Blavatnik - NYAS

Andrea Alù is challenging the laws of physics to improve data transmission. Oh yeah, he’s working on an invisibility cloak, too!

Published October 1, 2021

By Roger Torda

Andrea Alù

Andrea Alù isn’t satisfied with how light waves and sound travel through objects and space. So he engineers new materials that appear to violate some well-established laws of physics. Enhanced wireless communication and computing technologies, improved bio-medical sensors, and invisibility cloaks are just some of the achievements of his lab.

“We create our own materials, engineered at the nanoscale,” explained Alù, who is Director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). “We call them metamaterials, which push technologies forward, to realize optical properties, electromagnetic properties, or acoustic properties that go well beyond what nature and natural materials offer us.”

This work has led to many honors, and this year the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists is recognizing Alù as its 2021 Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

In a recent interview with The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy), Alù explained a core behavior of light that is at the heart of his research:

One of the most basic phenomena in optics is light refraction, which describes the change in direction of propagation of an optical beam as it enters a material. We can understand this as the collective excitation of molecules and charges in the material, produced by light. In metamaterials, we make up our own molecules—we call them metamolecules.

Metamaterials feature many different geometries of at the nanoscale. Some can be engineered to interact with light in such a way that they may actually make objects disappear from sight. It is a phenomenon called “cloaking.” Alù continued:

Engineering at the Nanoscale

This engineering at the nanoscale allows us to change the ways in which light refracts as it enters a metamaterial. By bending light in unusual ways, we can actually realize highly unusual optical phenomena, like enhancing or suppressing the reflections and scattering of light from an interface, making a small object appear much larger, or conversely, even disappear altogether, by hiding it from the impinging electromagnetic waves.

“Invisibility” has long been part of our popular imagination and science fiction, from H.G. Wells’ novels to Star Trek and Harry Potter. A pioneering theoretical step dates back to 1968, when a Russian physicist wondered if a phenomenon called “negative refraction” might be possible. But no materials featuring this property were known, and some scientists believed none would be found because negative refraction might violate widely-used equations describing the propagation of light. Thirty years later, in 2000, a team of scientists was able to demonstrate negative refraction in a metamaterial for a certain frequency of electromagnetic radiation. A few years later, experiments demonstrated actual metamaterial cloaking, and Scientific American proclaimed: “Invisibility Cloak Sees Light of Day.”

Alù started working on metamaterials in 2002, when he spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania as a visiting student. He has conducted pioneering research in the field ever since. A major achievement came in 2013. Alù, then at the University of Texas at Austin, and his collaborators, demonstrated the cloaking of a three-dimensional object using radio waves. The work showed that antennas, like the ones in our cell phones, could be made transparent to radio-waves, a finding of potential commercial and military value, as it eliminates interference between closely-spaced transmitters.

A Childhood Fascination

Alù’s interest in light and other electromagnetic waves began as a child in Italy when he was fascinated by how our radios and television sets receive broadcast information without wiring. His interest intensified in high school when he realized a “beautiful common mathematical framework” describes the propagation of light, radio signals, and sound, and the fact that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

Alù went on to study at the University of Roma Tre, where he earned a Ph.D. in electronic engineering. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of UT Austin in 2009, and moved to CUNY in 2018.

Nanomaterials being developed in Alù’s lab may also improve near-field microscopy for better biomedical imaging, and lead to optical computers, enabling faster and more efficient PCs that use light instead of electric signals.

Yet another area of intense research for Alù and his research team has been “breaking reciprocity,” with implications for improved transmission of sound as well as radio waves and light. “Light, sound, and radio waves, typically travel with symmetry between two points in space,” Alù explained. “If you hear me, I can hear you back. If you can see me, typically you can see me back. This property is rooted into the time reversal symmetry of the wave equations.”

Connecting Basic and Applied Research

Alù said his lab’s work in breaking this symmetry with metamaterials is a good illustration of the connection between basic and applied research:

Interestingly, making materials that transmit waves one way and not the other started as a curiosity, but it has rapidly become extremely useful, from improving data rates with which our cell phones or WiFi technologies operate to protecting sensitive lasers from reflections. This has been a very exciting quest, from basic research to applications.

Alù began his research and teaching career in the U.S. only after he earned his Ph.D. in Italy and, as a result, he found he initially had a smaller professional network than many of his peers. But Alù says the U.S. was very welcoming, and he quickly caught up:

I come from Italy and I did all my undergraduate and graduate studies there. So, coming to the U.S. first as a postdoc, then as a faculty member, I didn’t have a large support network around me, I didn’t initially have a lot of connections…. But at the same time, I have to say, the United States offers tremendous opportunities, in particular to young scientists, to help build up their research groups, and to thrive.

Alù continued: “The U.S. is an amazing country in welcoming young people, new talent, and supporting them in the broadest possible terms… An excellent example of this is the Blavatnik National Awards program, and the broad range of scientists it recognizes.”

The Economic Imperative for Better Battery Technology

A married research duo are studying ways to better predict the feasibility and potential economic benefits of adopting battery technologies for renewable energy.

