Technology Review is running a brief interview with Dr. Angela Belcher, MIT material scientist, MacArthur Grant winner and cofounder of Cambrios Technologies. She uses reengineered viruses as tools to create compounds at the molecular scale. The conversation is short, informative and somewhat amusing.

Your company describes its business as “directed-evolution technology.” So the goal is something with potentially very broad application? It’s a platform technology, yes. The aim is to work our way through the whole periodic table and be able to design materials of all kinds in a controlled way. My biggest goal is to have a DNA sequence that can code for the synthesis of any useful material.