United States national laboratory located near Berkeley, California
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2 episodes with lawrence berkeley lab
2 episodes with lawrence berkeley lab
From building a data platform and Parquet at Twitter to using AI to make biology easier to engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks, Dmitriy joins the show to chat about the early days of big data, the conversation that made him jump into SynBio, LLMs for proteins and more. Segments: (00:03:18) Data engineering roots (00:05:40) Early influences at Lawrence Berkeley Lab (00:09:46) Value of a "gentleman's education in computer science" (00:14:34) The end of junior software engineers (00:20:10) Deciding to go back to school (00:21:36) Early experiments with distributed systems (00:23:33) The early days of big data (00:29:16) "The thing we used to call big data is now ai" (00:31:02) The maturation of data engineering (00:35:05) From consumer tech to biotech (00:37:42) "The 21st century is the century of biology" (00:40:54) The science of lab automation (00:47:22) Software development in biotech vs. consumer tech (00:50:34) Swes make more $$ than scientists? (00:54:27) Llms for language is boring. Llms for proteins? that's cool (01:02:52) Protein engineering 101 (01:06:01) Model explainability in biology Show Notes: The Death of the Junior Developer: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-death-of-the-junior-developer Dmitriy on twitter: https://x.com/squarecog?lang=en Tech and Bio slack community: https://www.bitsinbio.org/ Stay in touch: - Make Ronak's day by signing up for our newsletter to get our favorites parts of the convo straight to your inbox every week :D https://softwaremisadventures.com/ Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Name: Isvari MaranweCurrent title: President and Co-FounderCurrent organisation: Dweebs GlobalI'm the President of Dweebs Global. I am also a national and cyber security lawyer, an ex-physicist, and a writer. I have held many positions with the U.S. government (Department of Defense, Department of State, National Commission on Service, FCC), worked for businesses (Sidley Austin, Ingenico, iKeyVault), written columns for several different outlets, and researched particle and astrophysics (CERN, Fermilab, Lawrence Berkeley Lab). I have taught Python, given two TEDx talks, and volunteered around the world. I write novels. I have played the piano for twenty years, sing, and speak Hindi, Spanish, German, French, Kannada, and English. Most of all, I help people.Janani Mohan, Nathan Maranwe, and I founded Dweebs Global, an international mentorship organization with thousands of mentors around the world. Starting to help people through COVID 19, our services will always be 100% free. No paid content. No sponsorships. No nonsense. If you are reaching out for free personalized resume edits, career tips, or anything else, please go through www.dweebsglobal.org/contact. We have helped thousands of people with life and mental health advice, resume editing, and boosting their careers and network. We will continue to help for free, especially in these dark times. If you are also willing to be a mentor, please reach out to me.Resources mentioned in this episode:Free Download of The Leadership Survival Guide (10 World-Class Leaders Reveal Their Secrets)The Leadership Conversations PodcastThe Jonno White Leadership PodcastThe Leadership Question of the Day PodcastClarity Website7 Questions on Leadership SeriesWe'd Love To Interview YOU In Our 7 Questions On Leadership Series!Subscribe To Clarity's Mailing ListJonno White's eBook Step Up or Step OutJonno White's Book Step Up or Step Out (Amazon)
Dr. Ruymán Reyes Castro, CTO at Codeplay Software, and Kevin Harms, Senior Software Developer at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, talk about their collaboration with the National Energy for Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab to enhance the LLVM-based DPC++ open source compiler, based on the SYCL standard, to support Nvidia GPUs. They […]
Dr. Ruymán Reyes Castro, CTO at Codeplay Software, and Kevin Harms, Senior Software Developer at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, talk about their collaboration with the National Energy for Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab to enhance the LLVM-based DPC++ open source compiler, based on the SYCL standard, to support Nvidia GPUs. They […]
Dr. Ruymán Reyes Castro, CTO at Codeplay Software, and Kevin Harms, Senior Software Developer at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, talk about their collaboration with the National Energy for Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab to enhance the LLVM-based DPC++ open source compiler, based on the SYCL standard, to support Nvidia GPUs. They […]
Tom is metal worker and machinist currently working at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab with scientists and physicists developing and building machines to use in scientific research. Tom also has a YouTube channel Oxtoolco and is the author of several books about metal working. 0:00 intro1:33 The machinist community2:15 Machinist education6:22 Tom's background11:07 Clorox12:20 Thrasher magazine15:04 A great opportunity19:37 Lawrence Berkeley lab23:00 Physics & machinery27:53 Tom becomes an author32:15 Tom's YouTube channel36:52 Where to find Tom YouTube: OxToolCoInstagram: oxtoolsBooks:https://amzn.to/3nl61G9 https://amzn.to/35fFZhm https://amzn.to/3njyjRz
Naveen Sikka Founder & CEO Naveen Sikka is the founder and CEO of TerViva, a Series-D agriculture technology company that is building the world’s most sustainable supply chain of plant protein and vegetable oil. Utilizing experience in management consulting, technology, natural resources and agriculture, Naveen established TerViva to understand and extend the benefits of the ancient pongamia tree’s resilience and protein and oil-packed beans. TerViva has since introduced pongamia as a new commercial crop that converts distressed farmland into sustainable, productive acreage. Under his leadership, TerViva has unlocked pongamia’s potential as a climate-friendly, nutritional powerhouse for feeding the world’s rising population. TerViva is the first company to develop high-yielding, non-GMO cultivars of pongamia and to create edible protein and oil from its beans to feed people. Product partners draw on TerViva’s plant protein and vegetable oil supply chain that is world class in its low-carbon intensity, traceability and cost competitiveness with existing oilseed supplies. Naveen and TerViva have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Food Navigator, Growing Produce, All About Feed, Food Business News and Pacific Business News, among other leading publications covering sustainable innovation and technology in agriculture and food. Naveen completed his MBA from UC Berkeley where he co-chaired the development of the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley Lab to evaluate its existing portfolio of commercial technologies. Prior to earning his MBA, Naveen worked as a management consultant at Gemini Consulting and TPI. He graduated as a Class Senior Marshal with a BA from Columbia University, during which time he studied and worked in France and West Africa. He is a mentor and member of Environmental Entrepreneurs and the New Innovators Council of the World Resources Institute. Sudhir Rani CFO, Board of Directors Sudhir brings extensive financing and structuring experience to TerViva. Before joining TerViva in 2011, Sudhir was a Director in the Private Equity group at D.E. Shaw & Co. in New Delhi, India where he structured, negotiated and conducted due diligence on growth capital investments. Prior to that, he spent eight years at UBS in Asset Management and Investment Banking. Sudhir has an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Columbia University. https://www.terviva.com/ https://nexuspmg.com/
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
Using brain organoids to understand neural development, learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Show ID: 35682]
In today’s episode, we cover:• Shayle’s journey from energy transition in the market intelligence space to climate change venture capital at Energy Impact Partners (EIP)• EIP, a VC with ~$1B in AUM whose LPs are a coalition of utilities• The sectors EIP invests in• Abe’s journey from Rockport Capital Partners, a cleantech private equity firm based, to cofounding Congruent Ventures in 2016• A history of the first cleantech wave• Lessons learned• How the current interest in climate tech compares/contrasts with the first cleantech wave • What types of innovation is needed in climate tech• What types of capital are the best for for which types of innovationLinks to topics discussed in this episode:• Energy Impact Partners: https://www.energyimpactpartners.com/• Congruent Ventures: https://www.congruentvc.com/• Rockport Capital Partners: http://www.rockportcap.com/• Solyndra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra• Thin-film solar cell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_solar_cell• MiaSolé: http://miasole.com/• Alpha: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp• National Renewable Energy Lab: https://www.nrel.gov/• Lawrence Berkeley Lab: https://www.lbl.gov/
Megan interviews Blake Simmons, current director of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, about grad school in New Orleans. Blake talks about his time in the military prior to school and how he let the good times roll in NoLa, even during his qual.
In this 12th discussion of the series, Anca Mosoiu, Founder, Tech Liminal & Software Engineer, Joins The Discussion with Cindy F. Solomon, Founder, SUPA Product Academy and Malcolm Knapp, Founder, The Engineering Accelerator. Anca Mosoiu is a programmer and consultant who loves complex, large-scale technology projects, where her curiosity and ability to translate between technical and non-technical helps teams get things done. Her past and current clients include the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Cisco Systems, Nike and Sony. She has professional nerd credentials, as a Computer Science graduate from MIT. Subsequently, she worked as a programmer for a 3D startup in the 1990’s and helped design and develop some of the earliest websites and online stores while working for Razorfish. Her experience in the corporate and startup world was followed by a focus on local community, as a volunteer and an entrepreneur. Listeners are invited to join the discussion, ask questions and provide your own perspectives and approaches for what process and tools you currently employ to arrive at a cross functional and validated vision of the product prior to build.
In this 11th discussion of the series,Anca Mosoiu, Founder, Tech Liminal & Software Engineer, Joins The Discussion with Cindy F. Solomon, Founder, SUPA Product Academy and Malcolm Knapp, Founder, The Engineering Accelerator. Anca Mosoiu is a programmer and consultant who loves complex, large-scale technology projects, where her curiosity and ability to translate between technical and non-technical helps teams get things done. Her past and current clients include the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Cisco Systems, Nike and Sony. She has professional nerd credentials, as a Computer Science graduate from MIT. Subsequently, she worked as a programmer for a 3D startup in the 1990’s and helped design and develop some of the earliest websites and online stores while working for Razorfish. Her experience in the corporate and startup world was followed by a focus on local community, as a volunteer and an entrepreneur. Listeners are invited to join the discussion, ask questions and provide your own perspectives and approaches for what process and tools you currently employ to arrive at a cross functional and validated vision of the product prior to build.
Learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, groundbreaking research into the human microbiome, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Science] [Show ID: 31533]
Learning computer science and engineering by building remotely controlled quadcopters, groundbreaking research into the human microbiome, understanding geysers, high-tech approaches to sustainable agriculture, the work of the Berkeley Laboratories, and a very smart puppy, all on this edition of On Beyond. Series: "On Beyond" [Science] [Show ID: 31533]
We are at the beginning of one of the greatest economic and consumer behavior experiments ever seen in the energy sector. How do we refine pricing in order to rapidly transition our aging, centralized grid to a clean, decentralized one? And can we do it so that we limit the economic losers, pay for the fixed costs of operating the grid, and make everyone whole? It’s a complicated question. The range of actual rate design options – decoupling, minimum bills, demand charges, fixed charges, and time-of-use – offer so many varying benefits and drawbacks. Everyone agrees that we’re moving to a distributed grid. But there’s a lot of disagreement on how to pay for it. That is what we’re tackling in the show this week. We’re joined by Lisa Wood, the executive director of the Edison Institute for Electric Innovation, and Ralph Cavanagh, a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council. Their perspectives on rate design are featured in a new report from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, called "Recovery of Utility Fixed Costs: Utility, Consumer, Environmental and Economist Perspectives." This podcast is sponsored by Mission Solar Energy, an American solar cell and module manufacturer: http://www.missionsolar.com/ This is a complimentary episode of our premium podcast, The Interchange. Find out more about GTM Squared: http://www.greentechmedia.com/squared
This week IAQ Radio will be flashing back to January 21, 2011 for a show we did with Mark J. Mendell, PhD. of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the California Dept. of Health. When looking back at shows to replay this one stood out so we remixed the sound, tweaked a few things and will replay it today. Mark Mendell, Ph.D., is currently a Staff Scientist/Epidemiologist in the Indoor Environment Group at EETD, and an Air Pollution Research Specialist at the California Department of Public Health. Dr. Mendell is on the editorial board of the journal Indoor Air and a member of the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences. He was formerly at the Centers for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, where he was head of the National Occupational Research Agenda Team on Indoor Environments. Dr. Mendell holds a BA from Cornell University; a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Oregon; and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley, School of Public Health. Dr. Mendell has worked for 20 years in the field of environmental epidemiology, focused on health effects related to indoor environments in buildings. His work includes field research to help understand relationships between specific factors and conditions in buildings and health effects in occupants, and critical reviews of the literature that summarize what we know, how well we know it, and what we do not know, about specific environment/health relationships in buildings. His research interests include health risks associated with buildings, ventilation systems, moisture, and microbial growth; effects of indoor environments in schools on health and performance of students, and effects of indoor chemical exposures in residences on asthma and allergies. LEARN MORE about indoor environments and the health effects related to mold and moisture this week on IAQ Radio!
This week IAQ Radio will be flashing back to January 21, 2011 for a show we did with Mark J. Mendell, PhD. of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the California Dept. of Health. When looking back at shows to replay this one stood out so we remixed the sound, tweaked a few things and will replay it today. Mark Mendell, Ph.D., is currently a Staff Scientist/Epidemiologist in the Indoor Environment Group at EETD, and an Air Pollution Research Specialist at the California Department of Public Health. Dr. Mendell is on the editorial board of the journal Indoor Air and a member of the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences. He was formerly at the Centers for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, where he was head of the National Occupational Research Agenda Team on Indoor Environments. Dr. Mendell holds a BA from Cornell University; a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Oregon; and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley, School of Public Health. Dr. Mendell has worked for 20 years in the field of environmental epidemiology, focused on health effects related to indoor environments in buildings. His work includes field research to help understand relationships between specific factors and conditions in buildings and health effects in occupants, and critical reviews of the literature that summarize what we know, how well we know it, and what we do not know, about specific environment/health relationships in buildings. His research interests include health risks associated with buildings, ventilation systems, moisture, and microbial growth; effects of indoor environments in schools on health and performance of students, and effects of indoor chemical exposures in residences on asthma and allergies. LEARN MORE about indoor environments and the health effects related to mold and moisture this week on IAQ Radio!
Whose Century Is It?: Ideas, trends & twists shaping the world in the 21st century
Will the poor always be with us? The global poverty rate is dropping fast, and the UN and other groups are working, together and apart, to come up with creative ways to help the world's poorest pull themselves into a better life. Shashi Buluswar, who leads the Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies, at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, talks about harnessing emerging tech solutions to solve age-old problems.
