Fikile Brushett, an MIT associate professor of chemical engineering, had an unusual source of inspiration for his career in the chemical sciences: the character played by Nicolas Cage in the 1996 movie “The Rock.” In the film, Cage portrays an FBI chemist who hunts down a group of rogue U.S. soldiers who have commandeered chemical weapons and taken over the island of Alcatraz. “For a really long time, I really wanted to be a chemist and work for the FBI with chemical warfare agents. That was the goal: to be…
