Today is the thousandth day since the start of the pandemic, and we still haven’t figured out how to hold efficient meetings online.
Here’s a useful resource:
I had a great time at Penn State University, where I was positively impressed by the facilities and the people!
I mainly visited the Material Research Institute and the department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, where they are developing x-ray adaptive optics for space application together with NASA, for the Lynx project.
Millennium Science Center, Penn State University (November 2022)
Thanks Susan Trolier-McKinstry for hosting me!
We were pleased, as Berkeley Lab Global Employee Resource Group co-chairs, to invite and co-organize with Angela Saini at Berkeley Lab on November 9th, 2022.
Author Angela Saini in conversation with Aditi Chakravarti from the Diversity and Inclusion office at Berkeley Lab (IDEA)
More details about the event:
global.lbl.gov/events/idea-speakers-series-angela-saini
I discover the beautiful fluid motion videos from Yahya Modarres-Sadeghi of the Fluid-Structure Interaction Lab at UAmherst:
fluid speckle (by Modarres-Sadeghi, FSI/UAmherst)
These images and videos just show us how much information can be gained from a random signal (the marbled incoming flow) when it is coherent (linear flow) preserve correlation in space and time.
Continue readingHello everyone!
I have a new website to talk more specifically about our work on adaptive optics for coherent beamlines (the DREAM beam project.)
Maria Zurek (left) and I (right) with Jeff Welser (IBM VP of research, center) and the rest of the Berkeley Lab Postdoc Association in October 2019
There isn’t much representation of scientists in popular culture, with a only few movies standing out, such as a “A Beautiful Mind” (on John Nash) or “Good Will Hunting.” There’s been a few more in the biopic genre lately, such as the “Imitation Game” on Alan Turing or “The Theory of Everything” on Stephen Hawking, and soon a movie on Robert Oppenheimer by Chris Nolan.
But the representation of women in science and technology is even less frequent. Things seem to be changing, and during the pandemic there’s been a few biopics on women scientists, to which I want to bring attention to:
(credit: @truffleduster)
We’re almost out of the pandemic, and it seems that a lot of people around me are starting podcasts. Here are three podcasts from friends or looser acquaintances that I found very entertaining. Check them out!
tried and tested
I must confess I did try to start a podcast, inspired by my favorite French show “Remède à la mélancolie” (now reborn as “L’Embellie“) I did two episode, but I quickly realized that would take much more effort than I thought if I wanted to get anywhere…
Among other podcast I listen to regularly: Science en question and Femmes puissantes (both in French, I hope there was an English version of these great shows! French public radio is awesome – see La black liste for excellent soul music and and Si l’Amerique m’etait contée for a history of America)EUV lithography is now part of everything – including the chips in your iPhone 12 and beyond. I don’t know if it’s because of the chip shortage, the $50B investment of the US government in semiconductor manufacturing, or the realization that having a nearly monopolistic market with its biggest player in Taiwan, at the mercy of an invasion, but there’s a lot of press on EUV lithography right now (I’ve been talking about my work on the topic at Berkeley Lab here: SHARP and MET5, and shared some thoughts on Moore’s law here.)
Me at the inaugural Berkeley Lab Slam (2016), talking about EUV lithography
Here’s a few pieces:
In this story, ASML is the quiet powerhouse – they have a de facto monopoly (their stock rose 10x over the last 5 years) and they keep expanding (ASML opens new state-of-the-art R&D facility in Silicon Valley.) There’s been some hardball played here, with the US pressuring the European company not to sell their technology with China (Reuters), as if it made any sense.
Besides, I am stoked to see my former colleagues from the Center for X-Ray Optics receive recognition for their work!I hope we’ll get to develop new techniques with x-rays using diffraction-limited beams to further the advances in semiconductors and microchips – skyrmions, superconductivity, memristors, and so many other cool things!
power spectral density of an EUV coherent beam reflected on a naturally rough surface going through an objective zoneplate with a topological charge of 1
I recently read the amazing book “New Expressions in Origami Art” by Meher McArthur, that I found at the shop Paper Tree in the Japan Town of San Fransisco (it’s one of my favorite shops; they always have stunning origami on display, some for sale, from many origamists featured in the book.)
Every page of the book is a delight, where a modern twists (abstraction, wet folding, tessellation) on origami always bring something very fresh.
One Crease, by Paul Jackson
While reading the book and learning about Goran Konjevod (who seems to be a colleague from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), I stumbled on the work of Amanda Ghassaei, who has created the Origami Simulator and many other cool simulation tools producing mesmerizing results.
https://twitter.com/amandaghassaei/status/1352605937077522434 Continue reading