Explore the latest projections about the extent of planetary warming and the dire consequences of our growing carbon imbalance. Tune in to hear presentations by Lawrence Berkeley Lab climate scientists Bill Collins, Margaret Torn, Michael Wehner, and Jeff Chambers, as well as UC Berkeley economist Max Aufhammer. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 25473]
Explore the latest projections about the extent of planetary warming and the dire consequences of our growing carbon imbalance. Tune in to hear presentations by Lawrence Berkeley Lab climate scientists Bill Collins, Margaret Torn, Michael Wehner, and Jeff Chambers, as well as UC Berkeley economist Max Aufhammer. Series: "Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory " [Science] [Show ID: 25473]
Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part two, Delia talks about her interests, the Molecular Foundry and its unique environment. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two part interview with Delia Mill Iron, [00:01:00] the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, Delia mill iron. Received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton and her phd in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry, which has spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies. Her group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a [00:01:30] multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technologies. Delia's group was recently awarded a $3 million grant by the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects, agency energy, ARPA e for her work on smart window technologies. Now the final part two of our interview. Uh, even though nano science is a relatively new pursuit, how have the tools to execute [00:02:00] your research and development? How have they advanced? Speaker 3: The tools have progressed remarkably and many would say that our ability to see material on the nataline scale and by c I mean more than just get a picture, but also to see the specifics of the chemistry, the electronic structure and so on that these advances in tools and characterization tools have [00:02:30] been the catalyst for every other development and nanoscience because it's very difficult to move quickly forward in making new materials. For example, if you can't actually see what you're making. So starting with electron microscopy, which used the fact that electrons moving very quickly, you have a wavelength far shorter than that of light and therefore they have the ability to resolve features on the nano meter and in fact on the atomic lane scale. [00:03:00] That's tremendous, right? That's an incredible enabling capability for nanoscience. But electrons are limited in the chemical information, the electronic structure information, they can probe some of this, but light is still king. Speaker 3: So spectroscopy which is using light to probe chemical bonds and composition and so forth is still king of understanding richness, rich detail about materials. So some of the most exciting events is to me [00:03:30] in the tools for nanoscience are bringing optical spectroscopy spectroscopy using light to smaller and smaller and smaller lane scales. The state of the art, if you use conventional optics, just nice, beautifully made lenses and so on is that you can use light to look at things down to about half the wavelength of light. So for visible light that means things on the order of a few hundred nanometers. If you're doing things very, very [00:04:00] well by manipulating the light further leveraging nanoscale phenomena like the plasmonics I mentioned earlier, you can now squeeze light into extremely small volumes and do optical spectroscopy down to lane scales, tens of nanometers across, so doing full rich optical characterization and materials. Speaker 3: Basically using light microscopy at 40 nanometer lanes scales is now [00:04:30] a reality and the kind of information we can get about materials, their properties and how those are related is just going to benefit tremendously from those kinds of new advances. Are there tools that you crave? Unrealized tools? Yes, sure. I love to be able to resolve rich chemical, detailed dental. The Lane scale of Adams, you know, tens of nanometers is nice, but uh, most of our nanocrystals are smaller than this. They're five [00:05:00] nanometers. There are 10 nanometers, they're not 40 or 50 nanometers. So we still haven't quite brought light in a useful way down to the dimensions of the materials that give us the most interesting properties. The other major thing many of us crave is to bring detailed characterization into three dimensions and really four dimensions. So how they're arranged in three dimensional space definitely affects their properties, but it's difficult [00:05:30] to image. Speaker 3: So microscopic tools still often look at the surface of material and so you get a two dimensional map at high resolution. It's much more difficult to get high resolution images and information in three dimensions. And then the fourth dimension is of course time. So being able to follow a structure and the flow of energy and electrons in three dimensional space as it progresses in time, pushing time resolution shorter and shorter and shorter. Can [00:06:00] we track those processes? So that we can understand how function emerges. Because function is very often dynamic in nature. It's not just a static moment in time. It's the way that chemistry and electrons and so forth progress over time. Explain the user program at the foundry. How do people get involved in that? Sure. So the, the user program provides free access to scientists from all over the world [00:06:30] who have an interest in leveraging expertise, materials, capabilities, techniques and so on that we developed at the foundry to advance their science or technology. Speaker 3: And the mode that people use, the foundry takes all different forms. Uh, one of our favorites is for scientists to send a student or postdoc or a young researcher or in fact visit themselves, for example, for a sabbatical and then actually work with us. I buy side in our lab [00:07:00] can best learn the INS and outs of working with synthesizing, measuring whatever it is, the materials and techniques of interest to them. Um, we found that this is a very powerful way to expose young scholars to the potential for interdisciplinary research as we exercise it at the foundry for this new mode of doing science where people from all different disciplines are talking every day about problems to advance a state [00:07:30] of the art. That's been very productive and I think those students and postdocs go home really changed in their outlook on how they approach science and they bring some of that perspective back to their home labs. Speaker 3: They also, by the way, bring some perspective on our safety approach back to their home labs. And we really enjoy the success stories of having companies even and also academic research lab to use our approach to safety in particular [00:08:00] nanomaterial safety but safety in general as a blueprint for setting up their own labs or for reinvigorating the safety culture and so on if their own institution. So this mode of people coming and working with us and engaging in all with a whole variety of scientists and techniques in our labs and then going back home is then tremendously effective. We also spend time, you know, shipping samples back and forth, doing some characterization on other people's materials or vice versa, shipping our materials [00:08:30] out to people who have specialized characterization, approaches that compliment what we do well and this is in the spirit, I would say of good scientific collaboration in general. But the most exciting thing by far is to bring people together and mix up their ideas and their concepts and see new things emerge. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum [00:09:00] on KALX Berkeley, our guest Delia mill iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: can you talk about the safety guidelines that are in place at the molecular foundry and in working with nanomaterials? Speaker 3: Yeah, so nanomaterials because it's a relatively new science to deliberately craft them, [00:09:30] we still don't know in many cases, the ways in which their toxicology and the risk of exposure may differ from the same material found in bulk form. And because we have this uncertainty, we owe it to ourselves and to the environment to treat them with an elevated level of care. And so the Department of Energy was actually the first agency in the u s to create specific guidelines for handling [00:10:00] nanoscale materials in laboratory environments. I was actually part of that process several years ago and that policy is updated every year and it forms the basis for what we implement on the ground in the lab terms of safety procedures. For example, we're particularly concerned about any nanomaterials that are not firmly bound within a matrix or firmly bound to a substrate because these have the potential to become airborne [00:10:30] or volatilized or something like this. Speaker 3: So that we most focus on these, which we call it quote unquote unbound engineered nanoparticles, engineered meaning deliberately created and these are always handled in enclosed ventilated environments. So for us, things like glove boxes and fume hoods and then we validate that those kinds of environments do indeed protect workers from exposure by doing low background tests for particle counts during agitated [00:11:00] procedures. So we exaggerate the potential risk. We reduce the background particle count in the lab with a portable clean room and we use a very sensitive particle counter to see if any countable particles are generated in the workspace of the actual scientists working in the lab. Um, and this helps us form systematic approaches to handling materials in ways that don't cause any exposure. Speaker 2: Is the toxicology of nanomaterials [00:11:30] a growing area of study? And what about the interaction of nanomaterials outside of the lab in the environment? Speaker 3: Yes, definitely toxicology is a growing area of study, but you raise an important point, which is even before a nano material that's out in the world can interact with a biological organism. It experiences the environment. And so the first thing that's maybe preliminary in a way, but it is now taking place at the same time as [00:12:00] to understand the fate of nano materials in the environment. So how do they move through different kinds of soil and medium because surface effects are so important. How do molecules that are just found very commonly around us adhere to the surfaces and change the properties of the nanomaterials before they ever encounter the biological organisms because that will have a big effect then on their toxicology. So the fate of Nano materials in the environment is definitely a growing [00:12:30] area of study and we've had scientists at the foundry who have collaborated with geologists for example, to understand how soil conditions and ph and so forth can affect the transport of nanomaterials that are under consideration for solar energy applications. Should they end up released, how would they respond in different kinds of soil environments and be transported or or not. In some cases they are not readily transported and that's equally important to understand Speaker 2: [inaudible] so it becomes [00:13:00] a life cycle study. Yes, materials and those things can take a long time to really get a grasp of what the impact is. How then do we gauge the extent to which nanomaterials get leveraged in the short term and monitor the longterm impacts [inaudible] Speaker 3: I think monitoring is an important point, right? It will take even longer if we're not paying attention to learn how things interact with the environment and what their fate ultimately is. So the [00:13:30] science in the lab is important, but the science as technologies begin to be released is, is equally important to track what's happening in the real world. Um, in the meantime, it's important to be thoughtful about the expected life cycle of technologies, incorporating Nana materials. So recycling programs, encapsulation recovery, assessment of likelihood of release from a completed say [00:14:00] device, like a solar cell solar cells are completely encapsulated in glass, right? So the initial thought would be, well, if this, if everything's going right, there will be no nanomaterials released. But now what if that panel breaks? What's the likelihood of that? So asking these questions upfront and taking, you know, a responsible role in the life cycle of the technology, I think is essential, particularly given the uncertainties. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:14:30] our guest is Delia Mil iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry. She was a chemist working at the Nano scale. You are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: How much time do you spend paying attention [00:15:00] to other areas of science and technology? As much as I possibly can. I think inspiration in science comes from broad perspective and so I am as far as I could get from being a biologist as a physical scientist, but the concepts of how biological systems work are quite intricate and inspiring though new discoveries in biomechanical [00:15:30] processes and so on can become the seed. That gives me a new idea of how to put nanocrystals together in a way that generates totally new phenomena, for example. It's also just fascinating, honestly. I mean I've always been fascinated with science, so paying attention to the uh, developments and the exploration of Mars or in astrophysics. There's a tremendous fundamental physics community at the lab and I love to listen to them talk about the [00:16:00] discoveries they're making through telescope observations of distant supernovas and these sorts of things. Speaker 3: I won't say that I can point to any direct impact that's had on my work. But I think expanding your general perspective on the way the world works at all these different length scales and timescales and so on, it forms your context as a scientist and you know, maybe as a person as well. Are there collaborations in other fields you'd like to see grow? [00:16:30] So this idea of connecting biology more deliberately are the concepts of biology more deliberately to materials research, which is my area of investigation I think is quite powerful and under exploited at this stage. It's amazing what molecular biologists now understand about the mechanisms that underlie life and how molecules [00:17:00] interact in elaborate ways to synthesize DNA, to create proteins to, you know, at completely mild conditions, fold proteins up and do catalytic activity. Things that in the engineering world, you know, have traditionally been approached by brute force, you know, thousands of degrees c and so on. And so if we can take some of these concepts from biology and see [00:17:30] how they can affect the way we approach synthetic materials to a greater extent, I think this will be a very important opportunity. Of course there are some people doing this. I don't want to suggest that that's a totally new idea, but I think that connection could be a much broader avenue than what it has been so far. Do you feel there's an element of art in what you do? Speaker 3: I think so. I definitely enjoy art, although not highly skilled. [00:18:00] My Adventures and creating sculpture, you know, clay wood and so on in my mind are in harmony with what we do on the atomic length scale in the way we try to craft nanoscale materials or madams and then craft macro scale materials from those nanoscale materials, putting them together as these building blocks and it has a sculptural aspect to it. And definitely there's beauty in the images generated when we use all these amazing [00:18:30] cutting edge techniques to visualize our structures. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to mention? I think the other comment I'd like to make going back to the molecular foundry and I lit up when you asked me, you know, what's the foundry about? Because I really think that the research environment do, the approach to scientific research being carried out at the molecular foundry is [00:19:00] a beautiful example for the way forward for science that science can be greatly accelerated in discovery of new terrain, new subject areas entirely through this mode of intense dynamic collaboration across fields. Speaker 3: I think it was somewhat deliberate and at the same time a bit of an accident that this emerged from the creation of the molecular foundry. What the [00:19:30] founders of the foundry did that was very smart was to hire a group of very young scientists who had an approach to science where they would clearly appreciate being involved in many different projects coming from many different perspectives. This was essential to make the user program work on your scientists must be enthusiastic about collaborating with all these different scientists who have different objectives, [00:20:00] different contexts and so on, but as a consequence of hiring that group of people and putting them together in one building, what naturally happened is we all started to interact in the same way with each other and the result is that you have a coupled series of dynamic feedback loops that greatly accelerate innovation. Speaker 3: One of them being between our science and that of our users and one of them being between the scientists internal to the building and [00:20:30] the results of that experiment really in scientific structure that's represented by the foundry are just starting to appear because we're still quite a young institution and I think that the impact of this sort of model is going to felt for a long time and is going to be replicated and mapped onto other research centers. We've already seen a lot of interests in understanding the way we do our science as research centers are being set up around the [00:21:00] world and that doesn't happen very often. That's an exciting deviation from the traditional department structure, single principal investigator directed research, as brilliant as one scientists and the research group may be. It lacks that dynamism that we have. So it's sort of a high of mentality to science, if you will, and that's really interesting and gonna yield a lot of fruit, I think. Speaker 2: Delia mill iron. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank [00:21:30] you. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: tours of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab are available monthly. The molecular foundry is on that tour. Just sign up for a tour, go to the Lawrence Berkeley [00:22:00] national lab website, which is lbl.gov Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: A regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening over the next two weeks. It's quiet time of the year, not a whole lot going on, but the Lawrence Hall of Science 3d Theater has daily screenings [00:22:30] of two films, space junk, and the last reef space junk is a visually explosive journey of discovery that ways the solutions aimed at restoring our planets. Orbits Space Junk runs through January 6th, 2013 the last reef was made with new macro underwater cinematography. The last reef reveals and astonishing world rarely seen at this scale. The film presents an unprecedented vision of the intriguing creatures that participate [00:23:00] in altering the geology of our planet. The last reef runs through May 5th, 2013 the exploratorium is leaving its only home at the Palace of fine arts and moving to piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. The new exploratorium will open in the spring of 2013 this coming January 2nd is the last day to experience the exploratorium as it is currently installed at the Palace of fine arts opened in 1969 [00:23:30] the exploratorium has evolved in this unwieldy space for 43 years. Catch one final glimpse. Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 check the exploratorium website for special events on that final day. The website is exploratorium.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: for the new segment. I want to do something a little different. As the year [00:24:00] draws to a close. I want to offer a short update on salient, national and commercial space launch ventures. Starting with the u s NASA reports that the Orien spacecraft is coming together for its 2014 test flight. Orianna is a new capsule that will take human exploration beyond earth orbit for the first time in 40 years. The first unmanned flight test of Orien will be launched a top a Delta for rocket from Cape Kennedy. The capsule [00:24:30] will be flown 3,600 miles above the earth and then return to the earth at 5,000 miles per hour for re-entry. The reentry will test the heat yields the landing at sea and the u s navy's recovery of the capsule. The longer term plans are to test the same capsule launched on NASA's next heavy lift rocket dubbed the space launch system. Speaker 2: SLS in 2017 SLS will launch NASA's Orient Spacecraft and other [00:25:00] payloads beyond lower earth orbit providing an entirely new capability for human exploration. Space x, the U S Commercial Space Company has completed the first of a contracted 12 supply missions to the international space station. Space X is also working with NASA to develop and test the dragon capsule to allow it to transport humans to and from the international space station. On that point. In August, NASA announced the winners [00:25:30] of the commercial crew integrated capability funded space act agreements. This program is designed to supply NASA with a domestic commercial capability to transport humans into low earth orbit, specifically to the International Space Station and back. The winning companies are Boeing with a $460 million contract space x at $440 million and Sierra Nevada corporation receiving 212.5 million. [00:26:00] In June, 2012 China launched this shungite in nine spacecraft, a top a long march rocket. The spacecraft carried three crew members on a mission to dock with the Chinese space station. The mission was successful and is widely regarded as a major accomplishment for the Chinese based program. The mission will be repeated. In 2013 India marked its 101st space mission. October 1st of 2012 [00:26:30] with the launch of its heaviest communications. Satellite Gee sat 10 from French Guyana. The Indian Space Research Organization has 10 mission scheduled for 2013 the tentative capper is a plan in November, 2013 Mars orbiter to be done without any international help. Speaker 2: The Russian space program continues to struggle after a series of embarrassing failures in spacecraft launches and flight operations that have cast [00:27:00] the future of the entire program. In doubt, observers fear that the rise of cheaper, more modern and reliable commercial space companies in the United States will peel off Russia's spaced services customers who currently infuse $1 billion annually into the Russian space. Industry. Insiders say consolidation, innovation, and modernization are required to save the industry. Leadership and funding for such a revival program are missing. At this point. The European space [00:27:30] agency successfully launched seven Ariane five rockets from their space port in French, Guyana during 2012 the Arianne five has had 53 successful launches in a row since December, 2002 Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 2: an interesting space, junk liability arose for the European Space Agency. When a large lower earth orbit satellite nearing the end of its fuel supply suddenly went silent. The satellite is now stuck in a prime orbit corridor [00:28:00] that will take 100 years to degrade and fall to earth during the next 100 years. This satellite may collide with other satellites. If it does, the European Space Agency is thought to be liable for the damage done. No removal method of space. Junk currently exists. That's it. Happy New Year. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:28:30] the music heard on the show is by Los [inaudible]. David from his album folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 Speaker 1: attribution. [inaudible] thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to my severe eating and address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com [00:29:00] chumminess in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part two, Delia talks about her interests, the Molecular Foundry and its unique environment. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible] [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two part interview with Delia Mill Iron, [00:01:00] the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, Delia mill iron. Received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Princeton and her phd in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry, which has spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies. Her group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a [00:01:30] multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technologies. Delia's group was recently awarded a $3 million grant by the Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects, agency energy, ARPA e for her work on smart window technologies. Now the final part two of our interview. Uh, even though nano science is a relatively new pursuit, how have the tools to execute [00:02:00] your research and development? How have they advanced? Speaker 3: The tools have progressed remarkably and many would say that our ability to see material on the nataline scale and by c I mean more than just get a picture, but also to see the specifics of the chemistry, the electronic structure and so on that these advances in tools and characterization tools have [00:02:30] been the catalyst for every other development and nanoscience because it's very difficult to move quickly forward in making new materials. For example, if you can't actually see what you're making. So starting with electron microscopy, which used the fact that electrons moving very quickly, you have a wavelength far shorter than that of light and therefore they have the ability to resolve features on the nano meter and in fact on the atomic lane scale. [00:03:00] That's tremendous, right? That's an incredible enabling capability for nanoscience. But electrons are limited in the chemical information, the electronic structure information, they can probe some of this, but light is still king. Speaker 3: So spectroscopy which is using light to probe chemical bonds and composition and so forth is still king of understanding richness, rich detail about materials. So some of the most exciting events is to me [00:03:30] in the tools for nanoscience are bringing optical spectroscopy spectroscopy using light to smaller and smaller and smaller lane scales. The state of the art, if you use conventional optics, just nice, beautifully made lenses and so on is that you can use light to look at things down to about half the wavelength of light. So for visible light that means things on the order of a few hundred nanometers. If you're doing things very, very [00:04:00] well by manipulating the light further leveraging nanoscale phenomena like the plasmonics I mentioned earlier, you can now squeeze light into extremely small volumes and do optical spectroscopy down to lane scales, tens of nanometers across, so doing full rich optical characterization and materials. Speaker 3: Basically using light microscopy at 40 nanometer lanes scales is now [00:04:30] a reality and the kind of information we can get about materials, their properties and how those are related is just going to benefit tremendously from those kinds of new advances. Are there tools that you crave? Unrealized tools? Yes, sure. I love to be able to resolve rich chemical, detailed dental. The Lane scale of Adams, you know, tens of nanometers is nice, but uh, most of our nanocrystals are smaller than this. They're five [00:05:00] nanometers. There are 10 nanometers, they're not 40 or 50 nanometers. So we still haven't quite brought light in a useful way down to the dimensions of the materials that give us the most interesting properties. The other major thing many of us crave is to bring detailed characterization into three dimensions and really four dimensions. So how they're arranged in three dimensional space definitely affects their properties, but it's difficult [00:05:30] to image. Speaker 3: So microscopic tools still often look at the surface of material and so you get a two dimensional map at high resolution. It's much more difficult to get high resolution images and information in three dimensions. And then the fourth dimension is of course time. So being able to follow a structure and the flow of energy and electrons in three dimensional space as it progresses in time, pushing time resolution shorter and shorter and shorter. Can [00:06:00] we track those processes? So that we can understand how function emerges. Because function is very often dynamic in nature. It's not just a static moment in time. It's the way that chemistry and electrons and so forth progress over time. Explain the user program at the foundry. How do people get involved in that? Sure. So the, the user program provides free access to scientists from all over the world [00:06:30] who have an interest in leveraging expertise, materials, capabilities, techniques and so on that we developed at the foundry to advance their science or technology. Speaker 3: And the mode that people use, the foundry takes all different forms. Uh, one of our favorites is for scientists to send a student or postdoc or a young researcher or in fact visit themselves, for example, for a sabbatical and then actually work with us. I buy side in our lab [00:07:00] can best learn the INS and outs of working with synthesizing, measuring whatever it is, the materials and techniques of interest to them. Um, we found that this is a very powerful way to expose young scholars to the potential for interdisciplinary research as we exercise it at the foundry for this new mode of doing science where people from all different disciplines are talking every day about problems to advance a state [00:07:30] of the art. That's been very productive and I think those students and postdocs go home really changed in their outlook on how they approach science and they bring some of that perspective back to their home labs. Speaker 3: They also, by the way, bring some perspective on our safety approach back to their home labs. And we really enjoy the success stories of having companies even and also academic research lab to use our approach to safety in particular [00:08:00] nanomaterial safety but safety in general as a blueprint for setting up their own labs or for reinvigorating the safety culture and so on if their own institution. So this mode of people coming and working with us and engaging in all with a whole variety of scientists and techniques in our labs and then going back home is then tremendously effective. We also spend time, you know, shipping samples back and forth, doing some characterization on other people's materials or vice versa, shipping our materials [00:08:30] out to people who have specialized characterization, approaches that compliment what we do well and this is in the spirit, I would say of good scientific collaboration in general. But the most exciting thing by far is to bring people together and mix up their ideas and their concepts and see new things emerge. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: you are listening to spectrum [00:09:00] on KALX Berkeley, our guest Delia mill iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: can you talk about the safety guidelines that are in place at the molecular foundry and in working with nanomaterials? Speaker 3: Yeah, so nanomaterials because it's a relatively new science to deliberately craft them, [00:09:30] we still don't know in many cases, the ways in which their toxicology and the risk of exposure may differ from the same material found in bulk form. And because we have this uncertainty, we owe it to ourselves and to the environment to treat them with an elevated level of care. And so the Department of Energy was actually the first agency in the u s to create specific guidelines for handling [00:10:00] nanoscale materials in laboratory environments. I was actually part of that process several years ago and that policy is updated every year and it forms the basis for what we implement on the ground in the lab terms of safety procedures. For example, we're particularly concerned about any nanomaterials that are not firmly bound within a matrix or firmly bound to a substrate because these have the potential to become airborne [00:10:30] or volatilized or something like this. Speaker 3: So that we most focus on these, which we call it quote unquote unbound engineered nanoparticles, engineered meaning deliberately created and these are always handled in enclosed ventilated environments. So for us, things like glove boxes and fume hoods and then we validate that those kinds of environments do indeed protect workers from exposure by doing low background tests for particle counts during agitated [00:11:00] procedures. So we exaggerate the potential risk. We reduce the background particle count in the lab with a portable clean room and we use a very sensitive particle counter to see if any countable particles are generated in the workspace of the actual scientists working in the lab. Um, and this helps us form systematic approaches to handling materials in ways that don't cause any exposure. Speaker 2: Is the toxicology of nanomaterials [00:11:30] a growing area of study? And what about the interaction of nanomaterials outside of the lab in the environment? Speaker 3: Yes, definitely toxicology is a growing area of study, but you raise an important point, which is even before a nano material that's out in the world can interact with a biological organism. It experiences the environment. And so the first thing that's maybe preliminary in a way, but it is now taking place at the same time as [00:12:00] to understand the fate of nano materials in the environment. So how do they move through different kinds of soil and medium because surface effects are so important. How do molecules that are just found very commonly around us adhere to the surfaces and change the properties of the nanomaterials before they ever encounter the biological organisms because that will have a big effect then on their toxicology. So the fate of Nano materials in the environment is definitely a growing [00:12:30] area of study and we've had scientists at the foundry who have collaborated with geologists for example, to understand how soil conditions and ph and so forth can affect the transport of nanomaterials that are under consideration for solar energy applications. Should they end up released, how would they respond in different kinds of soil environments and be transported or or not. In some cases they are not readily transported and that's equally important to understand Speaker 2: [inaudible] so it becomes [00:13:00] a life cycle study. Yes, materials and those things can take a long time to really get a grasp of what the impact is. How then do we gauge the extent to which nanomaterials get leveraged in the short term and monitor the longterm impacts [inaudible] Speaker 3: I think monitoring is an important point, right? It will take even longer if we're not paying attention to learn how things interact with the environment and what their fate ultimately is. So the [00:13:30] science in the lab is important, but the science as technologies begin to be released is, is equally important to track what's happening in the real world. Um, in the meantime, it's important to be thoughtful about the expected life cycle of technologies, incorporating Nana materials. So recycling programs, encapsulation recovery, assessment of likelihood of release from a completed say [00:14:00] device, like a solar cell solar cells are completely encapsulated in glass, right? So the initial thought would be, well, if this, if everything's going right, there will be no nanomaterials released. But now what if that panel breaks? What's the likelihood of that? So asking these questions upfront and taking, you know, a responsible role in the life cycle of the technology, I think is essential, particularly given the uncertainties. Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:14:30] our guest is Delia Mil iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry. She was a chemist working at the Nano scale. You are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Speaker 3: How much time do you spend paying attention [00:15:00] to other areas of science and technology? As much as I possibly can. I think inspiration in science comes from broad perspective and so I am as far as I could get from being a biologist as a physical scientist, but the concepts of how biological systems work are quite intricate and inspiring though new discoveries in biomechanical [00:15:30] processes and so on can become the seed. That gives me a new idea of how to put nanocrystals together in a way that generates totally new phenomena, for example. It's also just fascinating, honestly. I mean I've always been fascinated with science, so paying attention to the uh, developments and the exploration of Mars or in astrophysics. There's a tremendous fundamental physics community at the lab and I love to listen to them talk about the [00:16:00] discoveries they're making through telescope observations of distant supernovas and these sorts of things. Speaker 3: I won't say that I can point to any direct impact that's had on my work. But I think expanding your general perspective on the way the world works at all these different length scales and timescales and so on, it forms your context as a scientist and you know, maybe as a person as well. Are there collaborations in other fields you'd like to see grow? [00:16:30] So this idea of connecting biology more deliberately are the concepts of biology more deliberately to materials research, which is my area of investigation I think is quite powerful and under exploited at this stage. It's amazing what molecular biologists now understand about the mechanisms that underlie life and how molecules [00:17:00] interact in elaborate ways to synthesize DNA, to create proteins to, you know, at completely mild conditions, fold proteins up and do catalytic activity. Things that in the engineering world, you know, have traditionally been approached by brute force, you know, thousands of degrees c and so on. And so if we can take some of these concepts from biology and see [00:17:30] how they can affect the way we approach synthetic materials to a greater extent, I think this will be a very important opportunity. Of course there are some people doing this. I don't want to suggest that that's a totally new idea, but I think that connection could be a much broader avenue than what it has been so far. Do you feel there's an element of art in what you do? Speaker 3: I think so. I definitely enjoy art, although not highly skilled. [00:18:00] My Adventures and creating sculpture, you know, clay wood and so on in my mind are in harmony with what we do on the atomic length scale in the way we try to craft nanoscale materials or madams and then craft macro scale materials from those nanoscale materials, putting them together as these building blocks and it has a sculptural aspect to it. And definitely there's beauty in the images generated when we use all these amazing [00:18:30] cutting edge techniques to visualize our structures. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to mention? I think the other comment I'd like to make going back to the molecular foundry and I lit up when you asked me, you know, what's the foundry about? Because I really think that the research environment do, the approach to scientific research being carried out at the molecular foundry is [00:19:00] a beautiful example for the way forward for science that science can be greatly accelerated in discovery of new terrain, new subject areas entirely through this mode of intense dynamic collaboration across fields. Speaker 3: I think it was somewhat deliberate and at the same time a bit of an accident that this emerged from the creation of the molecular foundry. What the [00:19:30] founders of the foundry did that was very smart was to hire a group of very young scientists who had an approach to science where they would clearly appreciate being involved in many different projects coming from many different perspectives. This was essential to make the user program work on your scientists must be enthusiastic about collaborating with all these different scientists who have different objectives, [00:20:00] different contexts and so on, but as a consequence of hiring that group of people and putting them together in one building, what naturally happened is we all started to interact in the same way with each other and the result is that you have a coupled series of dynamic feedback loops that greatly accelerate innovation. Speaker 3: One of them being between our science and that of our users and one of them being between the scientists internal to the building and [00:20:30] the results of that experiment really in scientific structure that's represented by the foundry are just starting to appear because we're still quite a young institution and I think that the impact of this sort of model is going to felt for a long time and is going to be replicated and mapped onto other research centers. We've already seen a lot of interests in understanding the way we do our science as research centers are being set up around the [00:21:00] world and that doesn't happen very often. That's an exciting deviation from the traditional department structure, single principal investigator directed research, as brilliant as one scientists and the research group may be. It lacks that dynamism that we have. So it's sort of a high of mentality to science, if you will, and that's really interesting and gonna yield a lot of fruit, I think. Speaker 2: Delia mill iron. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Thank [00:21:30] you. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: tours of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab are available monthly. The molecular foundry is on that tour. Just sign up for a tour, go to the Lawrence Berkeley [00:22:00] national lab website, which is lbl.gov Speaker 1: [inaudible].Speaker 2: A regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening over the next two weeks. It's quiet time of the year, not a whole lot going on, but the Lawrence Hall of Science 3d Theater has daily screenings [00:22:30] of two films, space junk, and the last reef space junk is a visually explosive journey of discovery that ways the solutions aimed at restoring our planets. Orbits Space Junk runs through January 6th, 2013 the last reef was made with new macro underwater cinematography. The last reef reveals and astonishing world rarely seen at this scale. The film presents an unprecedented vision of the intriguing creatures that participate [00:23:00] in altering the geology of our planet. The last reef runs through May 5th, 2013 the exploratorium is leaving its only home at the Palace of fine arts and moving to piers 15 and 17 on the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. The new exploratorium will open in the spring of 2013 this coming January 2nd is the last day to experience the exploratorium as it is currently installed at the Palace of fine arts opened in 1969 [00:23:30] the exploratorium has evolved in this unwieldy space for 43 years. Catch one final glimpse. Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013 check the exploratorium website for special events on that final day. The website is exploratorium.edu Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: for the new segment. I want to do something a little different. As the year [00:24:00] draws to a close. I want to offer a short update on salient, national and commercial space launch ventures. Starting with the u s NASA reports that the Orien spacecraft is coming together for its 2014 test flight. Orianna is a new capsule that will take human exploration beyond earth orbit for the first time in 40 years. The first unmanned flight test of Orien will be launched a top a Delta for rocket from Cape Kennedy. The capsule [00:24:30] will be flown 3,600 miles above the earth and then return to the earth at 5,000 miles per hour for re-entry. The reentry will test the heat yields the landing at sea and the u s navy's recovery of the capsule. The longer term plans are to test the same capsule launched on NASA's next heavy lift rocket dubbed the space launch system. Speaker 2: SLS in 2017 SLS will launch NASA's Orient Spacecraft and other [00:25:00] payloads beyond lower earth orbit providing an entirely new capability for human exploration. Space x, the U S Commercial Space Company has completed the first of a contracted 12 supply missions to the international space station. Space X is also working with NASA to develop and test the dragon capsule to allow it to transport humans to and from the international space station. On that point. In August, NASA announced the winners [00:25:30] of the commercial crew integrated capability funded space act agreements. This program is designed to supply NASA with a domestic commercial capability to transport humans into low earth orbit, specifically to the International Space Station and back. The winning companies are Boeing with a $460 million contract space x at $440 million and Sierra Nevada corporation receiving 212.5 million. [00:26:00] In June, 2012 China launched this shungite in nine spacecraft, a top a long march rocket. The spacecraft carried three crew members on a mission to dock with the Chinese space station. The mission was successful and is widely regarded as a major accomplishment for the Chinese based program. The mission will be repeated. In 2013 India marked its 101st space mission. October 1st of 2012 [00:26:30] with the launch of its heaviest communications. Satellite Gee sat 10 from French Guyana. The Indian Space Research Organization has 10 mission scheduled for 2013 the tentative capper is a plan in November, 2013 Mars orbiter to be done without any international help. Speaker 2: The Russian space program continues to struggle after a series of embarrassing failures in spacecraft launches and flight operations that have cast [00:27:00] the future of the entire program. In doubt, observers fear that the rise of cheaper, more modern and reliable commercial space companies in the United States will peel off Russia's spaced services customers who currently infuse $1 billion annually into the Russian space. Industry. Insiders say consolidation, innovation, and modernization are required to save the industry. Leadership and funding for such a revival program are missing. At this point. The European space [00:27:30] agency successfully launched seven Ariane five rockets from their space port in French, Guyana during 2012 the Arianne five has had 53 successful launches in a row since December, 2002 Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 2: an interesting space, junk liability arose for the European Space Agency. When a large lower earth orbit satellite nearing the end of its fuel supply suddenly went silent. The satellite is now stuck in a prime orbit corridor [00:28:00] that will take 100 years to degrade and fall to earth during the next 100 years. This satellite may collide with other satellites. If it does, the European Space Agency is thought to be liable for the damage done. No removal method of space. Junk currently exists. That's it. Happy New Year. Speaker 1: [inaudible]Speaker 2: [00:28:30] the music heard on the show is by Los [inaudible]. David from his album folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license. 3.0 Speaker 1: attribution. [inaudible] thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to my severe eating and address is spectrum dot kalx@yahoo.com [00:29:00] chumminess in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:29:30] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part one, Delia explains Nano Science and Technology. She talks about her research with nanocrystals to make thin films. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today is part one of a two part interview with Delia Mil Iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, [00:01:00] Delia mill iron is a chemist. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her phd from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry which has recently spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies for group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technology. Delios group was recently awarded a $3 million grant [00:01:30] by the Department of Energy Advanced Research projects, agency dash energy by e for her work on smart window technologies onto the interview. Delia mill iron. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 5: Thank you.Speaker 4: I suspect that most of our listeners have heard of nanoscience but don't have a lot of perspective on the detail. Would you explain what makes nanoscience and nanotechnology unique? Speaker 5: Sure, [00:02:00] so nano science is about investigating how the properties of matter change sometimes quite dramatically when we structure them on the nanometers scale, which is really the molecular scale. So in a sense it's quite related to chemistry, but it's about materials and matter and how their behavior is very different than what you'd expect from macroscopic pieces of material. Would you like some examples? [00:02:30] Sure. An example would be great. Okay. A classic example is to look at the optical properties or just the visible appearance of gold and everyone knows, of course, when gold is macroscopic, it's shiny and it's yellowish and we're very used to that form of gold. When you make gold in the form of nanoparticles, the things that are, let's say between five and 50 nanometers across [00:03:00] or containing a few thousand atoms per particle, then the gold no longer looks either yellow or shiny. In fact, you can make stable dispersion or solution of gold at that scale in water. And it appears translucent and red in color. And this effect of Nano scaling and gold has been used to color artistic objects for centuries, but we've only recently become to systematically [00:03:30] understand the science of how these sorts of properties can change so dramatically when we make materials in the nanoscale. Speaker 4: So the actual doing of it has been done for a long time, but the understanding is what's more recent and then the ability to recreate Speaker 5: and the ability to control and deliberately manipulate. Yes. So there are plenty of instances of incidental or almost accidental creation of nanoscale materials and [00:04:00] utilization of these nanoscale effects on properties. But the science of it is about systematically correlating the structure and composition and materials to their properties. And then the nanotechnology or the engineering of of nanoscale materials is about deliberately controlling those properties to create new functional things, objects, devices and so on that we can use for useful things all around us. Speaker 4: And what are some of the common things [00:04:30] that we find nano technology in in our daily lives? Speaker 5: As with any new technology. The first applications are fairly pedestrian in some sense and don't require the most exquisite control over the materials. So one that's quite common is to use metal oxide nanocrystals. Typically things like zinc oxide or titanium oxide in sunblock. These materials absorb UV radiation to [00:05:00] protect our skin from damage from UV. But because they're at the nano scale, instead of looking white, it can be clear. And so it's just that ugly, much more pleasing to put on some block that then appears clear, but still does the job of blocking UV radiation. So this doesn't require a very fine control over the details of the structure or the size of the material. It's only important that the scale of the oxide particles be well below the wavelength [00:05:30] of light, and that's what makes it clear. So it's a very simple use, but nonetheless, very practical and helpful. Speaker 4: What are you finding are the challenges of working with nanoscale material? Speaker 5: It's all about taking that control to the next level. Chemists have learned for a long time how to manipulate atoms and create bonds and put them together into small molecules. Now we're working with structures of [00:06:00] a somewhat larger length scale and wanting to control different aspects of the composition and structure. So there are no ready solutions for deliberately arranging the atoms into let's say a five nanometer crystal with precision, um, in order to generate the properties that you'd like or again, just understand them frankly. So both the creation of materials with precise control and detailed understanding of what their structure is are still very [00:06:30] big challenges. Of course conventional microscopy methods don't extend very well to these small length scales. So there's a need for new characterization approaches. And then as I said, the chemical methods for making molecules and small molecular systems likewise don't necessarily translate to the slightly bigger scale that is nanometer length scale of these materials. Speaker 5: So we need a innovations on all sides, making new materials, new ways to look at them and characterize [00:07:00] them. And then finally the third piece is the theory that helps understand their properties and predict new properties. Again, it's sort of an awkward in between lanes scale where atomic detail matters, but larger scale aspects of how the materials come together matters as well. And that's very difficult to approach with computational methods, so we're seeing the frontier of nanoscience is pushing scientists from all different disciplines to advance their tools and their techniques [00:07:30] in order to really take advantage of what can be done at that landscape. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 6: Delia mill iron is our guest. She is the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory molecular foundry. She is a chemist working at the nanoscale. You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Speaker 4: You've talked about the meter. Yes. Is that a new form of measurement and how does it relate to anything [00:08:00] else? How do we reflect on an nanometre? Sure, Speaker 5: so it's not a new measure. It's simply a meter times 10 to the minus ninth that's what what Nano means and a more conventional measure on that lane scale might be an Angstrom, which is a traditional measure. It's one order of magnitude smaller than an animator, but to put it in more practical terms, I like to think of the Nano crystals that I work with, for example, which are about five nanometers across, [00:08:30] are about a million times smaller than an ant. So that for me gives me a sort of practical reference point as a chemist. It also makes sense to me to think of a five nanometer crystal as containing about a thousand atoms, but atoms are not necessarily a easy to understand lane skill for everybody. So the the ant is maybe a more common reference point, what natural materials have been created and what about them makes them [00:09:00] more promising than another depending on the realm of properties that you examine. Speaker 5: Promising has all sorts of different meanings, right? So things like semiconductor nano wires or perhaps graphene or carbon nanotubes may be considered promising for new electronic materials because the transport of electrons through these structures can proceed quite unimpeded and move very [00:09:30] readily so that we could have fast electronics or very conductive transparent thin films to replace the things we use today in our flat panel displays and so on. Other nano materials are very promising for diagnostics of different kinds of diseases or even for therapy of different kinds of health issues. So there are biological probes being developed that can be directed into specific areas [00:10:00] of your body. For example, where a tumor site is located using a nanoscale magnet and then they also carry a payload of drugs that can then be released specifically at that site. So you could have targeted therapies. So these sort of multifunctional nano constructs are very interesting. Speaker 5: I would say promising in the long run for for new targeted therapies, I have many fewer side effects than these broad spectrum drugs that we commonly use today. In terms of coming up [00:10:30] with new nanomaterials, is it as often the case that you are trying to create something for a specific purpose or that you accidentally find something that has a characteristic that can be applied pretty widely or to a specific use? I think that much of Nano materials research is motivated by the investigation and discovery of new phenomenon. And I distinguish that from targeted application [00:11:00] focused development because it's often unclear what a new material or it's phenomenological characteristics will actually be useful for. In my lab. Uh, we do tend to think of practical connections, but then the ones that we ultimately realize could be very different from the one that motivated us at the outset of the project. So I think as a scientist it's important to be attuned [00:11:30] for surprising opportunities to apply materials in ways you didn't anticipate. And so you have to be aware of the needs that are out there, the big needs in society, basically paying attention for how the phenomena you're discovering might map onto these societal needs. You probably as a scientist, not going to able to take Speaker 5: a new discovery all the way through to a practical application. But if you don't at [00:12:00] least identify those connections, it will be difficult for engineers and industry to take your discoveries and turn them into practical applications. So there's a role on both sides to make that connection. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are the deputy director of the molecular foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Tell us about the foundry and the work going on there. Speaker 5: So the molecular foundry is a very special place. It's one of five department of energy funded [00:12:30] nanoscale science research centers, which are located around the country. And we have the mission of pushing the forefront of nanoscience broadly defined, so nanoscience in all different aspects while at the same time acting as a user facility to help others in the scientific community, be they academic researchers, industry, others at national labs move the science in their areas forward by leveraging the tools of nanoscience. [00:13:00] So it in effect, it becomes this amazing hub of activity and nanoscience where people from really all around the world are coming to us to leverage capabilities that we are continuously advancing and developing in different kinds of nanoscience be it inorganic nanocrystals, which is my focus theoretical methods for treating nanoscience completely out of this world. In my mind, I'm spectroscopic techniques [00:13:30] for looking at nanostructures.Speaker 5: All these things are being developed at the foundry, at the absolute bleeding edge of nanoscience, and these can have impact in all different areas. And so our users come, they work with us, they learn these state of the art techniques, generate new materials that they can take home with them to their own laboratories, integrate into their materials and processes and devices and so on or do their a specialized characterization on and the amount of science that results by [00:14:00] that multiplication and leveraging is really very exciting to watch. Oh, it's a hub. It's an intersection of ideas in one place of problem, motivations from different perspectives and then it branches right on back out to impact science and in all different ways. Speaker 4: What sort of a funding horizon are you on? Speaker 5: Uh, so we have very stable funding from the Department of Energy. These centers are quite new. They were only established [00:14:30] over the last 10 years. The foundry has been in full operations for about six years and they are very much the flagship capabilities of the office of science within the Department of Energy and will be for quite some time to come. So they're making a very stable and continued investment in this area and continue to see the value and opportunity for really in the end, American economy, taxpayers and industrial [00:15:00] innovation that's generated by all of this scientific activity. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Delia mill, iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: what's the focus of your research? Speaker 5: So my research involves the [00:15:30] innovation of Inorganic nanocrystals, which are a few nanometers diameter crystal and arrangements of atoms. And they're using these as building blocks to construct materials. So we put them together with each other and two, for example, porous architectures, or you put them together with polymers or we put them together, uh, with glassy components to construct macroscopic materials often than films. And we're interested [00:16:00] in these primarily for their electrochemical functions. So electric chemical devices are useful for things like batteries, supercapacitors a storing energy also for converting energy. And in our case, we've most recently been focused on electrochromic window applications. So these are function like batteries, but instead of storing charge, they have the effect of changing the tint on a window dynamically as a function [00:16:30] of voltage. But everything starts with the nanocrystals and new ways to put them together with other components to construct materials. Speaker 4: And is the crystal material something unusual or is it real commonplace? Speaker 5: It varies actually. Most of the materials that we craft into nanocrystals are well known and have been studied for a long time in their bulk form. So just as in the example of gold being very different in both and obviously useful for [00:17:00] all sorts of things like currency now having very different function on the Nano scale. We work with materials that maybe are not quite as common places goal, but nonetheless fairly common. So one material we've been working with a lot lately is called indium tin oxide. And whether you know it or not, you probably use it every day. It's the material that provides conductivity in flat panel displays, touch screens, all of these sorts of things. And so in it's normal thin [00:17:30] film form, it's obviously very well established and used around the world for all different applications. It was only synthesized in a well controlled way as Netto crystals in the last few years. Speaker 5: And in the Neto crystal form, it has all of these wonderful properties relating to electric chromic windows. And beyond that it has, I guess I should say more fundamentally, the phenomenology underlying those windows applications is that this [00:18:00] material is plasmonic, which means that it can effectively condense a near infrared light to a very small scale, can amplify the electric field from the light, basically manipulate light in a new way. And people have been doing this with metals like gold as one example. Silver is another for a while, and a whole new field of plasmonics has emerged. Um, now with Ito on the nanoscale, we're bringing [00:18:30] plasmonics into the infrared region of the spectrum, which is going to give us whole news opportunities for manipulation of light of that sword, channeling light and so on. So the, as I was saying earlier, the phenomenology is where we spend the most time and discovery of these plasmonic characteristics of Ito is going to lead to many, many applications. The one we've been focusing on is this electric chromic window idea. Speaker 4: Oh, is this one of the real opportunities [00:19:00] within nano science that when you take a material to the Nano scale, you get all this new behavior [inaudible] Speaker 5: that's the fundamental concept underlying the investigation of nanoscale materials. And so the NNI, the national nanoscience initiative or national nanotechnology initiative, which was started, you know, over a decade ago now had as its founding principle, basically that idea that we would investigate the properties that emerge [00:19:30] when materials are made on the nanoscale that are very distinct from what we see on the macro scale. And from this, uh, we would have a whole new playbook for creating functional materials and devices. Speaker 4: There's been talk about the idea of transparent failure being a good thing in science. So you can learn from what goes wrong. Speaker 5: Yeah, science is full of failure. Most things don't work, especially when you first try them. [00:20:00] So I like to say that in order to be a scientist, you have to be unrelentingly optimistic because you're great idea that you're incredibly excited about, probably won't work or at least it won't work initially. And then you have to try again and try again and try again. And often it won't work even after you've tried again many, many times and you still have to have the same passion for your next great idea that you wake up the next morning [00:20:30] and you're excited to go try something new. That belief in possibility I think is fundamental to science, but at the same point. Yeah, I think you're right. The failures are not merely something to be discarded along the way to, and they do teach us a lot and frankly they suggest the next great idea more often than not. Speaker 5: So we have in mind something we're trying to do and a complete failure to [00:21:00] accomplish that. Whether it's a bond we're trying to make or a way we're trying to control a shape of a material or to create a specific optical property we get something we didn't expect and that should and when science is functioning well does cause you to stop and think about why that's happening. In fact, maybe the challenge, some of the challenge in doing science is not becoming too distracted by all of the [00:21:30] possibilities that emerge. When you do that. It's a mistake of course to be too single minded and focused on an end goal too early because you'll, you'll miss really all the new phenomenon, the things that you least expected are often the most important and innovative, so you have to pay attention to these things and perhaps redefine them as not being failures but rather being a new success or a new seed of a success that can take you in a new direction. Speaker 5: That said, there probably are things that [00:22:00] even in that from that perspective can be viewed as a negative result or a failure and there's an important role. I mean the scientific literature is, is full of every scholarly article has to include a transparent reporting of the conditions that led to what's being defined as success or specific results and a recording of what happens elsewise basically because that allows you to understand much more [00:22:30] deeply where that successful result emerges if you understand the conditions that lead to failure and different types of failure. So definitely for understanding sake, this is essential. Speaker 3: This is the end part. One of our interview with Delia [inaudible] finale, part two will air December 28th at noon. Don't miss it. The molecular foundry website [00:23:00] is foundries.lbl.gov Speaker 1: now the calendar with Lisa [inaudible] and Rick Karnofsky on Saturday, December 15th science at Cow Lecture series. We'll present a free public talk by Rosemary, a Joyce or UC Berkeley anthropology professor on everyday life and science in the Pre-colombian Mayan world. Joyce. We'll discuss how the Maya developed and use their calendar, which spans almost 1200 [00:23:30] years ending around December 21st, 2012 the end of the world, she will explore the observational astronomy made possible through the use of written records, employing one of the only two scripts in the world to develop a sign for zero. The lecture which is free and open to the public, will be held on December 15th from 11 to 12:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 7: Tomorrow, December 15th Wild Oakland. [00:24:00] We'll have a free one hour walk from noon to one defined an identifying mushrooms around lake merit. Meet at the Rotary Science Center on the corner of Perkins in Bellevue. The walk will be around the grassy areas, so rattling the boat house and the Lake Merritt Gardens. Learn to read the landscape and find where the mushrooms hide and their role and the local ecology. Bring guidebooks. Have you have them as well as a small pocket knife, a paintbrush [inaudible] jacket. Visit a wild oakland.org for more [00:24:30] info. Speaker 1: On Saturday, December 15th the American Society for Cell Biology welcomes the public to its 2012 keynote lecture. The event will feature Steven Chu Nobel laureate and US Secretary of energy and Arthur Levinson, chair of Genentech and apple here about the future of science and innovation and view an art exhibit by scientists, artists, Graham Johnson and Janet, a Wasa. Attend the art exhibit and reception [00:25:00] from five to five 45 and then stay and listen to the Speakers from six to 7:30 PM free. Preregistration is required at ASC B. Dot. O. R. G, the event takes place at Moscone center west seven 47 Howard street in San Francisco. Saturday, December 15th Speaker 7: the regional parks botanical garden at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park drive and Tilden regional park in the Berkeley hills. [00:25:30] Host the Wayne Rodrick lecture series. These free lectures are on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM and are on a variety of topics related to plants and natural history. Free Tours of the garden. Begin at 2:00 PM tomorrow's tuck features Dick O'Donnell, who will discuss the floristic surprises and the drought stricken southwest and next Saturday the 22nd of December. Steve Edwards. We'll talk about the botany and GLG of the Lassen region. More information on the series is available@nativeplants.org Speaker 1: [00:26:00] beginning on December 26 the Lawrence Hall of science will begin screening and interactive program in their planetarium called constellations. Tonight. A simple star map will be provided to help participants learn to identify the most prominent constellations of the season in the planetarium. Sky. Questions and activities will be part of the program. The presentation will continue until January 4th and will be held every weekday from two to 2:45 PM [00:26:30] tickets are $4 at the Lawrence Hall of science after the price of admission. Remember that's beginning on December 26th [inaudible] Speaker 7: with two news stories. Here is Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of itch. Nature News reported on December 11th Speaker 1: that the u s national ignition facility or Nif at Lawrence Livermore national laboratory is changing directions. Nip uses a 192 ultraviolet laser beams that interact with the gold capsule, creating x-rays. These x-rays [00:27:00] crush a two millimeter target pellet of deuterium and tritium causing fusion. Nif has not yet achieved ignition where it may deliver more energy than it consumes I triple e spectrum criticized the project for being $5 billion over budget and years behind. Schedule in the revised plans [inaudible] scale back to focus on ignition and would devote three years for deciding whether it would be possible. It would increase focus on research, a fusion for the nuclear weapons [00:27:30] stockpile stewardship program and basic science. It would also devote resources to other ignition concepts. Namely polar direct drive on Omega at the University of Rochester and magnetically driven implosions on the San Diego z machine. The Journal. Nature reports that rows matter a natural plant die once price throughout the old world to make fiery red textiles has found a second life as the basis for a new green [00:28:00] battery chemist from the City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U S army research lab to develop a nontoxic and sustainable lithium ion battery powered by Perper in a dye extracted from the roots of the matter plant 3,500 years ago. Speaker 1: Civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled matter roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds, and pinks. In its latest incarnation, [00:28:30] the climbing herb could lay the foundation for an ecofriendly alternative to traditional lithium ion batteries. These batteries charge everything from your mobile phone to electric vehicles, but carry with them risks to the environment during production, recycling and disposal. They also pumped 72 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour of energy in a lithium ion battery. These grim facts have fed a surging demand to develop green batteries [00:29:00] growing matter or other biomass crops to make batteries which soak up carbon dioxide and eliminate the disposal problem. Speaker 3: The news occurred during the show with his bylaw Astana David from his album folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Princeton and UC Berkeley trained chemist Delia Milliron is the Deputy Director of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. In part one, Delia explains Nano Science and Technology. She talks about her research with nanocrystals to make thin films. foundry.lbl.govTranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm Speaker 3: [inaudible].Speaker 1: Welcome [00:00:30] to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 4: Good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Today is part one of a two part interview with Delia Mil Iron, the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley national lab molecular foundry, [00:01:00] Delia mill iron is a chemist. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her phd from UC Berkeley. Delia leads a research group at the molecular foundry which has recently spun off a startup named heliotrope technologies for group is a partner in the newly announced Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a multistate department of energy research hub focused on developing transformative new battery technology. Delios group was recently awarded a $3 million grant [00:01:30] by the Department of Energy Advanced Research projects, agency dash energy by e for her work on smart window technologies onto the interview. Delia mill iron. Welcome to spectrum. Speaker 5: Thank you.Speaker 4: I suspect that most of our listeners have heard of nanoscience but don't have a lot of perspective on the detail. Would you explain what makes nanoscience and nanotechnology unique? Speaker 5: Sure, [00:02:00] so nano science is about investigating how the properties of matter change sometimes quite dramatically when we structure them on the nanometers scale, which is really the molecular scale. So in a sense it's quite related to chemistry, but it's about materials and matter and how their behavior is very different than what you'd expect from macroscopic pieces of material. Would you like some examples? [00:02:30] Sure. An example would be great. Okay. A classic example is to look at the optical properties or just the visible appearance of gold and everyone knows, of course, when gold is macroscopic, it's shiny and it's yellowish and we're very used to that form of gold. When you make gold in the form of nanoparticles, the things that are, let's say between five and 50 nanometers across [00:03:00] or containing a few thousand atoms per particle, then the gold no longer looks either yellow or shiny. In fact, you can make stable dispersion or solution of gold at that scale in water. And it appears translucent and red in color. And this effect of Nano scaling and gold has been used to color artistic objects for centuries, but we've only recently become to systematically [00:03:30] understand the science of how these sorts of properties can change so dramatically when we make materials in the nanoscale. Speaker 4: So the actual doing of it has been done for a long time, but the understanding is what's more recent and then the ability to recreate Speaker 5: and the ability to control and deliberately manipulate. Yes. So there are plenty of instances of incidental or almost accidental creation of nanoscale materials and [00:04:00] utilization of these nanoscale effects on properties. But the science of it is about systematically correlating the structure and composition and materials to their properties. And then the nanotechnology or the engineering of of nanoscale materials is about deliberately controlling those properties to create new functional things, objects, devices and so on that we can use for useful things all around us. Speaker 4: And what are some of the common things [00:04:30] that we find nano technology in in our daily lives? Speaker 5: As with any new technology. The first applications are fairly pedestrian in some sense and don't require the most exquisite control over the materials. So one that's quite common is to use metal oxide nanocrystals. Typically things like zinc oxide or titanium oxide in sunblock. These materials absorb UV radiation to [00:05:00] protect our skin from damage from UV. But because they're at the nano scale, instead of looking white, it can be clear. And so it's just that ugly, much more pleasing to put on some block that then appears clear, but still does the job of blocking UV radiation. So this doesn't require a very fine control over the details of the structure or the size of the material. It's only important that the scale of the oxide particles be well below the wavelength [00:05:30] of light, and that's what makes it clear. So it's a very simple use, but nonetheless, very practical and helpful. Speaker 4: What are you finding are the challenges of working with nanoscale material? Speaker 5: It's all about taking that control to the next level. Chemists have learned for a long time how to manipulate atoms and create bonds and put them together into small molecules. Now we're working with structures of [00:06:00] a somewhat larger length scale and wanting to control different aspects of the composition and structure. So there