The Narrative

Who are the teachers you remember and contributed the most to who you are today?

Posted on by charlie

Teacher I listen to NOVA's Science NOW podcasts. These are nice snippets of info, taken from NOVA's shows. Many of these snippets are also from Neil deGrasse Tyson, the head of the Museum of Natural History in NYC, and an amazing speaker. 

The last episode I listened to was the Q&A session Tyson held at a monthly Science Pub, sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science. 

Event info: Portland Science Pub
In this podcast, Neil deGrasse Tyson visits Portland, Oregon, to participate in a monthly event called the “Science Pub.” Sponsored by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the “Pub” invites researchers to talk about their work, answer audience questions, and have a beer. It's a science conversation done Oregon style. The original event lasted over two hours, but we trimmed the Q&A down to about 30 minutes.
[link to mp3 of the event] 

One of the questions raised was around the teachers that have made the most impact on you. Tyson showed that for most of us (expect for some strange dude who was an outlier) we have about five teachers who we remember best. 

Of course, I'm thinking of my scientific career. And a few come readily to mind (these are folks who changed my thinking or I quote to this day). Now's a good time to thank some of them. 

– Ms Strickland – My high school teacher. She not only introduced chemistry to me, but taught me many useful techniques that I used all throughout my science career. As my children start doing more serious science, I find myself teaching the things Ms Strickland taught me.

– Jim Garbe – Ok, not formally a teacher, but he was a grad student I worked closely with when I was a tech at MIT. He not only taught me a boatload of science and technique, but bathed me in the culture of science and being a scientist.

– Craig T Martin – My PhD advisor. He taught me TRUE molecular biology, feeding into my love of tinkering with molecules. He also taught me a lot on writing papers, and how to keep science fun. (He's recently been made head of the Chemistry Dept at UMass. Go, Craig!)

– Gary Silverman – My PI when I was a fellow. He taught me a lot about the business of academic research, such as running a lab, mentoring students, and grant writing. 

I suppose I remember each of these as each provided support, information, and direction for each layer of being a scientist. From the basic introduction to the culture to the business, these folks were invested in making me a great scientist. 

Thanks. 

So, who are the teachers who you remember and contributed the most to who you are today?

Image from Chicago 2016 Photos

Uncategorized

links for 2009-10-05

Posted on by charlie
Innovation/Science/The Narrative

Great overview of synthbio and diybio in WIRED UK

Posted on by charlie

Pharmacy_bottle Ben Hammersley, from Wired UK, wrote up an excellent article on synthetic biology with a bit of diybio mixed in (link below). Of course, the Knight and Shetty Biobricks were the center of the article, and provides a nice background to explain the concept behind standardized parts.

Link: At home with the DNA hackers:

Tom Knight, often called the "father" of biohacking, tells a joke: "A biologist goes into the lab one day, does an experiment and finds something is twice as complicated as she thought it was. 'Great,' she says, 'I get to write a paper.' An engineer goes into another lab, does an experiment, and she too finds something twice as complicated as she was expecting. 'Damn,' she says, 'Now how do I get rid of that?'"

The author of that article then touches upon DIYbio, and the trend to kitchen science. Knight, as usual, was concerned, but clear that he'd support it if DIYbiologists showed any competency. Interesting way to put it (and a good spin for things I am planning).

I was listening today to a podcast from Science Friday (highly recommended) on "The Age of Wonder," an interview of a science historian who spoke about the late 18th-, early 19th-century, when "science," as a descriptive term, did not exist. Back then, folks of all sorts of background, explored the world as "natural philosophers."

One story in particular, that Ira picked up on, was one such dabbler who discovered the anesthetic qualities of Nitrous Oxide but failed to put it in use, even with all the suffering from amputations during the Napoleonic Wars. Ira quickly asked if maybe because these guys were dabblers, they were exploring rather than looking for a solution or aware of the possibilities of applying what they discovered.

Might this be what Knight is thinking about DIYbiologists? While it's cool to think that folks can dabble with biology in their kitchen, does that prepare them for the safety issues, the problem solving, and potential serendipity as with an experienced biologist (or any craft)?

Or does it really matter?

Announcements/General

Quick note on new gig

Posted on by charlie

 

Chb_logo_centered_300dpi

For those who know, this summer has been busy for me: I stepped down from my fun job as Editor-in-Chief at Nokia Conversations and I moved my family (and dog) from Finland to the US. As if this were not enough, I have left Nokia today and have started to work at Children’s Hospital Boston.

I am now Senior Web Producer for Children’s Hospital Trust, the fundraising arm of Children’s Hospital Boston. In addition to media production, especially videos, I’m leading the Trust’s engagement with patients, families, and advocates through online social networking services (social media marketing and fundraising, similar to what I did at Nokia).

I’m excited to be doing more than selling electronics. And it’s great to be back at Children’s (it’s where I was a bit before I joined Nokia).

I’ll have more to say in future. For now, I’m sprucing up and stoking the Trust’s presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (the social media toolkit version 2009, of course) among other things. And they will have me making videos like crazy.

The funny thing is that it’s like starting all over again, training a corporation new to the joys of the conversational Web.

I haven’t updated my station identification yet to reflect these changes, but will soon. Until then, my about page says enough.

More later. For sure.

Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative

Don’t guess the future of the social Web, read it right here.

Posted on by charlie

Person-centric-real-time-web Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström wrote a brilliant article on the Arctic Startup site (hey, Ville and Antti, nice catch!). Both of them have been actively pushing forward the concept, philosophy, and hard-core standards for a more person-centric Web.

Link: The Web At A New Crossroads
It’s 2009, going on 2010. For the past three years, the web has been morphing into a real-time and people-centric place. We’ve seen this trend among individual users — through their actions and demands for better social experiences — but also increasingly among companies and developers. We want a web that’s more “like us” than the old model was. We want a web where people are as important to the architecture of the system as documents.

They chart out the history of the Web and point to where it must go.

There have been some recent indicators, for example, an excellent article from Marshall Fitzpatrick (who is also brilliant and a watcher in this space), Opera’s Unite, the anger at Facebook’s purchase of Friendfeed, the rise of the Cloud, and the social meltdown the day Facebook and Twitter were down from DoS attacks (and some indicative comments of data ownership, and network ownership in some of my posts on Nokia Conversations). We seem to be passing a conceptual hurdle and behind-the-scenes coding (gosh, I had wished for DiSo back in 2008!) and finally seeing some real motion towards a more peer-to-peer style of social networking.

I was explaining to my son that in the old days, computing was done on main frames via terminals, much like social networking today is done from a dumb browser with servers in the Cloud. What Chris and Jyri are driving is just as liberating as PCs were to folks tied to mainframes – bringing power, choice, control, and the like back to the user, unmediated by proprietary services.

This isn’t geeky dreaming. Chris, who had created Flock, which in some ways reflected a person-centric form of browsing, has been able to pull together Facebook, Myspace, Six Apart, and Google to back him up. And Jyri and Brad (who helped with the article) are key players in this and both work for Google (last I checked).

I admit I have not been following this as much as I used to. Other than the occasional article from Marshal that I pick up, in the past year or so, the most I have discussed this was at a lunch at Web 2.0 (where indeed, Chris, Jyri, and David Recordon, among others, were there going over all this stuff). So I am not sure what other articles these two have written.

In any case this article they have written will be part of the People-centric Real-time Web manifesto.

Will you be a part of it?

Original image here.