Laboratory Eden

Recently I worked in my lab for the first time in a long while. I found my lost car key on one of the benches. The same key that my husband replaced for me in honor of our 15^th wedding anniversary.

15 years ago I was eager and impatient to run my own laboratory. I had worked in others' laboratories since undergraduate days, and believed I could do it better. I learned to “play” in a lab early from my biomedical engineer father who would leave me alone for hours with microscopes, circuit boards, power supplies, oscilliscopes, an old EKG machine & treadmill, and other delights to take apart and put back together.

During my early years of setting up my own lab, my PhD advisor would regale me with his vision of centralized labs—“playgrounds” for scientists, staffed with technicians and other scientists. At the time I had too much invested in my own vision of my own lab and what I wanted to accomplish that I was unable to truly listen to his idea.

But now I would love to be able to do I want what (um….I mean have my students do what they want) in an externally managed laboratory playground environment, with technical support.

In fact, we do many of our experiments at synchrotron beamlines, which are shared community resources to perform experiments that many of us in the field have in common. It is far more efficient to have staffed, group facilities to perform these experiments. However, beamtime is expensive, and the requirement for user-friendliness often implies that experiments be engineered for existing capabilities, rather than the other way around. So these shared facilities are not quite the “playground” that my PhD advisor envisioned.

It is a false dichotomy to ask “centralized facilities? vs. individual labs?”  What I’d like best is unlimited access to a combination of (1) user facilities specialized for specific experiments (e.g. microscopes, beamlines), (2) my own laboratory in which students, post-docs and I have free reign to try new things and make mistakes and develop new experimental techniques to address our questions. The problem is (1) is usually too specialized and inflexible and therefore not the place for innovation and (2) often operates on a shoestring, necessarily limited, and can be isolating and lonely.

Enter the mythological Laboratory Eden: well-managed, staffed with knowledgeable helpful people, equipment-rich, scientist-playground where people come, work, build, talk, laugh, share their ideas with each other, listen, learn, and love (science).

Marriage Anniversary Markers

Recently, my husband & I celebrated our 15th Wedding Anniversary. This year's anniversary present (see below) was extra special, since it came in the classic powder blue box.  For a list of the more traditional anniversary markers, go here.

1^st            Camping Trip Anniversary

2^nd           Basement Flood Anniversary

3^rd            Diaper Anniversary

4^th            Purple Puddingstone Anniversary

5^th            Cross Country Move Annivesary

6^th            Serpentinite Anniversary

7^th            Maple Syrup Anniversary

8^th            Jasper Anniversary

9^th            Sushi Anniversary

10^th          Handcarved Wooden Bowl Anniversary

11^th          Grandma-calls-to-remind-us-it’s-our Anniversary

12^th          Marital Counseling Anniversary

13^th          I Can’t Believe We’re Still Married! Anniversary

14^th          New Job Anniversary

15^th          Replaced Lost Car Key Anniversary

Hot summer affair (with science)

The previous entry’s todo and nottodo lists have been very helpful to me so far this summer. I’m a to-do-list achiever. So far this summer I have been deeply involved in trying to develop a formalism for dealing with phase boundaries at equilibrium, and am having a great time doing so.

Geosciences are a bit different from physics and chemistry in that our problems are generally inverse problems, not forward problems. In all cases, the process of science uses observations to test models of how nature works. If you are a scientist who does not quite fit into this category, like a string theorist, “god-bless” as they say in my family parlance. In physics & chemistry, generally the scientist plans and runs the experiments. In geoscience, planetary science and astronomy, the Earth and planets and stars run the experiment for us, and we have to make good observations, and figure out what the results mean. And nature does not keep an organized lab notebook, but instead leaves hints lying around.

In petrology—the study of rocks—or more generally the study of Earth & planetary materials—one of the hints is how elements and isotopes partition between two phases at equilibrium—often a melt and a solid. We have lots of data both from the Earth, and from the lab. But it’s not straightforward. In both environments—lab and natural-world—it is hard to achieve and ascertain equilibrium. So one of my questions is—can we predict how element and isotope partitioning behave away from equilibrium? 