are no ready solutions for deliberately arranging the atoms into let's say a five nanometer crystal with precision, um, in order to generate the properties that you'd like or again, just understand them frankly. So both the creation of materials with precise control and detailed understanding of what their structure is are still very [00:06:30] big challenges. Of course conventional microscopy methods don't extend very well to these small length scales. So there's a need for new characterization approaches. And then as I said, the chemical methods for making molecules and small molecular systems likewise don't necessarily translate to the slightly bigger scale that is nanometer length scale of these materials. Speaker 5: So we need a innovations on all sides, making new materials, new ways to look at them and characterize [00:07:00] them. And then finally the third piece is the theory that helps understand their properties and predict new properties. Again, it's sort of an awkward in between lanes scale where atomic detail matters, but larger scale aspects of how the materials come together matters as well. And that's very difficult to approach with computational methods, so we're seeing the frontier of nanoscience is pushing scientists from all different disciplines to advance their tools and their techniques [00:07:30] in order to really take advantage of what can be done at that landscape. Speaker 4: Okay. Speaker 6: Delia mill iron is our guest. She is the deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory molecular foundry. She is a chemist working at the nanoscale. You are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Speaker 4: You've talked about the meter. Yes. Is that a new form of measurement and how does it relate to anything [00:08:00] else? How do we reflect on an nanometre? Sure, Speaker 5: so it's not a new measure. It's simply a meter times 10 to the minus ninth that's what what Nano means and a more conventional measure on that lane scale might be an Angstrom, which is a traditional measure. It's one order of magnitude smaller than an animator, but to put it in more practical terms, I like to think of the Nano crystals that I work with, for example, which are about five nanometers across, [00:08:30] are about a million times smaller than an ant. So that for me gives me a sort of practical reference point as a chemist. It also makes sense to me to think of a five nanometer crystal as containing about a thousand atoms, but atoms are not necessarily a easy to understand lane skill for everybody. So the the ant is maybe a more common reference point, what natural materials have been created and what about them makes them [00:09:00] more promising than another depending on the realm of properties that you examine. Speaker 5: Promising has all sorts of different meanings, right? So things like semiconductor nano wires or perhaps graphene or carbon nanotubes may be considered promising for new electronic materials because the transport of electrons through these structures can proceed quite unimpeded and move very [00:09:30] readily so that we could have fast electronics or very conductive transparent thin films to replace the things we use today in our flat panel displays and so on. Other nano materials are very promising for diagnostics of different kinds of diseases or even for therapy of different kinds of health issues. So there are biological probes being developed that can be directed into specific areas [00:10:00] of your body. For example, where a tumor site is located using a nanoscale magnet and then they also carry a payload of drugs that can then be released specifically at that site. So you could have targeted therapies. So these sort of multifunctional nano constructs are very interesting. Speaker 5: I would say promising in the long run for for new targeted therapies, I have many fewer side effects than these broad spectrum drugs that we commonly use today. In terms of coming up [00:10:30] with new nanomaterials, is it as often the case that you are trying to create something for a specific purpose or that you accidentally find something that has a characteristic that can be applied pretty widely or to a specific use? I think that much of Nano materials research is motivated by the investigation and discovery of new phenomenon. And I distinguish that from targeted application [00:11:00] focused development because it's often unclear what a new material or it's phenomenological characteristics will actually be useful for. In my lab. Uh, we do tend to think of practical connections, but then the ones that we ultimately realize could be very different from the one that motivated us at the outset of the project. So I think as a scientist it's important to be attuned [00:11:30] for surprising opportunities to apply materials in ways you didn't anticipate. And so you have to be aware of the needs that are out there, the big needs in society, basically paying attention for how the phenomena you're discovering might map onto these societal needs. You probably as a scientist, not going to able to take Speaker 5: a new discovery all the way through to a practical application. But if you don't at [00:12:00] least identify those connections, it will be difficult for engineers and industry to take your discoveries and turn them into practical applications. So there's a role on both sides to make that connection. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are the deputy director of the molecular foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Tell us about the foundry and the work going on there. Speaker 5: So the molecular foundry is a very special place. It's one of five department of energy funded [00:12:30] nanoscale science research centers, which are located around the country. And we have the mission of pushing the forefront of nanoscience broadly defined, so nanoscience in all different aspects while at the same time acting as a user facility to help others in the scientific community, be they academic researchers, industry, others at national labs move the science in their areas forward by leveraging the tools of nanoscience. [00:13:00] So it in effect, it becomes this amazing hub of activity and nanoscience where people from really all around the world are coming to us to leverage capabilities that we are continuously advancing and developing in different kinds of nanoscience be it inorganic nanocrystals, which is my focus theoretical methods for treating nanoscience completely out of this world. In my mind, I'm spectroscopic techniques [00:13:30] for looking at nanostructures.Speaker 5: All these things are being developed at the foundry, at the absolute bleeding edge of nanoscience, and these can have impact in all different areas. And so our users come, they work with us, they learn these state of the art techniques, generate new materials that they can take home with them to their own laboratories, integrate into their materials and processes and devices and so on or do their a specialized characterization on and the amount of science that results by [00:14:00] that multiplication and leveraging is really very exciting to watch. Oh, it's a hub. It's an intersection of ideas in one place of problem, motivations from different perspectives and then it branches right on back out to impact science and in all different ways. Speaker 4: What sort of a funding horizon are you on? Speaker 5: Uh, so we have very stable funding from the Department of Energy. These centers are quite new. They were only established [00:14:30] over the last 10 years. The foundry has been in full operations for about six years and they are very much the flagship capabilities of the office of science within the Department of Energy and will be for quite some time to come. So they're making a very stable and continued investment in this area and continue to see the value and opportunity for really in the end, American economy, taxpayers and industrial [00:15:00] innovation that's generated by all of this scientific activity. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: you were listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley, Delia mill, iron of Lawrence Berkeley national lab is talking about her work in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Speaker 2: [inaudible]Speaker 4: what's the focus of your research? Speaker 5: So my research involves the [00:15:30] innovation of Inorganic nanocrystals, which are a few nanometers diameter crystal and arrangements of atoms. And they're using these as building blocks to construct materials. So we put them together with each other and two, for example, porous architectures, or you put them together with polymers or we put them together, uh, with glassy components to construct macroscopic materials often than films. And we're interested [00:16:00] in these primarily for their electrochemical functions. So electric chemical devices are useful for things like batteries, supercapacitors a storing energy also for converting energy. And in our case, we've most recently been focused on electrochromic window applications. So these are function like batteries, but instead of storing charge, they have the effect of changing the tint on a window dynamically as a function [00:16:30] of voltage. But everything starts with the nanocrystals and new ways to put them together with other components to construct materials. Speaker 4: And is the crystal material something unusual or is it real commonplace? Speaker 5: It varies actually. Most of the materials that we craft into nanocrystals are well known and have been studied for a long time in their bulk form. So just as in the example of gold being very different in both and obviously useful for [00:17:00] all sorts of things like currency now having very different function on the Nano scale. We work with materials that maybe are not quite as common places goal, but nonetheless fairly common. So one material we've been working with a lot lately is called indium tin oxide. And whether you know it or not, you probably use it every day. It's the material that provides conductivity in flat panel displays, touch screens, all of these sorts of things. And so in it's normal thin [00:17:30] film form, it's obviously very well established and used around the world for all different applications. It was only synthesized in a well controlled way as Netto crystals in the last few years. Speaker 5: And in the Neto crystal form, it has all of these wonderful properties relating to electric chromic windows. And beyond that it has, I guess I should say more fundamentally, the phenomenology underlying those windows applications is that this [00:18:00] material is plasmonic, which means that it can effectively condense a near infrared light to a very small scale, can amplify the electric field from the light, basically manipulate light in a new way. And people have been doing this with metals like gold as one example. Silver is another for a while, and a whole new field of plasmonics has emerged. Um, now with Ito on the nanoscale, we're bringing [00:18:30] plasmonics into the infrared region of the spectrum, which is going to give us whole news opportunities for manipulation of light of that sword, channeling light and so on. So the, as I was saying earlier, the phenomenology is where we spend the most time and discovery of these plasmonic characteristics of Ito is going to lead to many, many applications. The one we've been focusing on is this electric chromic window idea. Speaker 4: Oh, is this one of the real opportunities [00:19:00] within nano science that when you take a material to the Nano scale, you get all this new behavior [inaudible] Speaker 5: that's the fundamental concept underlying the investigation of nanoscale materials. And so the NNI, the national nanoscience initiative or national nanotechnology initiative, which was started, you know, over a decade ago now had as its founding principle, basically that idea that we would investigate the properties that emerge [00:19:30] when materials are made on the nanoscale that are very distinct from what we see on the macro scale. And from this, uh, we would have a whole new playbook for creating functional materials and devices. Speaker 4: There's been talk about the idea of transparent failure being a good thing in science. So you can learn from what goes wrong. Speaker 5: Yeah, science is full of failure. Most things don't work, especially when you first try them. [00:20:00] So I like to say that in order to be a scientist, you have to be unrelentingly optimistic because you're great idea that you're incredibly excited about, probably won't work or at least it won't work initially. And then you have to try again and try again and try again. And often it won't work even after you've tried again many, many times and you still have to have the same passion for your next great idea that you wake up the next morning [00:20:30] and you're excited to go try something new. That belief in possibility I think is fundamental to science, but at the same point. Yeah, I think you're right. The failures are not merely something to be discarded along the way to, and they do teach us a lot and frankly they suggest the next great idea more often than not. Speaker 5: So we have in mind something we're trying to do and a complete failure to [00:21:00] accomplish that. Whether it's a bond we're trying to make or a way we're trying to control a shape of a material or to create a specific optical property we get something we didn't expect and that should and when science is functioning well does cause you to stop and think about why that's happening. In fact, maybe the challenge, some of the challenge in doing science is not becoming too distracted by all of the [00:21:30] possibilities that emerge. When you do that. It's a mistake of course to be too single minded and focused on an end goal too early because you'll, you'll miss really all the new phenomenon, the things that you least expected are often the most important and innovative, so you have to pay attention to these things and perhaps redefine them as not being failures but rather being a new success or a new seed of a success that can take you in a new direction. Speaker 5: That said, there probably are things that [00:22:00] even in that from that perspective can be viewed as a negative result or a failure and there's an important role. I mean the scientific literature is, is full of every scholarly article has to include a transparent reporting of the conditions that led to what's being defined as success or specific results and a recording of what happens elsewise basically because that allows you to understand much more [00:22:30] deeply where that successful result emerges if you understand the conditions that lead to failure and different types of failure. So definitely for understanding sake, this is essential. Speaker 3: This is the end part. One of our interview with Delia [inaudible] finale, part two will air December 28th at noon. Don't miss it. The molecular foundry website [00:23:00] is foundries.lbl.gov Speaker 1: now the calendar with Lisa [inaudible] and Rick Karnofsky on Saturday, December 15th science at Cow Lecture series. We'll present a free public talk by Rosemary, a Joyce or UC Berkeley anthropology professor on everyday life and science in the Pre-colombian Mayan world. Joyce. We'll discuss how the Maya developed and use their calendar, which spans almost 1200 [00:23:30] years ending around December 21st, 2012 the end of the world, she will explore the observational astronomy made possible through the use of written records, employing one of the only two scripts in the world to develop a sign for zero. The lecture which is free and open to the public, will be held on December 15th from 11 to 12:00 AM in room 100 of the genetics and plant biology building on the UC Berkeley campus. Speaker 7: Tomorrow, December 15th Wild Oakland. [00:24:00] We'll have a free one hour walk from noon to one defined an identifying mushrooms around lake merit. Meet at the Rotary Science Center on the corner of Perkins in Bellevue. The walk will be around the grassy areas, so rattling the boat house and the Lake Merritt Gardens. Learn to read the landscape and find where the mushrooms hide and their role and the local ecology. Bring guidebooks. Have you have them as well as a small pocket knife, a paintbrush [inaudible] jacket. Visit a wild oakland.org for more [00:24:30] info. Speaker 1: On Saturday, December 15th the American Society for Cell Biology welcomes the public to its 2012 keynote lecture. The event will feature Steven Chu Nobel laureate and US Secretary of energy and Arthur Levinson, chair of Genentech and apple here about the future of science and innovation and view an art exhibit by scientists, artists, Graham Johnson and Janet, a Wasa. Attend the art exhibit and reception [00:25:00] from five to five 45 and then stay and listen to the Speakers from six to 7:30 PM free. Preregistration is required at ASC B. Dot. O. R. G, the event takes place at Moscone center west seven 47 Howard street in San Francisco. Saturday, December 15th Speaker 7: the regional parks botanical garden at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park drive and Tilden regional park in the Berkeley hills. [00:25:30] Host the Wayne Rodrick lecture series. These free lectures are on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM and are on a variety of topics related to plants and natural history. Free Tours of the garden. Begin at 2:00 PM tomorrow's tuck features Dick O'Donnell, who will discuss the floristic surprises and the drought stricken southwest and next Saturday the 22nd of December. Steve Edwards. We'll talk about the botany and GLG of the Lassen region. More information on the series is available@nativeplants.org Speaker 1: [00:26:00] beginning on December 26 the Lawrence Hall of science will begin screening and interactive program in their planetarium called constellations. Tonight. A simple star map will be provided to help participants learn to identify the most prominent constellations of the season in the planetarium. Sky. Questions and activities will be part of the program. The presentation will continue until January 4th and will be held every weekday from two to 2:45 PM [00:26:30] tickets are $4 at the Lawrence Hall of science after the price of admission. Remember that's beginning on December 26th [inaudible] Speaker 7: with two news stories. Here is Rick Karnofsky and Lisa kind of itch. Nature News reported on December 11th Speaker 1: that the u s national ignition facility or Nif at Lawrence Livermore national laboratory is changing directions. Nip uses a 192 ultraviolet laser beams that interact with the gold capsule, creating x-rays. These x-rays [00:27:00] crush a two millimeter target pellet of deuterium and tritium causing fusion. Nif has not yet achieved ignition where it may deliver more energy than it consumes I triple e spectrum criticized the project for being $5 billion over budget and years behind. Schedule in the revised plans [inaudible] scale back to focus on ignition and would devote three years for deciding whether it would be possible. It would increase focus on research, a fusion for the nuclear weapons [00:27:30] stockpile stewardship program and basic science. It would also devote resources to other ignition concepts. Namely polar direct drive on Omega at the University of Rochester and magnetically driven implosions on the San Diego z machine. The Journal. Nature reports that rows matter a natural plant die once price throughout the old world to make fiery red textiles has found a second life as the basis for a new green [00:28:00] battery chemist from the City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U S army research lab to develop a nontoxic and sustainable lithium ion battery powered by Perper in a dye extracted from the roots of the matter plant 3,500 years ago. Speaker 1: Civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled matter roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds, and pinks. In its latest incarnation, [00:28:30] the climbing herb could lay the foundation for an ecofriendly alternative to traditional lithium ion batteries. These batteries charge everything from your mobile phone to electric vehicles, but carry with them risks to the environment during production, recycling and disposal. They also pumped 72 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every kilowatt hour of energy in a lithium ion battery. These grim facts have fed a surging demand to develop green batteries [00:29:00] growing matter or other biomass crops to make batteries which soak up carbon dioxide and eliminate the disposal problem. Speaker 3: The news occurred during the show with his bylaw Astana David from his album folk and acoustic made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attribution. