How do we study life as a form of matter? Traditionally, physicists have used simple, "toy" examples of physical phenomena for inquiry, but life is complex: there are no toy examples! I therefore create new materials that are toy models of some features unique to living systems. I focus on structure and information flow rather than on the synthesis of particular molecules.
If life is a "tightly controlled symphony of molecular interactions," perhaps one metaphor is that the simple synthetic materials I work with play just a few notes. I design and build chemical "motifs" that could be extended and combined to produce more complex materials. These materials share common features: they process information and remain consistently out of equilibrium, so they must be provided with an energy source. Generally this energy source comes in the form of an ongoing supply of molecules that are not in their lowest energy configurations that serve as fuel.