We have a lot of data—from the Earth and from experiments. And my research group has collected a huge data set over the past ~8 years or so on metal stable isotope partitioning between fluid and solid during electroplating, and there are certain aspects of the data that appear not to be predictable by the simple kinetic theories. Yes I can go to more complicated theories, but they provide too many free variables for my scientific taste. I hate fitting 8 variables to a data set. I can fit anything that way! Is there a simpler framework to understand element and isotope partitioning?

I have been working on this question in a low-key way for years, and in an accelerated manner the last several weeks. I’ll write more about the development of the theory—I still have lots to do, and lots of predictions to make, and lots of predictions to test. But now I want to write about how much fun I’m having.

I’m having so much fun doing this! I’m learning so much! I wake in the morning thinking about my beloved interfaces at equilibrium, often with a new idea, a new approach. And I’ve been spending 5-6 hours at a time many days working through the algebra and the implications of the calculations. Drawing pictures of interfaces, and finding ways to explain them to myself and others. I am thinking of how to incorporate some of the ideas I’m working on into my class this fall. And starting to outline the paper.

Sometimes science is a slog, and I just continue pushing forward, thankful for the occasional delicious small bits that come across my way.  Right now though, it’s a full-blown romantic affair complete with happy dreams, elevated mood, and anticipatory excitement about the object of my affection.

Summertime

To Do	To Not Do
Develop a thermodynamic formalism for dealing with two-dimensional phase boundaries.	Develop a departmental policy for dealing with two-academic couples.
Belt out the soundtrack of Rent during the morning commute to campus	Rehearse my lecture notes during the morning commute to campus
Run lots of fun experiments at the synchrotron	Write lots of SOPs for my lab here at the U.
Catch up with dear colleagues at two conferences in beautiful locations.	Catch the words of colleagues during faculty meetings for accurate minutes.
Submit two proposals and three papers. Work on experiments, papers, and abstracts with grad students.	Submit dossier and teaching and research statements. Work on curriculum committee, nominations committee, and sign undergraduate course change requests.
Family vacation on the water, in the woods, in front of the campfire.	Family shlepping to music lessons, band practice, grocery store.

Launchpad Engineer

Happy Fathers Day to my friend P. who works at the U where I work and who is an amazing launchpad engineer. P and his husband, who is a professor at U., have two children who went to on-campus daycare and school along with my son.

The launchpad engineer is that person in the family unit who ensures that all of the family members get launched daily, and go out to school, jobs, and life—to explore, play, work, and live as best they can. It’s also the launchpad engineer’s job to help ensure that the landing pad is equipped with sustenance and support when all of the family rockets splash down after their daily adventures. Being the family launchpad engineer is a huge job, and a competent launchpad engineer is a wonderful person to have in a family.

Every family does it differently. In many families, there is a single launchpad engineer who does the whole job with little assistance.  A family can have more than one launchpad engineer. In some families, the job is done by co-engineers who work very well together.  In others there is one person who does the morning launch, and the other preps the landing pad. Families with resources can hire additional personnel to help with launch and landing and all of the other jobs that go along with launchpad engineer. All families go through times when the rockets are all doing great; at other times one or more rockets fail to launch and/or the launchpad itself is in need of repairs. When you start to look at the different ways that families man their launchpads, you may notice that some are more effective than others. Many are inconsistent—sometimes working well; other times not so much.

The one thing that will tell you almost everything that you need to know about my own family’s launchpad is that each of the two adults are convinced that they are the chief launchpad engineer. We both gratefully acknowledge the important assistant engineering role performed by the other. (But I am the real one.)

In many families, the launchpad engineer also has their own rocket to launch. This is often required by economics, sometimes by choice and usually a combination of the two and other reasons too. Sometimes the launchpad engineer job takes a temporary or permanent backseat to the LE’s own rocket. In the Museum of Competence, there should be a large exhibit dedicated to great family launchpad engineers who also do amazing things with their own rockets on a daily basis.

So when I read articles or hear people stating things like

It's better for launchpad engineers not to have their own rockets.

or 

Being a launchpad engineer alone is not enough everyone should have their own rocket too.

or 

Women are biologically predisposed to be better launchpad engineers than men are.

or

Launchpad engineers are at a disadvantage in math and science intensive fields.

or even 

Wow! I am so lucky to have such an amazing launchpad engineer at home! I  know I'm just not smart enough to do that job! It's a good thing that I'm a science professor instead!