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via [00:29:30] our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Audio File: Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Krista Marks General Manager, Disney Online Kerpoof Studios Date: August 2, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes Lucy Sanders: Hi this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of NCWIT or the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And this is one in a series of interviews that we're doing with great entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies. And they all have great stories to tell, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship and the technology of the future. And with me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I am happy to be here. Lucy: What's going on with w3w3? Larry: Well we're doing all kinds of very neat things; we interview all kinds of neat people. But we really enjoy the NCWIT interviews because I'm having four daughters, and this idea of information technology in helping support women, it's just fantastic. Lucy: Well today is a real treat for us because today we're interviewing one of my absolute favorite people and entrepreneurs, Krista Marks. And she's a real blend of technical accomplishments, and social passion, and entrepreneurial spirit. You cannot spend more than five seconds with Krista without getting all kinds of really great information, and energy, and passion. And I had the privilege of interviewing her recently at Entrepreneurs Unplugged Session, and it was just a real treat. Everybody loved it. And I know our listeners are going to love the interview today. She's the co-founder of Kerpoof Studios, but before that in working in many technical areas with great technical credentials, patent-holder, et cetera. And when she started Kerpoof it was around a passion of children and innovation, and a great place to be on the Internet for learning. And apparently Disney thought that as well, and acquired Kerpoof in 2008. And Krista is now the general manager of Disney Online. And like I said at the Entrepreneurial Unplugged event she gets that little Mickey Mouse on her card, which I'm entirely jealous about. So welcome Krista. We're very excited to interview you. Krista Marks: Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit of about what's going on at Disney first before we launch into the interview. Krista: Well one of the most exciting things that's going on, everything on the Create portal is done in bolder. And if you go to disney.com there's a game portal like a video portal, but there's now a Create portal. And that was the vision when Disney acquired us, that we would take an extended technology we've done around Kerpoof and really combine it with their IT, and build kind of an area on that dedicated to creativity. And we've done that. But we have a very big event that's going on now that I'm super excited and proud about which is a digital mosaic. Lucy: Oh wow. Krista: It's a large scale mosaic. There are images of Mickey. We provide the tools for kids to create drawings online. Those drawings are submitted and once moderated there incorporated into a Mosaic of Mickey that takes thousands and thousands pieces of art. In fact, we are rolling out different images of Mickey and each one is populated as a Mosaic. The whole portal is very exciting but for me this is sort of the combination of what is exciting about the web. Is this idea, the technology the technology for those not interesting to me but technology combined with the kind of things you can do in terms of being kids into this story? Be part of the story to participate and that kind of interaction is just super exciting. And to do something on that scale so its not just, "hey kids come in and draw, hey kids come in and draw and be part of something larger. Is part of a large Mosaic dedicated to Mickey?" In addition, it has been hugely successful I think were over 300,000 pieces of art created today. Lucy: Wow that is awesome. I am going to check that out four sure. In addition, its just so fascinating to you knows Krista is a real pioneer in the area of innovation for kids on line and it is very inspiring. Therefore, I am glad a company that is big as Disney is getting into that, that whole area. Krista: Serious, honestly is not it I thought it was very exciting. The reality is to have a company with number one family media company in the world really embrace bringing the kids into this story. Not just saying here is our art and here is art beautiful this is what they do well. Right, they create content saying, "you know what kids we want you to create content too, we want you to be part of that." I think its extraordinary exciting and I am really proud to be part of it. Lucy: Absolutely, one of the things that we always like to ask people and you rather go back in time a little bit. And think through here you are at Disney today but you were not always at Disney. You were interested in technology for some reason so why don't you tell us how you first got interested in technology. And as you look at the technical landscape today what technology do you think are especially important? Krista: My road is not, some ways its super smooth because I went, I graduated high school and I went to college and I studied electrical engineering. I would say it was unsmooth and it is why NCWIT is so important and that when I went to college I did not know about technology or pursuing a career in technology. Which for me it ended up being electrical engineering but obviously the number of careers one can choose in technology. For me what happened in high school is that I really gravitated in mathematics and science, problem solving. This is the areas that I like, unfortunately when I got to orientation for college I sat next to a student and I said what your major is. In addition, they said they were an electrical engineer and I said I do not know what that is, what is that? And they said oh well, I do not what that is either. But I know that if you really like math and physics, that it's really the best major to have and I said oh my gosh. Those are my two favorite things. So I really fell into it. And so I think, why NCWIT is so critical in the kinds of things they're doing, that you are doing which is so important, is that I would like no young person to start college not knowing what computer science, engineering, electrical engineering, all of the areas that on can pursue in technology, bio engineering. You know, the list goes on and on. But to be really aware of those opportunities, it may not be for everyone. But at least to be aware of them and so mindfully know what you're choosing from, when you choose a career. So anyway, again, I think I got lucky which I don't think is a good thing. But the good news is I did end up there and love technology and in fact really wanted, from that point on, to be part of designing technology. And spent a number of years, my first eleven years, designing custom electronics for high energy physics experiments. Got to work around the world, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that really solidified my love of technology. Again, I was just working on really state of the art technology and systems. Great experience, great first experience. Worked with some real giants in that field and had amazing mentors. So that's kind of how I landed in technology. In terms of technology that I think is very interesting right now. I first would say, look at the I-pad, for a number of reasons. But for me, particularly, and again I'm interested in kids and technology. And the reality is kids learn by touching things. And so the I-pad is just perfectly designed for this demographic. And I think increasingly kids will literally learn how to read and problems solve using these types of devices. You know, what's interesting is, is I'm a part of a number of groups that are always thinking, gosh, can digital media actually make a difference. We have a lot of kids that are falling behind that aren't doing well. And there's always, can it be the silver bullet. We know that kids need scaffolding and they need adults to be there to help them succeed. But can digital media, can technology actually help set them and do something about this. And I think, to me, the I-pad is the first device, first piece of technology. And actually I like to bring up I-pad because a lot of times I think young people don't even think about the I-pad, the I-phone, the computer, that those are pieces of technology that are designed by technologists, right. And that how cool to have a career that, that's the kind of stuff you create, right. And I always say engineers. Look, at the end of the day all we do, we just create stuff. We build stuff whether it be Google the website, whether it be a Ferrari car, whether it be a Boeing airplane, whether it be an I-pad, and I-touch right. Software and hardware, that's what we do, we're creators, we're builders. So that's a piece that's exciting to me. I'm a little excited, I got to go to E3 which is of course the big conference this year, has to spend a little time there. In addition, have to see Microsoft's new Kinect, which of course is new tall. To me you know I would of prior to see thing that I would said the Wii. I think the Wii is very interesting piece of technology. I think its bringing back the sense of intergenerational game play. And again technology for technology's sake is not interesting to me but technology as a means to do interesting things like intergenerational play, very exciting. That takes that to the next level where you have Kinect where your whole body becomes the controller. Right, so you jump up and down on the screen the avatar jumps up and down. This is big stuff this is exciting stuff. I will say in the world self-serving but I think what we just did with the group wall, the digital Mosaic. [inaudible 09:01] is part of the kind of technology that to me is exciting, really pushing what the web can deliver. That level of interactive that frankly up to recently I would say you really only got from desktop software. Lucy: You know I saw Kinect at the Microsoft Facility Summit; it was interesting very, very interesting technology. Larry: Wow, you know, Krista, I thought when I fist met you at First Robotics, when you and I were both judges and of course, Lucy and her husband who were very involved also. But you mentioned Lawrence Livermore National Labs; about 20 years ago, they were a client to mine. Krista: What a small world. Larry: So I wonder if we met there. Krista: Actually, I was at Lawrence Berkley National Labs, something different then Lawrence Livermore. Larry: Oh, OK. Lucy: There all related to Lawrence. Larry: Is that the case. Krista: Actually there not, interesting a little aside the Lawrence was connected with Lawrence Berkley. In fact, his family has fought a long time to have his name removed from Lawrence Livermore. Because he really did high-energy research. He did not do bomb testing or development so a little aside. Lucy: That is interesting. Larry: It is and in fact when I think back there were very few women at all at Lawrence Livermore, very few. Anyhow you know here you are you got this techie background, you like solving problems in math and physics and all. Why you are an entrepreneur and what is about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Krista: You know I have not really thought about this it is a good question and the more I thought about it. I have been asked this before and one of the simplest reasons and I do not think probably unusual is my father was entrepreneur. I think there's always been a piece of me I really admire him and admire what he has accomplished. I think its something always in the back of my head that is a big dream. I also think, honestly I think it is in the water in the United States. I think we're born and bred on the idea that you can strike it on your own. You can really start your own company. It is an extraordinary thing about this country that makes me excited to be here. I think there's not that you cannot be an entrepreneur in other countries but its very favorable here. We have a very nurturing environment being an entrepreneur. But first of all, my father, I think some other things happened that were critical. I think the reason a lot of people aren't entrepreneurs is not that they don't want to be, but because it's too scary. You have a good job. You're getting good pay. Why would you leave that for something that, frankly, that most people fail. You go to making no money and very unsure. A different level of stress. Because now, really, the buck stops with you in a very real genuine way. And I think because of all that, most people don't make the leap. I had two pivotal events. And I think it's an interesting thing to share because it really validates how I think having mentors or people that believe in you can impact you. I met a very famous entrepreneur, Jerry Fiddler. He's actually the cofounder of Wind River. A company that he grew literally from his garage to a billion dollar company. And I was on a ski trip with mutual friends and he was there. And it was all week. And we were skiing together. And during the course of the week he got to know me. And by the end of the week he said, "I think you would be an amazing entrepreneur. And not only that, I think you would be an amazing CEO and entrepreneur." And I think that someone who you kind of look up to, validates you, and says that, it has a huge impact. And so, at that point, I knew I was going to do it. It was a matter of finding the right group to do it with. It's not true for everyone, but for me, it was really important to do it with cofounders. And I was at Xilinx for the time, and three other people who were at Xilinx, three other engineers, we all had had a lot of success at Xilinx. A very wonderful company Xilinx. And I got to lead some products that really made a difference to their bottom line and their company. And I felt like, wow, I think I can do this. I think I have some good instincts. One of the things I learned when I left Lawrence Berkeley Lab and went to industry, and went to Xilinx that I didn't know about myself was how competitive I was. And I was working on products. And this raging competitor came out of me. When we would lose design wins, I would be so angry. And I would say to the sales people, "What do you mean we've lost?" And they would say, "Well, Krista, you're products are only one of many pieces that factor into a win." And I would say, "What are you talking about? My products should be so good it should determine the win. I want to talk to your customers." And I would go to the customers. And I would say, "What could we have done? Could we have done anything?" And in fact, there were things. They said, if you did 120 of this bus, and you did dynamical lining. You know what? We would have given it to you. Well, we went back and we did those things. And in fact, [inaudible 13:40] at our customer and led to the success. But what I learned is that it's obvious. It's not like a lot of people don't know. But was listening to customers. How powerful that can be. Truly viewing what they want and the kind of success you can have from that. So I think that combined with obviously having seen a father that ended up having role model sort of confirm that they think I could be good at it. With sort of already having some product success within the company and feeling my instincts are good. I think this is something I could do. I think all of that came together to make me able to take that leap. That's a scary leap. I don't think anyone who takes that first leap to become an entrepreneur and start a company from scratch. I always see it as jumping off a cliff. In fact, the other three cofounders, I always said, "We're going jump off this cliff together, and here's what I know. If we hold hands, don't let go, ever. We'll succeed. If we hold hand and don't ever let go, we'll succeed." And I use that metaphor a lot actually. Even when we sold the business, I said that, "Look. You guys, we got to hold hands here. We're holding hands. We're stronger as a four than we are individually." I think that's true. Lucy: That's really awesome advice. And I want to point out Jerry Fiddler's encouragement as being something really important, especially to many women to start companies. That he saw a great skill and he encouraged it. And here we have Krista today, having done a lot of great technology, and a successful entrepreneur. I had cause to be in a room with him once. When he found out I was from Boulder, he came up and said, "Do you know Krista Marks? She's just fabulous. Do you know about Kerpoof?" Larry: Whoa! Wonderful. Lucy: So, he's definitely your fan. Krista: Well that's funny because I actually... at that ski trip, I said Jerry when I become an entrepreneur this means you have to be an advisor. That's what you're signing up for right? I had locked him in right then. Lucy: Oh, that's great. Krista: He was an advisor to Kerpoof. Lucy: So see, I think we know what makes Krista tick about entrepreneurship. It's great. So, along the way Krista you have obviously done some tough things in your career. Why don't you tell the listeners one thing that's especially tough that you've had to do? Krista: I'll answer that in two ways. The short answer is becoming an entrepreneur. By far. Just that single decision to leave the security of a good job. I was doing very well in the context of where I was, and take that risk. Career wise, that was the most radical thing I've ever had to do. I think there are two other things. I think if you become a manager, which I did when I went to Xilinx, I took on a manager role. So, I was managing a group of engineers in Silicon Valley and then eventually also in Boulder that were developing technology. And I think when you become a manger, one of the hardest things in any career, in my opinion, is the first time you have to let someone go. The first time you have to fire someone. That was so hard that I really questioned whether I wanted to be in a leadership role anymore. It really was that difficult. I think it's always a hard thing. I think the first one was the most traumatic for me. It really was very hard and yet really critical in that role. I mean I say if you can't take on that [inaudible 16:55] role, you shouldn't be in that role because the reality is as best as we try to vet people when we hire them, we don't always do a perfect