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US president Barack Obama had an impromptu lesson in chemical engineering during a recent visit to MIT’s laboratories.

Obama visited MIT to deliver a speech on the need to combat climate change through legislation, ahead of three days of hearings in the US Senate to debate legislation for a planned emissions trading system. However he used the opportunity to tour the university’s campus and see demonstrations of some of the research going on at MIT – the first time a US president has done so.

Out of the five teams of researchers who showed off their work, he paid particularly close attention to the demonstration by Paula Hammond, professor of chemical engineering at MIT. Hammond explained her work on using genetically-modified viruses to produce self-assembling solar cells and batteries. Hammond hopes that eventually, she’ll be able to produce batteries by spraying alternating layers of different organisms onto a glass surface.

It was however Hammond’s research collaborator, materials scientist Angela Belcher, who scored the most laughs. When explaining that her biologically-based system made it possible to conduct a billion experiments at a time, Obama interrupted to say, "Really?" Belcher replied "Yes we can," to which he quipped, "That was my slogan, you know."