Posts in category Organization

This is to report on my visit to alma mater, Moscow Physical-Technical University, commonly called Fiztekh. During Cold-war era this establishment aimed to educating researchers for vast military needs of Soviet Union, with a wise thought that those needs may also include the fundamental research, and good general education would pay off sooner or later. They gave indeed good and challenging education. I liked this, as well as a certian spirit of arrogance, workaholism, freedom and comreadship being cultivated at the place. Honestly think those where best years of my life.

However, I haven’t been to there for ages and did not miss it. While Leonid Levitov has visited me, he told me of his attempt to give a lecture over there: that about graphene for first-year students. According to him, the attempt was hardly sucsessful and gave him lots of bizzare and painful sensations. This was probably the reason he advised me to give such lecture as well.

I was intrigued and ask my Russian connections to arrange the lecture. By nature of my occupation, it’s been called “Nanophysics: yesterday, today, tomorrow”. Actually, I was hoping that I would not go down to these “boring” things: given the diversity of the audience, the concrete facts about the subject would hardly be usefull for them. I’d love to answer the questions like “how to become a scientist?”, “what is a research?”, “how things are rolling in your life?”. I imagined that an ambitious research-oriented student could make use of information I am able to provide about this.

So I came to the place. What followed did not look like a traditional Russian misorganization: rather, it looked like an exaggerated parody on traditional Russian misorganization. When I came to the place, there was a lecture in math: it ended five minutes after the time my lecture was to commence. After that, there were three students left. There was no beamer or any other technical tools. The students were trying to cheer me up: “just begin, perhaps there will be more people coming…” Indeed, people have been coming all the time, the last one arrived in two hours. After all, there was more than a hundred students. In 15 minutes after the beginning of the lecture I was flattered with the following scene: the dean of the department has entered the audience and personally brought a beamer for me while his entourage delivered an extension cord (that has a single socket: either for beamer or laptop)… Anyway, I know such things happen and did not mind.

Upon my feelings, the lecture was a moderate success (perhaps because of Andre Geim who provided me an excellent introduction). I could not completely escape talking about carbon nanotubes and quantum dots. I could not really strike the audience with original thoughts and ideas, and instantly transform them into the beings I like them to be. Yet there were sharp questions (“what’s your salary?”, “what were most important drawbacks in your education?”) and open answers. We could talk about very difficult subjects like latent xenophobia of Russian society and moral responsibility of a scientist.

I was even to able to tell a short story that I guess tells everything about science and education, a story which is difficult to understand but did not seem to be completely lost. I got it from a book of Ukranian sci-fi authors Dyachenko

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They are rather commercial authors, but this particular story is a masterpiece. This is what I told: “Listen to me: it may sound a silly joke for you now, but memorize it to ponder it later. This is a story of young girl who has begun her studies, and those were difficult. She was stressed for monthes for naught, and worked hard for nothing. Finally, after much sweat, the teacher told her that her performance, although still terribly unsatisfactory, has a little chance of improvement. Thus encouraged, the girl dared to ask a question: “I hardly understand the subject of my studies. How will I use the things learned?” The answer was: “Young lady, you should worry and care about many things, for instance, about your marginal performance, but not about this one. It’s not like you will use the things learned. It’s the things learned that will make use of you. “”

Long live science…

On September 16, we scientists and stuff of Kavli Institute have had an important and entertaining day.

The day has started from Grand Opening of Department of BioNanoScience. This is an offsping of our department started by Cees Dekker and Ninke Dekker (and their are not relatives, can you imagine) to promote biophysics at nanoscale. The opening has started with short official speeeches and went on with a nice scientific workshop. I liked the event, since despite its official orientation it contained lively features not entirely planned (like in the beginning the laptop of Cees has fallen down and it took up to five minutes to get it running). There was a discussion table after the talks on the topic if biology becomes engineering. The statements of the people at the table and responses from the audience were so unprepared and provocative as to create a surreal impession of importance and relevance of the topic. Do not ask me for the details, since if I’m asked to associate biology and engineering, my dentist is always the first and dominant association and the associations that follow are not at all enjoyable.

The discussion table was a theatre, there was also a real theatre with actors meant to entertain (and not quite tuned to my personal taste). The official speech of university president Dirk Jan van den Berg was sandwiched between the performances of this gang and, by virtue of taking place in a big make-shift tent, looked a part of it. Why am I so critical about this part? Simple. I got to there hoping for a free lunch. However, the audience was numerous, young and assertive. When it came down to food dispersion, I had no chance in Darwin-style events followed and had to resort to usual cantine food.

After that the Kavli day has begun. At two o’clock the members and stuff of our Kavli gang has been transported 15 miles to Zoetermeer to be processed at an enterprise specializing in corporative entertaining (bedrijfsuitjes in Dutch). Sounds boring? Not at all. First, the enterprise is called Ayer’s rock of all names. If you look at Wikipedia (as I did) what Ayer’s rock is you can already appreciate the creativity and certain romantisism of place owners. Indeed, they have provided some good fun

First part for me was GPS adventure. Everybody made fun of me for this part because of my adventures in Aspen. However, it went good and it was entertaining. We were the team of six given a Garmin unit and some challenging tasks that require the use of the unit. What stroke me is the task separation that has been authomatically and spontaneously established in our team. Me being professor had to keep the papers in order, cite the tasks loudly, collect the results and conceal my confusion over the run of events. The postdoc took the actual organization that included preventing the group sinking in marches, taking wrong turns and encouraging fullfilment the tasks. The indispensible apparatus has been operated by the senior phd student who gave us directions and readings required. And the students, as ususal, did the job. So it was like in a real research group. With my wise guidance, we’ve completed all tasks and made a record by scoring as high as possible. Too bad the responsible personeel was not able to spell my name to put it to the annals

The apotheosis was the transfer of Kavli directorship from Hans Mooij to Cees Dekker. That took place in a climbing hall. Hans gave a speech from 20m height and jumped down. He was connected to a rope so that the impact was less than you could imagine, but still it was spectacular. Then Cees took the rope and climbed up to the height to become the new Kavli director. These moments were quite thrilling since Cees did not simulate but actually climbed. His right foot did it fine while left foot from time to time has been searching for support: and everybody was afraid it won’t find any… After the event, I found it prudent to utter a light critisism to Cees, like he could train more on the same wall before the ceremory. No, said Cees, you don’t understand anything in climbing, I did it in the bast way possible. Thereby he has fully convinced me that he will be the best Kavli director one could imagine…

What else? I’ve attempted Djemble drum workshop, but could not do much and felt like a loser. Good diner has softened my feelings and was a perfect ending of the day. Guess everybody of us can say so. Long live Kavli

is what I filled with the first half of September. That does not bring me to a good mood since I will be travelling a lot starting next week and could have used this time to move towards flamming research goals and preparing the course for winter semester. Yet unfinished bisness, organizational matters, incautious promises (that result in inconvenient deadlines) and vanity (that results in unnecessary deadlines) have eaten most of the time. Some weird activities included:
– visiting twice Russian embassy in the Hauge
– making physcological portrait of one of the students
– studying open source packages that provide hierarchical menu systems in Python
– attending a talk about definition of quantum computer
– reading a chapter from a book of Abrikosov that I failed to understand thirty years ago (and still do not properly understand)
– weighting up the options to use light or heavy holes for a device that does not care about the hole weight
– writting four referee reports for journals I usually do not read.

And so on. Must confess that my attempts to avoid real work were quite sucsessful.
And they seem to become exemplary for others. Our secretary won’t be around for a couple of days: she studies how to provide first aid. In case she’d be absent for a reason, shouldn’t I learn this as well?