Published May 13, 2021

By Roger Torda

(Left to Right) Graham Elliott and Shirley Meng at the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards Ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History

What can we learn from a marriage of physical and social sciences?

Materials scientist and Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018, 2019) Shirley Meng, PhD, shares her answer to this question. She and her husband, economist Graham Elliott, PhD, combine their expertise in battery chemistry and economic modeling.

In an intriguing collaboration, they developed ways to better predict the feasibility and potential economic benefits of adopting battery technologies to integrate renewable energy, such as solar and wind energy, into energy grids. Together with their research team members, they published “Combined Economic and Technological Evaluation of Battery Energy Storage for Grid Applications” in the journal Nature Energy.

Meng is the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies and Director of the Institute for Materials Design and Discovery at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Elliott is also at UCSD, where he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics. We recently interviewed both to discuss this collaboration and what they learned through the process.

Can you tell us how this collaboration was initiated?

Meng: UCSD is a place where interdisciplinary and convergent research is not only highly valued but practiced. I founded the Sustainable Power and Energy Center (SPEC) at UCSD in 2015. SPEC reaches out beyond engineering and physical sciences to study economic and sociological issues that need to be addressed to create truly robust ecosystems for low-carbon electric vehicles and carbon-neutral microgrids. We won a competitive grant from the US Department of Energy, which provided the resources for this work.

Why did you choose to study batteries for energy grid applications? What question about batteries did you study?

Meng: With energy grids showing their age and continuing to distribute energy generated with high environmental costs, efforts that enable grids to distribute cleaner, renewable energy more efficiently would be a technological advance with a positive societal impact. While there have been exciting moves toward renewables, many problems lie ahead if we are to move from renewables being important to renewables being dominant.

Elliott: Grid energy storage remains a major challenge both scientifically and economically. Batteries, or energy storage systems, play critical roles in the successful operation of energy grids by better matching the energy supply with demand and by providing services that help grids function. They will not just transform the market for supplying energy but also transform consumer demand by lowering the prices of energy for households and businesses.

In this work, we studied the potential revenues that different battery technologies deployed in the grid will generate through models that consider market rules, realistic market prices for services, and the energy and power constraints of the batteries under real-world applications.

Bringing these together in an interactive way—examining the engineering and economic aspects as two parts of the problem together—allows for a complete look at the problem, and ultimately a better outcome for the economy.
Graham Elliott

What was the biggest finding of this collaboration? Were you surprised by your findings?

Meng: We found that while some battery technologies hold the greatest potential from an engineering perspective, the choice based on economics is less clear. The current rules of grid operations dictate which battery technologies are used for those particular grids—some of these rules may be out-of-date, and will be updated as the grids modernize. So even though we continue to see improvement in the energy/power performance of battery technologies and reduction in cost, policymakers are the ultimate decision-makers. Policymakers setting those rules have considerable influence on how fast and how successfully those battery technologies can be deployed, and therefore industry needs to work closely with policymakers to define the best practices for faster deployment of battery technologies.

We also found that there are a wide variety of factors that should be considered in choosing a battery technology. For instance, the battery recycling method is an important technical variable that determines the sustainability of a particular battery technology.

How could your findings eventually affect individual people and society? How can it help our economy?

Elliott: All gains in human welfare arise from what economists call productivity gains—people creating more with less effort, so there is more to go around. Technological advances in energy storage enable productivity gains. But for it to work, we need not only to be able to provide effective energy storage from an engineering perspective, but also it needs to be economically feasible. Different choices at the engineering stage mean differences in the economic feasibility, and how markets are arranged impacts engineering choices. Bringing these together in an interactive way—examining the engineering and economic aspects as two parts of the problem together—allows for a complete look at the problem, and ultimately a better outcome for the economy.

Meng: We are delighted to see to see that battery grid storage is starting to gain more momentum—policymakers are becoming informed about both economic and scientific, and engineering aspects of battery technologies.

A small-scale energy grid at the University of California San Diego, consisting of a network of solar cells with battery storage (Credit: University of California San Diego)

What did you learn from this collaboration? Are there any tips you would like to share with other researchers who would like to pursue similar collaborations between physical and social sciences?

Meng: Perhaps the most important thing for the collaborative team to do is to build a common vocabulary so we can truly understand each other. In our case, we started by explaining the most basic symbols and units in engineering, like the energy unit Wh (Watt-hour) and the power unit W (Watt). Without understanding the differences between these symbols, we will make mistakes in constructing important parameters in our economic modeling.

Elliott: Another thing we learned is that different fields have very different understandings of the big picture. Collaboration across fields helps focus everyone’s efforts. For example, engineers typically view markets as fixed, and the engineering problem is to find something that works for the market. Economists tend to think of products (such as batteries) as fixed and design markets that work for the available products.

There is a whole research area waiting patiently for economists to understand which parts of the engineering problem are important and for scientists and engineers to understand from their perspective which parts of the market design are important.

The Challenge of Quantum Error Correction

An illustrated graphic of a computer chip, or a similar piece of electronic equipment.

