Chance Discovery Leads to Amazing Possibilities.

• Position: CHEMISTRY

In the summer of 2007, a Colorado rancher asked Jeremy Foutch to test oil shale found on his land to see if it contained precious metals. Foutch, who recently had earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Idaho, burned the shale in a porcelain crucible in his home laboratory, but as acrid smoke filled the garage, he turned off the burner and looked inside. He found a silvery black film. A quick test showed it was electrically conductive, but when he touched it with a torch, it did not bead up like metal. Instead, it burned like carbon.

Foutch returned to Ul at the end of the summer, bringing the material with him. He showed it to Frank Cheng, an electrochemist with whom he had studied as an undergraduate. "I brought this interesting film to Frank and said, 'This is really curious. I'm not sure what this is.' He was interested, so we ended up running a bunch of tests on it and finding that it had some pretty...