It’s tempting to call Dr. Ramon Cerro a coatings matchmaker. The Argentina-born Dr. Cerro, a University of Alabama in Huntsville chemical engineering professor who does basic research into making stable and long-lasting bonds between dissimilar materials, is fascinated by why some coatings and surfaces find each other attractive while others face rejection. But unlike in love, this matchmaker can quantify why. To Dr. Cerro, everything seems of interest for his field of study, from nature to meta-materials that never happen there, and from the large scale to the nano-world. A recent conversation ranged across topics from a polishing technique and spray his wife had discovered that makes pans non-stick for noodles to placing quantum dots on a surface.