Shruti Puri, PhD, helps explain the challenges and the potential computational power this exciting new technology may bring about.

Published March 22, 2021

By Liang Dong, PhD

Quantum computing is a radically new way to store and process information based on the principles of quantum mechanics. While conventional computers store information in binary “bits” that are either 0s or 1s, quantum computers store information in quantum bits, or qubits. A qubit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time, and a series of qubits together remember many different things simultaneously.

Everyone agrees on the huge computational power this technology may bring about, but why are we still not there yet? To understand the challenges in this field and its potential solutions, we recently interviewed Shruti Puri, PhD, who works at the frontier of this exciting field. Puri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Yale University, and a Physical Sciences & Engineering Finalist of the 2020 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, recognized for her remarkable theoretical discoveries in quantum error correction that may pave the way for robust quantum computing technologies.

What is the main challenge you are addressing in quantum computing?

Thanks to recent advances in research and development, there are already small to mid-sized quantum computers made available by big companies. But these quantum computers have not been able to implement any practical applications such as drug and materials discovery. The reason is that quantum computers at this moment are extremely fragile, and even very small noise from their working environment can very quickly destroy the delicate quantum states. As it is almost impossible to completely isolate the quantum states from the environment, we need a way to correct quantum states before they are destroyed.

At a first glance, quantum error correction seems impossible. Due to the measurement principle of quantum mechanics, we cannot directly probe a quantum state to check if there was an error in it or not, because such operations will destroy the quantum state itself.

Fortunately, in the 1990s, people found indirect ways to faithfully detect and correct errors in quantum states. They are, however, at a cost of large resource overheads. If one qubit is affected by noise, we have to use at least five additional qubits to correct this error. The more errors we want to correct, the larger number of additional qubits it will consume. A lot of research efforts, including my own, are devoted to improving quantum error correction techniques.

What is your discovery? How will this discovery help solve the challenge you mention above?

In recent years, I have been interested in new qubit designs that have some in-built protection against noise. In particular, I developed the “Kerr-cat” qubit, in which one type of quantum error is automatically suppressed by design. This reduces the total number of quantum errors by half! So, quantum computers that adopt Kerr-cat require far fewer physical qubits for error correction than the other quantum computers.

Kerr-cat is not the only qubit with this property, but what makes the Kerr-cat special is that it is possible to maintain this protection while a user tries to modify the quantum state in a certain non-trivial way. As a comparison, for ordinary qubits, the act of the user modifying the state automatically destroys the protection. Since its discovery, the Kerr-cat has generated a lot of interest in the community and opened up a new direction for quantum error correction.

As a theoretician, do you collaborate with experimentalists? How are these synergized efforts helping you?

Yes, I do collaborate quite closely with experimentalists. The synergy between experiments and theory is crucial for solving the practical challenges facing quantum information science. Sometimes an experimental observation or breakthrough will provide a new tool for a theorist with which they can explore or model new quantum effects. Other times, a new theoretical prediction will drive experimental progress.

At Yale, I have the privilege to work next to the theoretical group of Steve Girvin and the experimental groups of Michel Devoret and Rob Schoelkopf, who are world leaders in superconducting quantum information processing. The theoretical development of the Kerr-cat qubit was actually a result of trying to undo a bug in the experiment. Members of Michel’s group also contributed to the development of this theory. What is more, Michel’s group first experimentally demonstrated the Kerr-cat qubit. It was just an amazing feeling to see this theory come to life in the lab!

Are there any other experimental developments that you are excited about?

I am very excited about a new generation of qubits that are being developed in several other academic groups, which have some inherent protection against noise. Kerr-cat is one of them, along with Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill qubit, cat-codes, binomial codes, 0−π qubit, etc. Several of these designs were developed by theorists in the early 2000s, and were not considered to be practical. But with experimental progress, these have now been demonstrated and are serious contenders for practical quantum information processing. In the coming years, the field of quantum error correction is going to be strongly influenced by the capabilities that will be enabled by these new qubit designs. So, I really look forward to learning how the experiments progress.

Harnessing CRISPR to Revolutionize COVID Testing

Professor Pardis Sabeti was able to apply findings from her research on Ebola to now develop a test for detecting COVID-19.

Published March 9, 2021

By Brittany Aguilar, PhD

Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil, MSc

This isn’t the first time that Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil, MSc, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and newly elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, has worn the hat of viral genome detective in the earliest days of a deadly outbreak or viral disease. Sabeti and her team began sequencing Ebola samples just days after the virus was first detected in Sierra Leone during the 2013-2016 West African outbreak. Since January 2020, she has been working on diagnostics for COVID-19, developing models to predict the most sensitive and accurate assay design candidates for the rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2, including an assay that harnesses the powerful accuracy of CRISPR technology.

Describe the innovative, rapid COVID-19 test that you helped create—how does it work, and why is it an improvement on current testing methods?