job. So that was very difficult for me. I think the other thing that was tough for me, in terms of it took sort of a ton of brain power is we lead first, we're entrepreneurs. And we initially launched Kerpoof in January of 2007. And we actually didn't have a lot of traffic. And I think we and the founders really had a tough, very tough decision about, do we keep going or do we do something else. You have to understand that was such a radical thing to do. We, all our hardware engineers and software engineers, the software engineers developing for hardware. Really pretty much a high tech classic background and we're coming to not only developing for children, a consumer web space. I mean, we really could not have in many ways, left our domain more completely. And everyone we talked to just thought we were insane, everyone just though we had lost our marbles. You know, why were we doing it? Xilinx is the leader in a product called a field programmable gate array and why are you doing some of that gate array, are you crazy. And we were following our heart, which I think is critical but with that comes more risk, right? You don't know, you don't know. You don't have the context of this. There's risk with that, so. And then combine with when you launch the product. And of course we thought we launch it in and everyone and their mother would use it and that didn't happen. So, we decided to stick with it and at that point, really I think did some true market research. There are two types of market research. One is you find what you want to hear and that feels good. And one is you really, you've got to get the answer. You dig deep. You're looking hard for the answers. And when we did that we really learned some stuff. We made some fairly modest tweaks to Kerpoof. And at that point really started watching it grow, watching the traffic grow. And it's interesting, a lot of the time it's true for entrepreneurs. They often, too quickly throw everything away and completely do something different, when often a small course correction can have a big impact. So that was very, I don't know if that's what you're looking for but I think that's for me personally was a pretty tough decision. Larry: Well speaking of tough decisions and giving good advice, how about if you were sitting down right now and across the desk from you was a young person considering entrepreneurship. What advice would you give them? Krista: That's so funny because my nephew is [inaudible 19:20] is interested in becoming an entrepreneur, so I just did this. I just had a delightful meeting with him over coffee. And that's what he's asking me, right. What was my advice? So I'll tell you the truth because I just did this and that's what I just said. The first thing I said is, "Get a co-founder." One of the things and I talked to a fair number of people and they have a good idea and they're kind of on their own. And I think there's a lot of value, I actually think there's a lot of value and in fact there is research to back up that diminishing return on number of founders doesn't go down until after five. Sort of shocking. If there's a lot of assumptions around the five, I think the five have to be... you offer diversity to their offering different skill sets. But literally and figure the five founders. So one of the things I say because I think it was so critical to me in my success was having co-founders. It's at least one other person. Once a very practical thing, if you can't convince one other person to jump off that cliff with you, how good of an idea is it? [laughter] Lucy: That's a very good point? Larry: Yeah. Krista: Right? That's one [inaudible 20:22] of a idea. But it is such a scary thing. And I say it feels a lot scarier than it is. I think the interesting thing about being an entrepreneur, I was impressed. What was the big deal and the other side is that it's such a big deal. But at the time those decisions feel so big and just having at least one other person hold hands. So the first thing I said to him was he needs to find a co-founder and the good news for him is he has. The other is I actually think the number one indicators for success as an entrepreneur has nothing to do with talent and little to do with good idea. I truly believe that and this is kind of a radical thing to say, it has to do with being tenacious. You need to want it, you need to have the drive, you're going to be there and if it's not right, you're going to make it right. Like I said, I said to my co-founders, "As long as we hold hands. Look, we may be really slow, it may take us 10 years before we have success but we will get to success. That's a given, we're going to get to success. I don't know how long that will take but we're going to get there." So I naturally had the tenacity and the drive and I think you got to have that. If you don't have that it's too hard. You'll just give up because it's too hard. And it's too much of an emotional roller-coaster. Look, most of the time you're looking for people to say yes. Whether it be you're trying to sell something to someone or an investor and the majority of the time you get a no, right? No, no, no, no and then it maybe turns into a no. So it's tough, it's really tough. So if you didn't have that drive and tenacity because you're following your heart, you have a passion. Do you have like, "You're going to work on this day and night, night and day until it's right because you just have to. It's just in your blood, you got to do it." You got to have that. If you don't have that then I sort of think good luck because this is not an easy thing, I think, to succeed. So you have to have kind of had that drive and passion. I think it says the obvious but one of the things I go back to the co-founder. I think it's a very interesting relationship with the co-founder. I almost liken it to a marriage though it's not a marriage but it's literally subjected to that much stress. And so you really, ideally the people that you co-found with you know pretty well, you really trust them, you're really comfortable with them. Because I think if you're not, if the trust isn't there, if that relationship isn't there, I find it hard to believe it would hold up to the kind of stress that is typical for a new entrepreneur. There's exceptions to these. I'm very much shaped by my own experience, so certainly take it with a grain of salt. The two core things in terms of once you decide to be an entrepreneur that I think have shaped me and I believe in, is build value first. One of the things that served us really well is, I felt like if we built value, we would succeed. Instead of focusing on, can we make a million billion dollars? Can we be bought by Disney? Instead of focusing on anything that might be a success scenario, just focusing on building value. So, look, we build this digital drawing tool for online for kids, let's build it really well. Let's make it great! I don't know that that will come with success, but I know that if we keep building value, we'll get there. The correlate of that is to follow your heart. I also think being an entrepreneur is really hard, so even when people are saying, "You are nuts! What do you know about kids? What do you know about the consumer's space?" If that's where your heart is... It's so hard, right? It can't be a means to an end. You have to enjoy the process. And we did. We would develop things for kids, they'd bring kids to the site, they would play with them. We may have been, in the early days, really kind of struggling, but that brought so much joy. Right? Building value, seeing [inaudible 23:56] kid liking it, feeling like, hey, we're on to something! I think part of that was really this fight. To a person, everyone's advice that we were crazy... We really did follow our hearts. Lucy: Yes you did. We had the pleasure of working with Kerpoof a little bit, and it was a great deal of fun. So, Krista, this advice is wonderful advice, and from it you can derive certain personal characteristics about Krista. For example, passion, and competitiveness, and tenacity. But also listening, valuing what the end customer, in this case kids - what do they need? Truly listening to those requirements. What other personal characteristics do you have that you think have given you advantages as an entrepreneur? Krista: Besides tenacity, which I think is a big one - drive, tenacity - I think... To me, this so overwrites everything, but it's very easy. Think of it as audience. Because it's particularly true for technologists, I just think we love technology. We just do, and so it's very easy to get caught up in the technology and forget the customer. It just doesn't matter how cool whatever you're widget is if no one else cares about it. Really identifying who your audience is, who your customer is. I really think focusing, and then being able to listen to your customer. I think sort of that's in general a characteristic of a good entrepreneur. They genuinely want to build things that people are going to use. That maybe isn't as true for a business to business. But I would say even in the business to business kind of entrepreneur at the end of the day the corporate clients that you're going to have or the business clients you're going to have. What do they want? What are their pain-points? What are they struggling with? I just recently talked to a really neat entrepreneur, but I felt like they had 10 ideas. I mean they were all good, but it was hard for me to feel they could all do well at once. I really, my advice to them, personally was just take one, focus on it, do it extremely well, and then grow that, expand that. I think there are a lot of ideas. So one of the characteristics of entrepreneurs that is very valuable is being able to narrow and focus in a very clear way. And sort of to know that focus should become bigger and when it should become narrower. That's a really critical skill. Larry: With everything that you do Krista, and I know you're busy well about 48 hours a day, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Krista: It's such a [inaudible 26] question for me, because I feel like it doesn't apply as well to entrepreneurs. And the reason is, I think typically when people talk about work life balance, there's very much this notion that work is something that you do because you need to see a paycheck. And so you want to just to turn it off, and not worry about it, and go. And I think when you follow your heart and you're doing what you're passionate about you realize it's 24/7, but it's a different kind of 24/7. And it doesn't mean it's not tiring, it doesn't mean it's not going to cost to your family and friends, certainly. And this is [inaudible 27:02] somewhat true. First becoming an entrepreneur, and even now being part of Disney I don't see as much of my family and friends. But in part that's because I love what I do. I want to do it. I love what I do. But that thing said, we did feel like they were diminishing returns and not being somewhat careful of burnout. And when we became a company we all agreed that we'd take one day off a week. We didn't always honor that. But I think we have the notion of trying to do that, of really trying it one day a week, which was typically Sunday. That know you're coming to the office. That we'd spend time with our friends and family, we'd rejuvenate, go hiking in the mountains, whatever. And certainly that helped. But, again, it is a finer line I think when what you're doing, particularly in entrepreneur it does become all consuming. It's funny one made the analogy. And I thought it was such a good analogy that in many ways being an entrepreneur, starting a company is much like having a child. And if you ever meet a new parent they're obsessed with their child. They want to show you pictures of the child, they want to talk about their child. They're really not interested in anything else in the world, right? There could be earthquakes, and there could be things going on, and they're just oblivious, right? And, that's their first year bubble of new child. And, entrepreneurs are a lot like that. I said - I always joked, you know, that - that the only family they spend a lot to time with - In the first couple of years of my being an entrepreneur, of starting Kerpoof, were people who were into Kerpoof. If you were into Kerpoof, then we could have a good conversation. If you didn't want to have a Kerpoof, I didn't really have much more I wanted to talk about. So, there is sort of a - And, there is an all consumingness that may not happen to everyone. It certainly happens to some entrepreneurs. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. You know, I think it's part of doing something extraordinary. It's part of succeeding. I think to answer your question really in the most succinct way, I don' think I do bring a lot of balance to my life. But, I am trying to do a little better and not because I - to do it for it's sake, but because actually I do think that your relationships with your family and your friends are very important to the whole of your life. And, if you neglect it too long, obviously that's at a cost. So, not to say that I don't think those things need to be considered and nourished. And, I think I have neglected them, for sure. And, I am - I making up now for that. Lucy: Well, I learned how to speak Kerpoof. Larry: Yeah. You did. You did. Krista: You did. You did. And, we got to talk. Lucy: I learned how to speak Kerpoof. And, listeners should also know that Krista is very generous with her time in the community with First Robotics, and certainly with NCWIT, and other groups. So, we definitely appreciate that as well. So... So Krista, the last question - You've achieved a lot. You know, you - I'm sure - have things that you want to accomplish in the future. Why don't you tell us a bit about what's next for you. Krista: You know what? One thing that... I don't know. I feel ostensibly believe life is extremely long. I think people say life is short and they're just wrong. I think it's long. I think we have the ability at least in the United States for - Many people have the ability to do many things in the course of their life if they're interested. So, I'm 43 now. So, I believe as many things as I've done to date, I've will, at least if not more, just have found it wiser to do as many more. So, I think life is very long. I also don't tend to be a long-term planner. I never have. I think it's kind of hog wash - much more interested in today and - and short term. So, for me what I know for sure is I feel very passionately about making sure...I really would love to see Disney stay in Boulder. I would love that - how ever long that takes. And, that could take a decade. But, I would love to see Disney remain in Boulder as a presence in Boulder. I think it's an extraordinary company. And, I think they have a real need for the kind of talent... we have in Boulder-technical talents - and also in Dimmer, actually inside Colorado. People don't realize the creative talent. But it is the fifth state in the top five in terms of the number of creative people that are here - artists and creatives - and so that combination of creatives and technologists. I actually hate that word "creative" because I think engineers are creative. But anyways, that's still the term that's used. Creatives - so animators and artists and the kind of amazing engineering talent and technical talent that we have here. That combined is very special. So it's not just an act to have Disney here. I think Disney can actually flourish here. I think we can continue to add something important to what they're trying to achieve with digital media. So that's one goal. Also, and I think this is happening but I really believe that we are changing the face of the Internet in some meaningful way for kids. I think that historically the large companies that frankly own the kids audience. The reality is kids go to very few sites. Nick.com, Disney.com obviously are the two big ones. Then there are a number of other players. Club Penguin certainly is one. But there are only a small number of sites. So what you want is for those sites to offer engaging entertainment but also offer participation, interactivity, and the ability to design because one of the things that's unique to the computer that's not true for a mobile device at least today, and it's certainly not true for a TV, is you can't design. So the computer is this unique platform. I think that, not those mobile platforms won't also be this, but those platforms you actually can participate, right? So to me this large piece of having a place and do that kind of dedicated creativity is a step towards we just move in a direction that nobody would think of doing otherwise. If you create something for kids, you just wouldn't imagine not offering some level of genuine engagement, some level of genuine participation, if it is computer-Internet based. That would just be an obvious step. I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're moving there. One of our competitors - actually it was interesting - I just noticed launched a very modest, but albeit a little center dedicated to creativity on their site, a site you wouldn't anticipate that from. I just thought that was so exciting, right? To me, you know you're leading when people are following. If you're leading in a place that's interesting for kids, then that's very exciting to me. I guess to me that's what's next. Lucy: We vote for that, and we vote for Disney in Boulder. Larry: Yeah, you bet you! Lucy: Absolutely. Well, thank you, Krista. This was very interesting as always. We really appreciate it and want to remind listeners to look for this interview at W3W3.com and also NCWIT.org. Krista: Oh, and thank you, Larry and Lucy. It's really my pleasure to be here. Larry: It's great, and of course we're going to have to follow up on you again. Lucy: Thank you, Krista. Krista: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Krista MarksInterview Summary: "When I went to college, I didn't even know about technology or pursuing a career in technology," says Krista. "Fortunately when I got to orientation for college, I sat next to a student who said she was going to major in electrical engineering. 'What is that?' I said. And she said, 'I know that if you really like math and physics, it's the best major to have. I said, 'Oh my god, those are my two favorite things! I would like every student to be aware of the available opportunities when they're choosing a career. I did end up there and loved technology. In fact, from that point on I really wanted to be involved in designing technology. I spent the first eleven years designing custom electronics, and got to work around the world." Release Date: August 2, 2010Interview Subject: Krista MarksInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 33:56
Like Russia, China has been a huge and inefficient user of energy for decades. Now, however, the country is cleaning up its act. In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Mark Levine, Lawrence Berkeley Lab energy group director, dispels common American myths about China's energy and environmental practices, demonstrating that the country is becoming surprisingly progressive. He touches on areas such as subsidies, pricing, and emissions policies. https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/mark_levine_-_chinas_environmental_sustainability_myths_dispelled
Meet one of the three winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, Lawrence Berkeley Lab astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter. He explains how dark energy, which makes up 70 percent of the universe, is causing our universe to expand.
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