Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future– Niels Bohr
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future– Niels Bohr
I was lucky to meet the President of the University of California Michael V. Drake, in my capacity of co-chair of the Berkeley Lab Global Employee Resource group (global.lbl.gov), dedicated to providing support to international employees at the national laboratory.
I made the point the re-building communities should be a priority after the pandemic, and particularly early career scientists, who do not have family or go to school where they could thread their social fabric. The participation of international scientist at Berkeley Lab is an important strength, because the national lab is de facto at the center of international research, and that gives it a competitive edge compared to other countries such as China or Saudi Arabia, where large research expenditure cannot compensate the lack of free flow of ideas.
I think my talking points were well received, and president Drake encouraged collaboration on these topics with the University of California, BerkeleyThis last month, I received two awards related to mentorship from Berkeley Lab. They both came as a surprise, since I consider myself more a student of mentorship than someone who has something to show for.
Berkeley Lab Outstanding Mentorship AwardDirector’s award for For building the critical foundations of a complex mentoring ecosystemI began to be interested in mentorship after I realized that mentorship plays a large role in the success of young scientist, (1) having experience myself the difference between having no mentorship and having appropriate mentorship (I’ll be forever grateful to my mentor/colleague/supervisor Ken Goldberg), (2) having had tepid internship supervision experience due to the lack of guidance, (3) realizing that academia is ill-equipped to provide the resources necessary for success.While I was running Berkeley Lab Series X, I always asked the speakers (typically Nobel prize laureates, stellar scientists and directors of prominent research institutions) how they learned to manage a group, and they answer was generally: “on the spot, via trial and error”, what struck me as awfully wrong. If people don’t get the proper resources/training, many are likely to fail, and drag their own group down the abyss. In this post, I will try to share resources I gathered along the years, and what I learned about mentorship, and provide some resources I found useful. This is more descriptive of my experience than prescriptive, but I hope you find this useful. Continue readingThere’s a lot of things happening on the front of AI for Big Science (AI for large scale facilities, such as synchrotrons.)
The recently published DOE report in AI for Science, Energy, and Security Report provides interesting insights, and a much-needed update to the AI for Science Report of 2020.Computing Facilities are upgrading to provide scientists the tools to engage with the latest advances in machine learning. I recently visited NERSC’s Perlmutter supercomputer, and it is LOADED with GPU for AI training.Meanwhile, companies with large computing capabilities are making interesting forays in using AI for science, for instance Meta, which is developing OpenCatalyst in collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon University, where the goal is to create AI models to speed up the study of catalysts, which are generally very computer-intensive (see the Berkeley Lab Materials Project.) Now the cool part is to verify these results using x-ray diffraction at a synchrotron facilities. Something a little similar happened with AlphaFold where newly derived structure may need to be tested with x-rays at the Advanced Light Source: Deep-Learning AI Program Accurately Predicts Key Rotavirus Protein Fold (ALS News)
Continue readingLast week I was lucky to meet with Vanessa Chan, the Chief Commercialization Officer for the Department of Energy and Director of the Office of Technology Transitions. She wanted to hear what kind of hurdles when it comes to start a company (hint: a lot.) I told her that a major, overlooked issue is that you generally to be a permanent resident to start at company in the US, whereas two-thirds of postdocs are foreign nationals and on visas. There are ways to get around the requirement (such as Unshackled), but it’s a little sad not more is done to provide support to those willing and able (plus – it is a well-known trope that many US companies are founded by foreign nationals, what I tend to believe is among what sets California apart from other states and other countries, where entrepreneurship doesn’t flourish as much as expected despite many efforts)
Making a presentation to an audience is important to get your ideas through, and while communication is a basic human trait, communicating effectively requires some thoughts (TED talk speakers go through a thorough training to get their point across.)
Here are a few things learned, for the use of postdocs where one can easily drown everyone else. These are based on my experience, but there are many resources around the web to draw from.
(These are stretch goals; I rarely follow these rules myself, but they are useful if you don’t know where to start.)
Use 16:9 format (these days most presentations are online, and most screen are wide)Start with an outline.Often, using the title to summarize the main point of the slide is a good use of the title.No text should be smaller than 18pts.Use animations sparingly, to expose your thoughts point by point. Avoid fancy animation or transition between slidesNo more than one slide per minute (if there’s more, you can probably merge a few points) Continue reading“I suppose in about fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Lately, many of my colleagues have been leaving DOE light sources (Berkeley Lab and SLAC National Lab) to work for startup companies, and it seems that they all try to build better sources (probably based on Free Electron Lasers.)
Such companies are Tau Systems, xLight and a third one which seems to be stealth but looks light a giant black hole, given the pool of talent it managed to attract.Good EUV sources have always been a problem, and the current solution using laser pulsed plasma, blasting 40kW of CO2 laser power onto 100um tin beads at khz rates to generate ~200W of EUV is totally crazy, but it works. Still, there must be better ways to do it, and given the unit cost of a EUV litho scanner ($200M), improving the uptime and productivity even by a few percent would be extremely valuable…I’m wishing good luck to my colleagues going his route, this is quite exciting!Yesterday I invited Tanya Zimbardo from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to give a talk at Berkeley Lab (details about the even can be found here: Hybrid Forms: Connecting Art and Science)
It was quite interesting to hear her perspective on a topic which is close to my heart, and happy to hear many references to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who currently has the Techs-Mechs exhibition running at the Gray Area, but also quite surprising not hear anything about Jim Campbell (whose art glows atop the Salesforce building “Eye of Sauron”) or the work of Illuminate.
Continue readingHere are two resources that I found useful for (1) supervising researchers (SMART) and (2) mentoring scientists (TGROW)
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:
A practical guide to Remote & Hybrid Communications – Berkeley Executive Education