Over the last several years, my lab, colleagues, and I have been developing an assortment of technologies for genomic surveillance of pathogens. In particular, we have been deeply invested in CRISPR technologies. CRISPR was first discovered within bacterial immune systems, where it is used to protect the bacteria from invading pathogens by rapidly identifying and targeting a genomic sequence with very high fidelity. Thus, it is immensely powerful as a diagnostic tool, since it can be designed to detect any sequence of genetic material with impressive accuracy.

It is an incredibly exciting technology: it is highly accurate, it would be able to rapidly detect pathogens using little equipment and a simple, paper-strip read-out, and it could be developed in a matter of days to detect newly discovered pathogens or new variants of known pathogens. Crucially, the test is also inexpensive to manufacture, which means it could be easily scaled and distributed as pathogens—or novel variants of pathogens—emerge.

Throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, some have suggested that testing is optional, unnecessary or unreliable—can you describe why the creation of rapid, reliable tests is so important? Does that change depending on where we are in the infection curve?

Testing is extremely critical to fighting the spread of any infectious disease, and this has been demonstrated through history. However, testing technology has been achievable but not prioritized—if we had invested in this space after the SARS-CoV epidemic [the SARS outbreak in 2003], I believe we could have been poised to respond to SARS-CoV-2 before it spread throughout the world.

The need for diagnostics is critical everywhere, from pre-empting a pandemic, to response and recovery. To be as useful as possible, diagnostics must also be affordable and accessible to all—this is not just in infectious disease but throughout all medicine. The sooner individuals and communities have information, the better they can respond, enabling better outcomes.

You wrote a book last year entitled “Outbreak Culture.” Are there any key learnings from that book that can be applied to COVID or future pandemics?

In this book we argue that a dysfunctional “outbreak culture”—the collective mindset that develops among responders and communities that emerges in the chaos and crucible that is disease outbreaks—poses a great threat to our ability to curb outbreaks and save lives, and that we must continually watch for and dismantle toxic response systems where possible. This includes the data and resource hoarding, perverse capitalistic incentives, the spread of misinformation, and the loss of empathy and good citizenship.

I think people are still just beginning to understand the gravity of outbreak culture and how it is operating amidst COVID. For example, we all now know the importance of detecting outbreaks, through track-and-trace methods, before they have the chance to spread widely. But what is given less attention is how those efforts can be sidelined or undermined by many surrounding societal and political forces.

I always advocate for a massively increased effort for empathy during outbreaks. We need resilient communities to be able to do the best work against infectious disease. With our trust in our fellow citizens, our leaders, and our scientists undermined during this time, it is crucial to work within the community and low to the ground. We must listen to others, respect their opinions, and understand their fears. For that reason, I believe we must double down on empathy when it comes to community participation. If we do not work with communities and support them in the right ways, we end up causing more harm than good.

About Prof. Sabeti

Pardis Sabeti, MD, DPhil, MSc is a Professor at the Center for Systems Biology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was a 2016 and 2017 Finalist for the Academy’s Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists. To learn more about Dr. Sabeti and her work, click here to listen to the “Deciphering Zika” podcast.

Reinventing One of the Planet’s Oldest Materials

A man delivers an address during the symposium.

It was a chance encounter and conversation with a wood researcher that set 2019 and 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Finalist, Liangbing Hu, PhD, on a path to exploring important problems in sustainable energy, water, and the environment.

Published January 21, 2021

By Marvin Cummings Jr., PhD

Liangbing Hu at the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

A physicist by training, Hu is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a self-described “wood nanotechnologist.” He considers himself an outsider and works every day to make wood—one of the oldest biomaterial resources on the planet—a viable solution to some of the most pressing problems in sustainability.

We recently sat down with Professor Hu to discuss his research, the exciting opportunities in front of him in sustainability, his new company, and his philosophy on making a real-world impact through innovation.

What pressing sustainability challenges in energy, water, and the environment are you most focused on addressing in your lab?

My research interests focus on material innovations for energy and sustainability. We are interested in replacing the non-sustainable materials that we use in our everyday life, like plastics and glass, and steel; these materials are widely used but have a huge negative impact on our environment. For example, steel production has a tremendous impact on the environment, our air, and climate, in-part, because of the huge amount of energy needed to produce it.

Specifically, my lab is looking to utilize tiny filaments (nanofibers) found in wood as a potential technological solution to many non-sustainable materials. These nanofibers look almost identical to carbon nanotubes (unique molecules made entirely of carbon and nearly 50,000´ smaller than the diameter of a human hair), but have the unique advantage of being significantly cheaper and more abundant. We want to explore the unique ion transport, optical, and mechanical properties of nanofibers and come up with new solutions to address the current environmental challenges we face.

What exciting types of wood-based nanotechnologies have come out of your lab recently?

Liangbing Hu’s Prototype. Photo Credit: The University of Maryland.

There are three wood technologies that we are excited about in our lab:

Megawatt Batteries: Megawatt batteries are an important application in new battery technology and are needed for grid storage from renewable energy sources, like wind and solar. Our lab is using wood nanofibers as a medium to transport ions, like sodium and magnesium, and to improve the battery’s charge rate. The technology addresses two challenges. One is related to ion transport, the other is mechanical.

