Magnetic Times
Roberto at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting
July 2019
The first week of July 2019 I had the unique opportunity to attend the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting . This is a meeting that takes place every year in Lindau, Germany, a town on Lake Constance right at the border between Germany and Switzerland. Each year the meeting has a different topic, focusing alternatively on one of the three natural science Nobel Prize disciplines: Physics, Chemistry and Physiology & Medicine. This year's meeting was dedicated to Physics, which is my field of research.
The aim of the meeting is to bring together Nobel laureates and young scientists from all around the globe to foster scientific exchange between different generations and cultures. This year, 39 Nobel laureates met with 600 young scientists from 89 different countries. We, the young scientists, had the great opportunity to closely interact with each of the Nobel laureates in a multitude of sessions and formats, among which: Laureate lectures, Agora talks, open sessions, panel discussions and Laureate lunches.
Myself at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting venue in Lindau, Germany.
I personally enjoyed the open session with Konstantin Novoselov (2010 Nobel laureate in Physics for the discovery of graphene). The format was very informal: myself and 50 other young scientists shared more than an hour with Sir Novoselov, during which we had an engaging conversation about his present and future work, how the Nobel prize changed his life, both professional and private, as well as about how he thinks we should approach our own research work in order to succeed as he did. Obviously, he had much more concise answers to the first two types of questions than he did for the last one. However, he tried to give us some advice, or at least this is the take-home-message I extract from his answer: if you want to find something really new, you should look where you usually would not be looking. Actually, this was a message resonating among most of the Nobel laureates I have been interacting with.
Another event I personally enjoyed was the lunch with Steven Chu (1997 Nobel laureate in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms in "optical molasses"). I and nine other young scientists had the opportunity to share a meal with Prof Chu (see picture below), during which we discussed many different topics. What I really enjoyed of that lunch was the ability of Prof Chu to quickly jump from the tiny details of his scientific experiments to less technical discussions about the role of science in our society and the need of a scientific mind in the present political scenario. An example of that is the global warming crisis and the need to rely on the scientific understanding of the problem in the attempt to make new policies which can effectively help us to mitigate its effects. I felt immensely inspired by such discussions!
Myself and nine other young scientists at lunch with the Nobel laureate Steven Chu.
Last, but not least, the meeting was an exceptional opportunity to connect with other young researchers. I managed to interact with peer researchers from many different branches of Physics, which allowed me to have many interesting discussions about science, academic career in general and our personal and professional aspirations in particular. I am glad I had the unique opportunity to attend the Lindau Meeting and of becoming part of the big Lindau Family. I wish to every young researcher out there to have the same opportunity and I strongly encourage them to apply to the upcoming meetings.
Finally, I would like to share with you the keynote addressed by Brian Schmidt (2011 Nobel laureate in Physics, for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe) at the opening ceremony of #LINO19 entitled: Big Questions for Society, Big Questions for Research. Enjoy!
Outreach event at the NightLife of the California Academy of Sciences
March 2019
In March 2019, I and my colleagues from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had the unique opportunity to showcase our work at the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco. The occasion was the NightLife, a Thursday night event open to adult-only crowd with a different topic picked for each week. Investigators from Universities and research centers from the Bay Area working in fields related to the topic of the night are invited to showcase their findings and innovations with the public.
We were among the few research teams selected for the night of March 14, which was dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). At first, you might wonder why my colleagues and I were invited to such event. After all, our studies are mostly focused on the investigation of magnetic materials systems, which might sound very different from the typical work done by electrical engineers and computer scientists working in the area of artificial intelligence. But here is the twist: in order to enable a technological innovation like A.I. and make it available to everyone, new energy efficient computers and data storage devices need to be developed first. And it is here that our work on magnetic materials can play a crucial role. At the Berkeley Lab, my colleagues and I are exploring new types of magnetic materials which can be useful for the development of fast, low power, high density magnetic data storage devices. Since A.I. will rely on an enormous amount of data to be continuously stored and repeatedly accessed, memory devices that are going to use little energy to work and store a lot of information per unit area are going to be a critical piece of this technological revolution.
During the night we had the pleasure to interact with many (fortunately!) people asking questions about magnetic memories, how they worked in the past and how the future ones will look like. Some of them had also more specific questions about our current work on the development of new magnetic materials, and how this work will contribute to the field of Information Technology.
I personally have been inspired by the interest of the public in our work. It was exciting to see their engagement and genuine interest in understanding what we do and how it can impact their everyday life. I really look forward to more of these events in the years to come.
Interaction with some great people at our poster station.
Interesting group conversation.
My colleague Mac Robertson answering the questions of interested attendees about the history and the future of magnetic data storage technology.
Group picture, from the left to the right: Alex Stibor, myself, Mac Robertson, Kévin Franke.
A digital friend at the NightLife event curious in understanding how our work can improve its life!