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Thomas Kempa
To watch the images of Poland on Thomas Kempa’s documentary film, one might not realize that the young filmmaker has also made a name for himself—as a scientist. Kempa’s parents, both scientists, imbued their son with a passion for science, but also shared with him a fondness for classic films. “The idea of using a camera as a paintbrush fascinated me,” says Kempa, who moved from Poland to the United States with his family at age four. These interests led Kempa to add a film minor to his scientific pursuits at Boston College. He took many film courses with Professor John Michalczyk—on documentary, propaganda, and Eastern European film; on the Holocaust and the arts; and on the history of European cinema. When Kempa traveled back to Poland and met his father’s peers, he started pondering their momentous lives: they had witnessed the fall of Communism, the emergence of democracy, and Poland’s reintegration into Europe. During the spring break of his junior year, Kempa interviewed his father and his Polish friends, and eventually created a 45-minute documentary, an effort funded by the Jacques Salmanowitz Program for Moral Courage in Documentary Film, a resource of the fine arts department. Kempa’s accomplishments as a chemistry major have been recognized throughout his tenure at Boston College. Under the tutelage of chemistry professor John Fourkas, he has used lasers to provoke light from nanoparticles, minute pieces of matter. The research, Kempa says, could some day produce technologies to enhance the development of flexible flat-panel computer screens or biological probes that detect contaminants without placing humans at risk. He became one of the University’s first Beckman Scholars, which funds research in chemistry, biochemistry, or biology, and received a Marshall Scholarship. More recently, Kempa was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship, which funds three years of graduate education. During studies this year at the Imperial College London, he plans to work on trying to make photovoltaic cells harness solar energy more efficiently. Fourkas, his advisor, says Kempa stood out as a freshman in the honors chemistry class. “He had ready answers for practically anything,” Fourkas recalls. When Kempa asked Fourkas if he needed research help, he assigned the student a computational analysis for a graduate student’s project. “Almost with no effort he ran it off and came down a few weeks later with important results,” Fourkas says, adding that he’d expect a graduate student to spend about three months on such a challenge. An ardent environmentalist, Kempa can imagine himself in academia, in the public sector, or in business building a company based on innovative environmental research and development. He believes his scientific and artistic sides are not divergent, but sensible: both focus on the world’s wonders. “Art teaches us about ourselves and society. Science is an instrument through which we observe the beauty of nature.” Photo: Thomas Kempa in the film editing studio in Devlin Hall. |