The battery needs to be soft, like the cushion in your sofa, so it can expand and shrink during charge and discharge cycles as ions such as magnesium and sodium cycle in and out, causing battery material to shrink and expand. It is like the battery is breathing in a healthy way. Wood nanofibers can potentially provide the mechanical flexibility and ion transport properties needed to make grid storage battery technology a reality.

Transparent paper: We want to replace the widespread use of plastic with transparent paper. We have discovered that by taking regular paper fibers and tearing them apart into nanofibers we can make the paper material 10 or even 100 times stronger. In addition, the fiber diameter is now smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so visible light in‑effect does not see the fiber anymore. The paper becomes transparent, so this material could potentially replace plastics in food packaging.

Water treatment: Water shortages have become a huge issue in many regions around the world. We are working on a process known as desalination, to obtain freshwater from seawater. We have developed a technology that takes advantage of wood’s inherent ability to transport water and also to absorb a lot of light. As a result, the system can turn large amounts of seawater into steam without forming a salt layer. We co-founded a company based on this innovation, and many other companies are taking note, especially in cities like Los Angeles where the water shortages are constant.

What advice do you give when training the next generation of young scientists on sustainability?

Liangbing Hu presents at the 2019 Blavatnik Science Symposium at The New York Academy of Sciences.

To younger scientists or engineers, I always say, “think out of the box”—but this is easier to say than to do. Re-invention very often happens from outsiders. I challenge young researchers to look at a topic like sustainability in a new way, to understand where the true challenges and problems lay, and then to apply your fundamentals in physics, chemistry, and mathematics without any boundaries. It is really about using disruptive ideas to attack new challenges in the real-world.

Wood is an invaluable natural resource. It is a renewable and sustainable material. The forest acreage in North America has been stable for close to a century, and the US Forest Service has reaffirmed that the utilization of “our Nation’s wood resources wisely and efficiently, while at the same time keeping our forests healthy” is a worthwhile endeavor.

For more information on this exciting new wood technology, see the 2019 Blavatnik Science Symposium eBriefing, Shaping the Future of Science.

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.

Resolving the World’s Challenges through Collaboration

Founded in 2004 by the former minister to the Japanese government, Koji Omi, The Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum was created to provide a new mechanism for informal, open discussion between scientists and government leaders from around the world.

Published Oct 23, 2020

By Benjamin Schroeder, PhD

Resolving the World’s Challenges – Learnings from the STS Forum.

The goal: to resolve the new challenges facing the world, including global warming, pollution, food shortages, overpopulation, and the need to develop renewable energy sources. Each year, leaders from science, technology, and government converge in Kyoto, Japan for a unique summit, which is referred to as the STS forum.

Over a decade ago, The New York Academy of Sciences forged a partnership with the organizers of the STS forum, through the Academy’s then President and CEO, Ellis Rubinstein. Subsequently, Rubinstein was elected to serve as Council Member — a seat that has recently been assumed by the new Academy President and CEO, Prof. Nicholas B. Dirks. As part of the partnership between the two organizations, each year the Academy selects eight scientists under the age of 40. Two each, from North America, Europe, Asia, and the developing world are then invited to the Annual Meeting in Kyoto, Japan.

In 2019, two Blavatnik Scholars, Dr. Moran Bercovici (MB) and Dr. Wilhelm Palm (WP), were selected as representatives from Europe. Dr. Bercovici was honored as the Laureate in Chemistry for the 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel, and Dr. Palm was a Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists Finalist in the field of Chemistry in 2017. We asked them to share some memories of last year’s STS forum.

What were some of your fondest memories from the 2019 Science and Technology in Society forum in Kyoto, Japan?

Moran Bercovici (far right) and Wilhelm Palm (second from right) with a group of STS Forum young delegates.

MB: Receiving advice from Nobel Laureates over drinks; listening to an inspiring talk by Japan’s then Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe; learning about climate change directly from leaders in the field; participating in round-tables with industry and government leaders; and generally, meeting great people who want to change the world for the better.

WP: I remember lively discussions with young leaders working in space technology, cybersecurity, and agricultural engineering all around the globe. And having a chat during the conference dinner at Kennin-ji temple, standing in front of the famous folding screen painting Wind God and Thunder God.

The STS forum is unique in that it brings together leaders not only from various scientific fields, but also from the government and private sectors as well. What were some of the advantages to such a gathering?

MB: It’s not often that we scientists get to go outside our ‘bubble’ and have close, personal interactions with government and industry leaders. The STS forum manages to set the right atmosphere where everyone leaves their ego at the door and is willing to discuss very openly the challenges and opportunities that technology and science bring to society.

WP: We all know that solutions are often found through interdisciplinary collaborations. But normally, for me that means to work with a biologist from a different field, or maybe a medical doctor or a chemist. But the STS forum was truly interdisciplinary, bringing people together from vastly different professional backgrounds and cultures. This was a lot of fun and really inspirational.

Who were some of the science VIPs that you were able to interact with? Did they have any advice that you have incorporated into your career?