--I think what an assortment of garbage stinky with festering baloney.

Launchpad engineers are individuals, often women, and there is great variation, but don’t forget that our society benefits greatly from its collective unpaid launchpad engineers. Instead of putting down and isolating the launchpad engineers, we—as individuals and society--should be investing our energies to provide support for all of our launchpad engineers so that families can thrive and all of us are able to launch their own rockets to explore as we wish, when we wish.

****

Our own launchpad is messy and a bit disorganized, but we all land home at the end, share a good meal, trade reports of our days’ adventures, and cry and laugh.
****

Gender Bias

My department is blissfully free of bias, as I have been informed in recent days by many of its members. The fact that I think it’s almost cute how proud they are of themselves tells you how much I like most of my colleagues.

We can all count that there is one woman out of 25 tenured faculty members in our department, so we definitely recognize that we have a bad case of gender disparity. Most of us think it's a problem. But that's about the extent of our collective sophistication on the subject.

 What we need is a good map and an experienced guide to help us think through why it is like it is, point us in the right direction for solutions, and find a way that we can discuss these issues without feeling as if we are walking on eggshells with each other (i.e. me), and implement solutions.   

 Lack of diversity/gender discrepancy is a big problem, not only in academic physical sciences & engineering, but also at the tops of corporations, law firms, etc. What are the origins of gender discrepancies? is a big unsolved question because the reasons are complicated and multivariate and involve people. For example, three of the many explanations for gender discrepancies that have been floating around recently include:

            Motherhood

            Gender differences in statistical behavior at the extremes (A "bell-curve"-type argument that I think was actually the core of Larry Summers "intrinsic aptitude" argument)

            GenderBias

Here’s one of my question as a scientist:

Are these (and the many other) factors competing hypotheses for an issue that likely has a single, overriding cause (Occam’s Razor)? Or do many factors come together in complex ways that result in a single outcome of inequity?

And here's my question as an engineer:

What do we do about it?

One of our goals as members of a department and university is to make decisions based on data and not bias. So I think it is worthwhile to check out some of the research done on bias in decision making. The goal isn’t to purge ourselves of our schemas, or to claim that bias doesn’t exist. Ideally, some of us will occasionally succeed in recognizing our own biases-in-action, and either self-correct or even call it out for the rest of us to acknowledge and/or discuss. I think it’s worth facing the idea squarely—as trained critical thinkers—especially if it results in a better and more diverse department/ university.

 

Here are some more resources:

http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/genderequity/equitymaterials.html

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/advance/_toolkit_

 

Scientist/Cook

I recently celebrated my 5000^th meal.

I am pleased with my achievements and trajectory as a cook. I aim to feel the same way about my life as a scientist: my teaching, research, writing. My job as a professor and as cook are similar in their combination of technique, practice, skill, experience, balance of perspiration and inspiration.

Here is what I can learn from my life as a cook that I can apply to my life as a scientist:

Cooking is a habit: I cook most days

I am product oriented: I put the product on the table and serve it as-is. Always a “ta-da!” never with apology.

My attitude is healthy: I spend almost no emotional energy on expectations before the meal nor post-mortem analysis afterwards.

Meals run the gamut from workaday to simply good to superlative to triumphant. The least successful ones I accept as natural part of the variation, and do not erode at my self-confidence.

After successful meals, I congratulate myself aloud at the dinner table. This is followed by Mom—stop bragging. Really? Why not? I take it as my parental duty to acclimatize my son to the swagger of women.

I have cried twice over cooking (discounting onions & shallots which make me bawl). In 1990, I made a spinach sauce that oxidized and my date called it “monkey vomit”. In 2011 I was cooking for neighbors and had marinated small pieces of meat all day and the whole meal dropped to the fire through the grill grating.

In the end, the meal is evaluated without self-judgment. I am analytical: what worked? What didn’t? What's next? Never: I should have done it better, what do my colleagues think about me. No. Not even a little bit.