COVID-19 (Disease)

In this interview, Elizabeth Simmons discusses: role as Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) at UC San Diego; impact of COVID-19; current developments in the field that she finds exciting; family background and childhood; experiences as a woman in physics; M.Phil at Cambridge in Volker Heine’s group working on condensed matter theory; study of condensed matter theory at Harvard; Howard Georgi; work on models exploring electroweak symmetry breaking and quark masses; opinions on why SSC died and the impact on the field; collaboration with Cynthia Brossman on the Pathways K12 outreach project supporting girls’ involvement in STEM; research on the top quark; interest in supersymmetry and physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) using a Higgless model; papers with husband Sekhar Chivukula and others exploring the idea of a five-dimensional spacetime; leading Lyman Briggs College; MOOSE model; reaction to the discovery of the Higgs boson; post-Higgs work distinguishing which models can and can’t be consistent with the data; consulting work for the American Physical Society (APS) and the wider academic and scientific community on matters of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI); advocacy on behalf of the LGBTQ community; advisory work for the Center for High Energy Physics in China; collaborations at the Aspen Center for Physics to support EDI in the field; role creating career development workshops for women at the International Center for Theoretical Physics; work increasing EDI in curricula and faculty hiring; building cross-field collaboration at UCSD; collaboration with other EVCs in the UC system; current physics work on model building and how to get the most out of available data; and current work on graviton-graviton scattering. Toward the end of the interview, Simmons reflects on intersectionality and the value of diversity in science and discovery.

Interview with William Gelbart, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. The interview begins with Gelbart discussing his research pertaining to COVID-19 and creating a vaccine. Gelbart then recounts his childhood in New York and describes growing up with a mathematician father. He takes us through his undergraduate years at Harvard where he majored in chemistry and physics. Gelbart speaks about his grad school experience at the University of Chicago and the trends in chemical physics at the time. He describes working under the mentorship of Stuart Rice, Karl Freed, and Joshua Jortner. Gelbart then details the factors that led him to a postdoctoral fellowship in Paris, followed by a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley, at which time he transitioned into physical chemistry. Gelbart also discusses his subsequent move to UCLA and his collaborations with Avi Ben-Shaul. He explains his shift into biology and virus research, and his recent work on RNA gene expression and cancer vaccine research.

Interview with Zane Arp, director for Biomedical Physics at the FDA. Arp provides an organizational overview of where his office sits within the FDA and its key institutional partners throughout and beyond the federal government. He recounts his childhood in Texas and his undergraduate experience at Angelo State where he majored in chemistry. Arp explains his decision to pursue a PhD in physical chemistry at Texas A&M with a focus on quantum chemistry through spectroscopy, and he describes his postgraduate work at Los Alamos on laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. He discusses his subsequent work at Wye Laboratories and Johnson Space Controls in support of the International Space Station. Arp describes his next job at GlaxoSmithKline to work on pharmaceutical development and where he grew into management leadership roles. He describes the opportunities that led to him joining the FDA and he describes his game plan for improving the biomedical device research and regulatory process. Arp explains why this is a long-term proposition and he describes how COVID has, and has not changed FDA’s regulatory environment. At the end of the interview, he reflects on what shifts he been able to put in place so far at the FDA and why his office truly benefits from having a mission statement.

Interview with Anjelica Gonzalez, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Faculty Director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale. Gonzalez explains the origins of the Center and the challenges of getting it started during the pandemic. She recounts her family’s diverse background and her childhood in Las Vegas. Gonzalez describes her early interests in science and her undergraduate experience at Utah State, where she focused on biomedical engineering. She discusses the opportunities that led to her graduate studies at Rice, where she conducted thesis research on neutrophil engagement with soft tissue mimetics and her interest in applying therapies for sepsis. Gonzalez describes her research assistantship at Yale to work with Mark Saltzman and Jordan Pober, and she explains the collaborative nature of immunobiology research. She describes her faculty appointment and the positive changes that Yale has embraced in advancing diversity and inclusion, and she explains why biomimetic development is at the heart of her research and how this work could be useful for Covid research and therapies. At the end of the interview, Gonzalez reflects on the ways science benefits when it embraces diversity, and she conveys optimism for the positive health impacts that her future research can yield.