Moran Bercovici speaking on a panel at the 2019 STS forum.

MB: If I had to choose one conversation that really affected me, it was the one with Prof. Ryoji Noyori. This came at a time that I was struggling and debating with myself on the question of ‘what is good research?’ I distinctly remember one particular piece of advice that he gave me: “Don’t be the best one in what you do. Be the only one”. This is now my compass.

WP: During the young leaders’ discussion with Nobel Laureates, I had the chance to talk to Prof. Ryoji Noyori, from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, and Nobel Laureate Prof. Ada Yonath from the Weizmann Institute. I found it helpful to get a personal account of how such pioneering scientists made their own way in different fields and systems. I also remember a dinner conversation with a Japanese university president, who recommended saké bars in Kyoto. From what I understand, interaction between Japanese scientists from different career stages are usually more formal, and it was nice to see that our hosts embraced a more relaxed way to interact with their Western guests.

Would you recommend this experience to other young scientists?

MB: I very much recommend this experience to anyone who is given the opportunity. Come with an open mind to experience something different, talk to anyone and everyone, and bring a big pile of business cards—you’re going to make lots of connections.

WP: Yes, definitely. In our daily work, we have to think deeply about the specific scientific problem that we are trying to solve. The STS forum is a chance to take a step outside and think about how science and technology can contribute to solving the grand challenges of our present and future. This was a profound experience for me as a scientist and as a person.

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.

From Iowa to NYC: The Path of Gold

A man stands at a podium and delivers an address.

When astrophysicist Brian Metzger looks at the origins of black holes, all he sees is gold. It’s a perspective that has been years in the making.

Published October 20, 2020

By Marvin L. Cummings Jr., PhD

Brian Metzger, recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s HEAD Bruno Rossi Prize, gives a plenary lecture at the society’s 235th meeting at the Hawai’i Convention Center.

As a NASA Einstein Fellow at Princeton University in 2010, Metzger theorized that gold, along with other heavy and precious metals, was created during a collision of two merging neutron stars and that this process would create a luminous flare of emission known as a “kilonova” right before the merged stars collapse into a black hole.

In 2017, this prediction was proven true after LIGO detectors, large-scale observatories located in the states of Louisiana and Washington, pointed astronomers to a kilonova explosion that revealed evidence of heavy elements like gold.

Answering Long-standing Questions in Astrophysics

Metzger’s correct predictions about these long-standing questions in astrophysics that had eluded scientists for years—including how gold was made—propelled him to be named the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering.

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences announced all three 2020 Laureates in July. Metzger, 39, a physics professor at Columbia University in New York, was also a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist in previous years, 2018 and 2019.

Metzger said important discoveries in his field – and answers to everyday, fundamental science questions – are becoming close in reach, thanks in part to advanced LIGO detectors, which can measure cataclysmic gravitational wave events, and other astronomical tools (satellites).

Before Metzger’s research, he said, “we didn’t know where these elements came from, and now we think a very large fraction of them do come from these merging neutron star systems.”

Closer to home, “it’s an incredible realization that the precious metals in my wedding band were likely forged in the vicinity of a black hole,” he said.

Hailing from the Hawkeye State

Brian Metzger giving a public lecture in his hometown of Burlington, Iowa.

Growing up in Burlington, Iowa, the hometown of many famous scientists, Metzger had a local connection to science. He was amazed by Dr. James Van Allen, a University of Iowa alumnus and professor who discovered the Van Allen radiation belts. Also, Dr. Edward Jones, the principal investigator of the Voyager missions, which flew to the outer solar system and took up-close pictures of the planets.

“I remember looking at images from Voyager, of the planets, and really wondering what were these exotic alien worlds?” he said.

Metzger also credits his science background to his mom, an art teacher who turned to science when her school’s art program was cut. He remembers turning the pages of his mom’s astronomy textbooks and being fascinated. Seeing his mom blend her creativity with science taught him that science is nothing but “constrained creativity”—creativity with rules.

At Columbia, Metzger said he’s motivated by working with his students and colleagues who come from diverse backgrounds. He said their strengths and expertise not only compliment his own, but also span wider than what he can offer.

Metzger said he’s long followed advice from his doctorate adviser: Be yourself and play to your strengths.

That guidance has proven to be gold, no pun intended. That’s because, Metzger said, you should look to “find the collaborator who makes up for your weaknesses or complements you”—a combination that can help solve the universe’s biggest mysteries.

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.

Clues to Disease Revealed in the Physics of Cells

A man poses for the camera inside his research lab.

Clifford Brangwynne, PhD, credits his start in science to Fritjof Capra’s popular science book, “The Tao of Physics” about the implications of quantum theory.

Published October 7, 2020

By Marvin L. Cummings Jr., PhD

Clifford Brangwynne, PhD. Credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

That book—and a random ride home from his high school job at Barnes & Noble with an MIT graduate student in materials science—lit the spark.

“I was a late bloomer,” Brangwynne said. “I wasn’t one of those kids with a chemistry set in my basement, competing on the math team and all of that.”

