Ned B. Bowden was recently promoted to the rank of professor. He is a proud product of the Midwest; he was born in Wisconsin and raised in Minnesota.  After spending a couple of years in the Netherlands where he completed high school at a high school on an American Air Force base, he moved to California to attend the California Institute of Technology where he worked with Professor Bob Grubbs.  He was one of the first people in the world to work with the Grubbs catalysts while an undergraduate.  He graduated with his B.S. in chemistry in 1994 and then moved across the country to Harvard University for graduate school in chemistry where he worked with Professor George Whitesides.  He learned much about how to do, present, and think about science from Professor Whitesides and his research group.  After completing his Ph.D. in 1999, he moved to Stanford University where he worked in Professor Bob Waymouth’s laboratory to synthesize polymers.  In 2002 he moved to the University of Iowa where he started his independent career. He has worked in a variety of areas including polymer synthesis, small molecule synthesis, membrane separations, organic monolayers on Si(111), and agriculture-based chemicals. He works in areas where his expertise in synthesis can be used to tackle problems that no one else is studying.  He has been a part of three start-up companies and plans to launch more.