested I became.

You say your work includes “planning catalyst syntheses” and “completing syntheses, as well as catalyst testing.” That sounds amazing. But what does it mean? Catalysts are compounds used to speed up a chemical reaction without being consumed themselves. One common approach for making catalysts is to use a common active metal and alter other characteristics of the compound to see if they have a positive or negative effect. We try to plan our syntheses so that our catalysts interact in interesting ways with the molecules we are trying to alter, and synthesize our catalysts to test the effects of different characteristics.

You worked on this during your summer breaks from college. Did you ever feel the need to go work at a summer camp or backpack across Europe instead? Sure — most of my research commitments were only eight to 12 weeks in length, so I had plenty of time to enjoy other summer activities.

What’s your dream job? I think there is a lot out there I would really enjoy doing. Anything that is open to hiring a recent college graduate sounds pretty good right now though.

What’s your dream scientific discovery? A cheap way of converting plants or garbage into gasoline.

Who’s your all-time favorite scientist? Richard Feynman. He has had such impressive impacts on so many different areas.

What kind of fuel does your car run on? Nothing special, I’m afraid. I am certainly open to a change though.