By his freshman year at Carnegie Mellon University, Brangwynne decided to take an introduction to materials science course. He remembers being enthralled during a lab activity pouring molten aluminum alloys at over 1,000°Celsius to study the crystallization process. And he’s been hooked ever since.

That introduction to materials science, paired with his fascination with cell biology, how cells function, and how they move, has led him to a stellar scientific career, evidenced most recently by being named the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Laureate in Life Sciences.

From Finalist to Laureate

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences announced all three 2020 Laureates in July. Brangwynne was also a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist in 2019 and 2018.

Now a biophysicist and bioengineer at Princeton University, Brangwynne was honored for his discovery of liquid-liquid phase separation as a cellular organizing principle. Cells typically separate the many biochemical reactions they perform by surrounding them in a membrane. In liquid-liquid phase separation, reactions are separated without a membrane into groupings called condensates, similar to tiny oil droplets that separate from vinegar in newly shaken salad dressing.

Without the restrictions of membranes, cells can benefit from the constant formation of new and different biochemical reactions. His studies suggest that when this process goes awry, cells can die. This can then lead to medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

“The recognition of this new field at the interface of cell biology and soft matter physics inspires my lab to continue breaking the barriers separating scientific disciplines,” Brangwynne said.

The First from Princeton University

The first Blavatnik National Awards Laureate from Princeton University, Brangwynne is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He also is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute—one of the most sought-after appointments in biomedical research.

Before finding his footing in science and academia, Brangwynne thought that science would be a lonely profession. He grew up in Boston in what he said was a “large, wonderful” working-class family “full of electricians and plumbers and house painters and nurses.”

From that, he said, he had a misconception of an “isolated scientist, working alone” and never speaking to others. “I realize now that that was incredibly mistaken,” he said, describing his work as social, interesting, and multidimensional.

He compared running his lab to a team sport, allowing him to interact with students and scientists across different areas of expertise.

Outside the lab, he enjoys reading about history and spending time with his family of five.

Brangwynne said his several mentors fueled his passion and pushed him to follow his scientific instincts. The greatest piece of advice he has ever received? “Do what you love and the rest will take care of itself.”

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.

Harnessing Chemistry to Improve the Human Condition

The real power of science hit William R. Dichtel, PhD, when he was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Published September 17, 2020

By Marvin L. Cummings Jr., PhD

Working in the lab of his mentor, Prof. Timothy M. Swager, he looked for ways to detect explosives, the so-called legacy landmines – deadly unexploded landmines left behind from war-torn regions worldwide. It was, Prof. Dichtel said, the first time he realized how much creativity is involved in science – more than just facts in a textbook.

That principle – using the tools of science to improve the human condition – has carried him to the top of his profession, named the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Laureate in Chemistry. The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences announced all three 2020 Laureates in July. Prof. Dichtel was a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist in 2017 and in 2019.

“Training Scientists of the Future”

Now an organic chemist at Northwestern University, Prof. Dichtel was recognized for his groundbreaking chemical methods that he uses to invent novel, porous materials from simple, carbon-based building blocks. One of these porous materials removes toxic pesticides and industrial pollutants from drinking water.

In 2016, he co-founded Cyclopure, a startup company to move these materials beyond the lab and into commercial use. He also is actively developing new methods to make plastics more sustainable and recyclable.

Prof. Dichtel, the first Blavatnik National Awards Laureate selected from Northwestern University, still teaches parts of the university’s introductory organic chemistry course, furthering his goal of inspiring the next generation to solve complex problems with chemistry.

Prof. Dichtel presenting at the 2019 Blavatnik Science Symposium at The New York Academy of Sciences.

“It is a true privilege to tackle leading scientific problems,” Prof. Dichtel said. “We’re definitely producing science and we’re discovering things, but along the way, we are building a community and we’re training scientists of the future.”

Outside of the lab, Prof. Dichtel, a Texas native who grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, is a competitive long-distance swimmer. In August, he completed the Chicago Skyline marathon swim in Lake Michigan, setting a record with a finish at just under 12-and-a-half hours.

What was he thinking during that long, watery stretch? “Weird mental tangents and occasional bars from Hamilton or Jason Isbell lines, though mostly just being in the moment,” he told his Twitter followers.

Repeated Failure Leads to Success

Earlier this year, he also had planned to swim the English Channel, but the pandemic scuttled that idea – for now.

To excel in science – and in his after-work vocation, sports – Prof. Dichtel follows a core rule: perseverance.

That’s key, he said, as well as developing communication skills in writing papers, presenting work and being a collaborator with others across multidisciplinary fields.

“This is a business of repeated failure so that one can be successful,” Prof. Dichtel said. “We get almost everything wrong, almost all the time. Just getting comfortable with that and still being not discouraged and logical about it is very, very important.”

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.

When Artificial Intelligence Meets Physical Sciences

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. What can we expect as this technology continues to grow? And how will it impact you?

