Nano, by Saad

I visited one of my scientific mentors last week and she gave me this advice: Become an expert in two areas. We did not pursue the topic further, discussing particular areas of materials research, for example, but her words remained in my thoughts after the visit.

Being knowledgeable in two areas certainly gives me more options when selecting research projects, but the real power of knowing two areas is the potential to combine them and discover something worthwhile in a third area.  One of my favorite books, The Medici Effect, calls this phenomenon “being in the Intersection.” The book relates the tales of a diverse collection of innovators, past and present (examples: Charles Darwin, Richard Branson, and the guy who invented the card game Magic The Gathering) and how they connected concepts from two seemingly unrelated wells of knowledge to make an astounding discovery and/or a huge pile of money. The book is a great read, and I’m glad my mentor’s words reminded me of it, because I know I should spend more time brainstorming intersectional ideas along with directional ideas (ones that seem to naturally evolve from a previous finding).

In my still-evolving scientific career, I have been fortunate to experience the Intersection once already. By combining electrophoretic deposition—an efficient technique for depositing nanoparticles into solid films from a suspension—with the use of a sacrificial layer—a concept from MEMS fabrication that allows thin sections of material to be suspended freely—we invented a new technique for creating standalone nanoparticle films. Our lab was already using electrophoretic deposition, but because I had previously studied MEMS and done some microfabrication work, I was able to draw from this second well of knowledge. This experience shows the value of collaborating with scientists outside of my field and even taking steps to branch out on my own from the confines of what I’m already comfortable with studying.

In any creative work, most of the ideas put forward end up unused or turn out to be ho-hum. The Medici Effect even points out that past success in finding an Intersection is no guarantee that someone will find it again. So the conclusion here would be: never stop thinking, never stop visiting new places and soaking up new concepts, and never stop trying out new (and seemingly crazy) ideas.

This sentiment is the key point of an essay by Martin Schwartz that I found. Titled “The importance of stupidity in scientific research,” the piece explains that unless one truly delves into the unknown (thus feeling “stupid”) it is not possible to achieve great, groundbreaking discoveries.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice.  Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant.  One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time.

I certainly agree.  In materials science, we strive to create new and useful materials or fabrication processes.  The foremost question is, “Can we make it?”  If it were easy to make, someone else would have done it already.  So we struggle through a process of trial-and-error: the first pass is based on known techniques, with subsequent refinements based on what we find after each step with a change in the fabrication parameters.  Trying to create something–without a recipe that limits the scope of mistakes one can make–is incredibly humbling.

No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.

Conclusion: research is not easy and it certainly is not for everyone.  Check your ego at the lab door.

Not an article, but an essay: Hearts and minds and nanotechnology. Nature Nanotechnology 4, 136 (2009).

The timing of this piece’s publication, a week after I started my blog, could not have been more appropriate.  In my first post I wrote, “writing… about nanotechnology will be of even greater importance as the science makes its way into everyday-use devices.  Think about politicians: they practically live for uninformed demagoguery in exchange for votes.”

Now, this essay by Chris Toumey asserts that people’s opinions favoring/opposing nanotechnology are shaped heavily by their existing prejudices about science/technology and by their religious intensity.  While earlier surveys suggested that the more people knew about nanotech the more likely they were to support it, the amount of knowledge people have or acquire is unlikely to overcome existing biases.

For those who expect that people will embrace nanotechnology when they learn about the science, the… message… is that scientific knowledge in our minds is a weak companion to the strong values and concerns in our hearts.

If nanotechnology is to work its way into our lives and effect positive changes, we cannot afford to get bogged down in debates like those assigning scientific merit to both intelligent design and evolution, as if they were opposite sides of the same coin.  So what should you, the nanotech innovator who wants to change the world with your science, do in the face of these opinion hurdles?  I have three ideas.

1. Frame discussions to highlight the real-world benefits and de-emphasize the technical detail. Read the rest of this entry »

“Writing a Paper” by George Whitesides is fantastically useful. Only three pages long, it is a succinct guide to writing a cogent, coherent article from the questions, experiments, and data that are swirling in your mind.

The central message is to formulate, early in the life of a project, an outline to direct your thoughts and data collection.

“No project is ever complete, and it saves enormous effort and much time to propose a plausible paper and outline as soon as you see the basic structure of a project.”