Interview with Sheperd Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, founding member of the Black Hole Initiative, and founding director of the Event Horizon Telescope. He surveys his global initiatives and his interest in fostering black hole research in Africa and he describes how the pandemic has slowed down his work. Doeleman affirms that he is of the generation for which black holes were always “real” and not theoretical abstractions, and he provides a history of the discovery that supermassive black holes were at the center of galaxies. He reflects on the applied science that was achieved in the course of creating EHT, and he describes the unique values that land and space-based telescopes offer. Doeleman recounts his childhood in Oregon and his admission to Reed College when he was fifteen. He explains his motivations in completing a solo research mission in Antarctica and he describes the opportunities that led to his graduate research at MIT, where he worked with Alan Rogers at the Haystack Observatory on the 3mm VLBI. Doeleman narrates the technical advances that allowed his team to achieve an eight-fold increase in bandwidth, and he describes the EHT’s administrative origins and the events leading to the measurement of the Sagittarius A* black hole. He describes what it meant to image the black hole, and he conveys the deep care and caution that went into the analysis before EHT was ready to publicize its findings. Doeleman discusses winning the Breakthrough Prize as the public face of a large collaboration, and at the end of the interview, he considers the ways that EHT’s achievement can serve as a launchpad to future discovery.

Interview with Timothy James Symons, Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and recently retired as Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences, for which he ran the Lab’s programs in high energy and nuclear physics. Symons explains how the Lab has responded to the pandemic and the wide range of physics research he is following at Berkeley and beyond. He recounts his childhood in England and his early interests in science and the opportunities that led to his undergraduate education at Oxford where a tutor focused his interests in nuclear physics. Symons explains his reasons for remaining at Oxford for graduate school and the relevance of the SU(3) shell model for his thesis. He describes his postdoctoral work at the UK Science Research Council, and the opportunities that initially led him to Berkeley to work with David Scott on low energy nuclear structure. Symons provides a history of the Bevatron and the many reasons that compelled him to take a staff position. He describes the challenges in replacing the Bevelac, and the import of the ISABELLE cancellation at Brookhaven on Berkeley’s decisions. He provides detail on the interplay between laboratory experiments and DOE policy decisions and he explains the significant administrative pull of his work for NSAC. Symons reviews broadly the state of U.S. nuclear physics in the 1990s and the value of the APS as a sounding board in shaping policies for the decade. He does the same for rare isotopes in the early 2000s and how the Lab became involved in DUSEL. Symons describes his world as Associate Lab Director and he discusses his interactions with the Lab Director which gave him a high-altitude appreciate for the broad range of research across the Lab. He explains the Lab’s contributions in energy research which stems from Steve Chu’s directorship. At the end of the interview, Symons reflects on the significant changes in the Lab’s scope and mission over his career, the overall trend that once-disparate research areas are now increasingly on a path of convergence, and he conveys optimism on the fundamental discoveries that are within reach for the near future of nuclear physics.