Published September 14, 2020

By Liang Dong

From virtual assistants like Siri to self-driving cars and computer-aided medical diagnoses, artificial intelligence (AI) affects our lives with unprecedented speed. Slowly but steadily, scientists in a broad range of fields have started to embrace AI in their research, hoping to significantly reduce the time needed to achieve new discoveries. This trend has become more obvious in the physical sciences, and in the field of materials science in particular, which is focused on the discovery and production of new, advanced materials imbued with desirable properties or functions. Think: screens of foldable smartphones; batteries that power electric cars; or materials that bend light around them, rendering them invisible.

How exactly could AI help materials scientists? We recently interviewed three honorees of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, Alexandra Boltasseva, PhD, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University; Léon Bottou, PhD, Principal Researcher at Facebook AI Research; and Sergei V. Kalinin, PhD, Corporate Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who are contributing to an upcoming virtual symposium on October 6 and 7, AI for Materials: From Discovery to Production. Here’s what they had to say about the opportunities, as well as the challenges, in this rising field.

It is only recently that researchers in the physical sciences, like materials scientists, have begun to incorporate AI techniques into their work. Why do we need to take advantage of AI for this field? What benefits may AI offer materials science?

Kalinin

AI offers a set of powerful tools to explore large volumes of multidimensional data in the physical sciences, and promises to uncover hidden functional relationships between the physical properties that we can observe. As such, AI methods are poised to become an inseparable part of all physical sciences, to enable discovery and hypothesis-driven research and to guide planning of experiments. We can take advantage of a broad range of AI techniques—from multivariate statistics to convolutional networks, unsupervised and semi-supervised methods, Gaussian processing, and reinforcement learning.

In addition, the proliferation of laboratory automation in areas from materials synthesis to imaging of materials’ molecular structures opens up broad opportunities for AI-driven experiments. For example, we will be able to adopt large-scale robotic systems or the microscale lab-on-a-chip platforms in our experiments, producing thousands or more materials in a single process.

Boltasseva

My own field, photonics, has truly been transformed by the concept of “inverse design,” meaning scientists input desired performances of photonic systems into computers and run physics-informed algorithms to figure out the best possible optical designs. The daunting challenge of this field lies in the inconceivably high computational power required for an exhaustive search within the extremely large, hyper-dimensional space of optical design parameters and constituent materials. Merging AI techniques with photonics is expected to not only enhance and enrich the design space, but, most importantly, to unlock novel functionalities and bring about disruptive performance improvements.

As compared to life sciences and pharmaceutical sciences, the application of AI in physical sciences is at least 10 years behind. What do you think is the biggest challenge for applying AI in physical sciences? How could the AI and physical sciences communities work together to address these challenges?

Bottou

Using machine learning in physical sciences is not an obvious proposition. Recent advances in AI have shown how tasks in computer science, such as computer vision and machine translation, can be achieved using big data. Yet it would be unwise to claim that this success can be replicated in all scientific fields. Big data only reveal statistical correlations that are not always indicative of the causal relations that physicists often seek. To solve this question, the AI and physics communities may take the strategy of defining a hierarchy of problems for which one could envision using AI, such as:

Visualizing or measuring an ongoing physical phenomenon. These problems are the most accessible to AI/machine learning because they can directly leverage recent advances in computer vision and signal analysis in collecting data from physical experiments and computations.
Explaining a physical phenomenon. These problems belong to the next rung of difficulty because we need AI/machine learning systems that incorporate enough of our current knowledge of physics, and can then clarify the phenomenon of interest by constructing something interpretable on top of our current knowledge.
Designing a physical system that leverages a certain phenomenon in new ways. These are by far the most difficult problems, because they require AI/machine learning systems to accurately predict how the physical phenomenon will be affected by changes that are not included or prominent in the experimental data on which AI models have been trained.

Boltasseva

The physical sciences community should ultimately build extensive databases to unleash the power of AI. We should even set up an ‘optical structures and materials genome’ project to construct a comprehensive dataset of photonic concepts, architectures, components, and photonic materials to enable hierarchical machine learning algorithms that could provide ultimate-efficiency devices.

Kalinin

I agree with Alexandra. AI tends to proliferate in the communities that adopt the model of open sharing of codes and data. While some areas of physics research have undergone this transformation, many more require both enabling tools and proof-of-benefit to accelerate this process.

I also want to add on to Léon’s comment on the fundamental difference between the AI and physics communities. AI starts with purely correlative models, and tends to rely on big data. In comparison, research in physical sciences is strongly based on prior knowledge to explore the cause and effect relationships, and often assumes the presence of simple rules or descriptors that can give rise to complex behaviors in macroscopic systems. Experiments in physical sciences can give rise to huge data volumes, but these data can pertain only to one specific situation of the system and hence are not “big.”

In order to further leverage the benefits of AI in physical sciences, researchers have to possess both sufficient domain knowledge in physical sciences and expertise in machine learning, or forge robust interdisciplinary collaborations. Conferences like AI for Materials will help researchers in both fields form these kinds of interdisciplinary teams.

Also read: The Challenge of Quantum Error Correction

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