Interview with Frances Hellman, professor of physics and of Materials Science and Engineering, Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at UC Berkeley, as well as senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab.  Hellman is also president-elect of the APS. Hellman explains why she considers physics her “home” department and why her research agenda spans so many disciplines. She describes the major issues in her incoming leadership of APS and how Berkeley has coped during the pandemic. Hellman recounts her childhood in Manhattan and then Brooklyn and she describes her Quaker education and her early interests in science. She describes her focus on ski racing and her undergraduate experience at Dartmouth, and the formative influence that Bruce Pipes had on her development as a physicist. Hellman discusses her motivations to pursue thesis research at Stanford, where Mac Beasley and Ted Geballe were her co-advisors and where A15 superconductor research was in full gear. She describes her postdoctoral appointment at Bell Labs to work on magnetic thin film materials and magnetic superconductors. Hellman conveys her interest in entrepreneurship and the opportunities that allowed her to join the faculty at UC San Diego, and she describes building up her lab and her interests in thermal links. She reflects broadly on the basic and applied aspects of her research, and she explains her reasons for transferring to Berkeley and her affiliation with the Exploratorium. Hellman describes her administrative responsibilities as department chair in physics and she conveys her recent interests in amorphous materials and specifically ideal glass. At the end of the interview, Hellman discusses her involvement in both the APS and Berkeley’s efforts to make STEM more inclusive and diverse, and she describes her optimism that her work on amorphous materials will lead to key discovery in the field.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Philip Anfinrud, Senior Biomedical Research Scientist, National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, at the National Institutes of Health. Anfinrud likens his work environment to the “Bell Labs of Biophysics” and he expresses his pride in working with colleagues conducting research at the cutting-edge of their respective fields. He recounts his upbringing in small town North Dakota and how he developed his early interests in atmospheric chemistry. Anfinrud describes the circumstances leading to his graduate work at Berkeley, and how he approached his interests in physics from a physical chemistry perspective. He describes his work with Walter Struve on energy transport and picosecond lasers, and he describes his postdoctoral research with Robin Hochstrasser at the University of Pennsylvania where he worked on infrared spectroscopy on the femtosecond time scale. Anfinrud discusses his first faculty appointment at Harvard, and he describes the process building a laser lab in partnership with Mitsubishi. Anfinrud explains his research on myoglobin and photolysis laser pulses, and he describes his first forays in X-ray radiation and crystallography. He describes his move to the NIH, where he created Laboratory of Ultrafast Biophysical Chemistry. Anfinrud explains the value of NMR spectroscopy to understand protein folding, and he describes how his interests are situated more in the realm of basic science and not clinically-oriented research. He discusses the value of scaling laws in physics as a means for understanding biochemical phenomena, and he describes the numerous ways that the NIH provides an ideal environment for research. At the end of the interview, Anfinrud provides an overview of his current research in time-resolved crystallography and single molecule behavior, and he describes the public health impact of his work on speech droplets as a means of transmitting the coronavirus.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Boleslaw (Bolek) Wyslouch, professor of physics at MIT and Director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and Director of the Bates Laboratory at MIT. Wyslouch explains how the laboratories have been coping during the coronavirus pandemic and he discusses the educational opportunities available for MIT students at the labs. Wyslouch recounts his childhood in postwar Poland, and he explains how his apolitical instincts worked well with his interests in science as a student. He describes his work at CERN, Saclay, and at DESY as an undergraduate, and he conveys his good fortune to be studying physics outside of Poland during the upheavals of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Wyslouch describes meeting Samuel Ting and the subsequent opportunity he made for Wyslouch to continue his research at CERN with Ulrich Becker, and the circumstances leading to his faculty position at MIT. He describes his work on the RHIC accelerator and the impact of Frank Wilczek’s work on QCD, and he explains his ongoing collaborations at CERN. Bolek reflects on his contributions to quark-gluon plasma research and the use of CMS for heavy-ion detection. He cites the quality of his collaborators as the most important ingredient in his successful research endeavors, and he describes his involvement with the LHC and why he will always consider CERN his “mother Lab.” At the end of the interview, Wyslouch assesses how ongoing advances in technology, and in particular, computational techniques and algorithms, will continue to push forward fundamental advances in nuclear and particle physics.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jackson recounts her family heritage and describes her upbringing in Washington DC and her early experiences attending segregated schools and visiting the Smithsonian museums. She considers some of the opportunities that came with being high school valedictorian, and she describes the circumstances leading to her undergraduate admission at MIT. Jackson discusses the discrimination she encountered during college and describes her experience amid campus protests against the Vietnam War. She describes her undergraduate thesis on tunneling density states in superconducting niobium-titanium alloys, and she explains why the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was central to her decision to remain at MIT for graduate school. Jackson describes her thesis research officially under the direction of Jim Young but in reality more with Roman Jackiw. She discusses her experience as a postdoctoral researcher Fermilab, where she continued her thesis research on one-particle inclusive reactions, and then CERN, where she worked as a fellow of the Ford Foundation, and from which she used as a home base to travel in Europe. Jackson describes her subsequent work at Bell Labs where she focused on the electronic and optical properties of layered materials. She explains her decision to join the faculty at Rutgers University and she describes the moment not long after when President Clinton asked her to become the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Jackson recounts the history and structure of the NRC and she shares her views on the role of nuclear power as an energy sources and as part of the solution for climate change. She describes the interplay between regulation and private industry from her vantage point of leading the NRC and the responsibility of ensuring safety in the civilian nuclear energy industry. Jackson discusses her work as a board member of the New York Stock Exchange, and she explains the circumstances that led to her being named President of RPI. She describes the process for establishing a mandate and a vision for the university as she assumed leadership. Jackson discusses her work in the Obama administration as a member of PCAST and the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and she explains why as president of a university it is important not to get caught up in the political controversies of any particular day. She shares her views on the importance of diversity and inclusivity in higher education and she describes how RPI has dealt with broader issues of racial justice in 2020. Jackson discusses her work on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus task force, and what she has learned from the pandemic. She describes why being awarded the National Medal of Science is so important to her personally and she reflects on her contributions in physics, and particularly on the properties of unique two-dimensional systems. At the end of the interview, Jackson describes her central focus on guiding RPI through the pandemic and championing environmental issues.