Posts in category Organization
Gary Steele
gave a talk today for Quantum Nanoscience stuff. Gary is presently a post-doc with Leo Kouwenhoven. However, this may change soon, and I wish Gary best luck with this.
Gary has been looking for best ways to make cute nanotube devices, and was lucky to find those. In particular, he has made tunable p-n and p-n-p nanotube junctions and a mechanical resonator of unbelievable quality factor. That inspired him greatly. The number of new ideas in his talk has exceeded the number of slides by a factor and could keep busy the whole Kavli Institute for ten years. Good program, in short.
I met Gary later on the day when we with a group of people were trying to discuss some nanoelectromechanical things.
Leo DiCarlo
gave a talk today for Quantum NanoScience stuff (although there were students present in the audience). Leo is a true quantum engineer, one of the few on this planet. Actually, the best one I ever met. I like both the physical realization of his quantum processor (josephson-based superconducting electronics, live-long field of Hans Mooij) and his no-nosense approach to this field. He’s a goal and finds means. His interest to quantum feedback brings very intruiging physical questions that overlap very well with my own research agenda.
Presently, Leo is a post-doc in Yale, with Rob Schoelkopf. He’s American look and feel. Very occasionaly, an extra-energetic gesture witnesses his Italian heritage.
I liked the speaker, the topic and the contens. The only thing I’ve got mixing feelings about was the road at his slides: he showed it to denomostate that he knows how to reach the goal. The road looked vaguely familiar. It could lead to an isolated dusty gas station. To a drive-in cinema or a luna-park. To a suburb residenial area with littered sidewalks and skyscapers at the horizon. I am so happy in Delft!
Exam quantum transport
has been held on 27-01-2010. I am still having schedule problems (have not finished ERC application yet). So I’ve finished checking the results today at 1 a.m.
The results are stable: let me put it like this. I am satisfied with average level, it is better than in years past. The reasons were: the book published, enthousiastic problem-solving session of Ciprian, better contact with the audience during the lectures. From the other hand, I expected more: perhaps just because I’m too romantic. In fact, the spread of the results was smaller than in years past. There was nobody with absolute or close to absolute score in multiple choice questions.
Do not mean I am not satisfied with an effort the students put into it: I am. There were several small factors that could affect the performance: i. Updated transparency sets differed much from unupdated ones, ii. there was a small discrepancy between the examination problem and corresponding material of homework that could confuse, iii. the examination problem required unnecessary algebra.
Jake Taylor
has given today a talk at our Nanoscience seminar. I knew dr Taylor as being involved in collaborations that resulted in interesting and ground-breaking publications. I came to listen to him with high expectations.
With no exaggeration, this was the worst talk I ever attended. I’ve listened to more than a thousand scientific talks that have varied very much in skill, comprehensibility and general qualities. However in every case the speaker attempted to relate the subject of the talk to the previous research, put it in the context known, and from very beginning give a preview of the results. At least, explain the title of the talk. None of these four elements were present in the talk of dr Taylor. In the beginning, the speaker has encouraged the questions from the audience. So I have asked some: I could not know that the speaker encouraged questions just to ignore them.
Dr Taylor must be a respected scientist, and the talk might be quite illuminating at the end. Unfortunately, I cannot stay till the end: I just got very unpleasant feeling and left after forty minutes. I have not understood a slightest bit of it.
Exam Advanced Quantum Mechanics
has been held on 19-01-2010. Today, 29-01-2010, I finished checking the results. What can I say?
This year I have had an attentive audience which has been motivating and provided strong feedback: we did have questions and discussions, I believe that we could do more together than in years past. I can see this in examination results that concern multiple choice questions and primarly check the material of the lectures. The average was significantly better than in years past. One score stopped short of absolute, there were no catastrophic scores with less then 50% points. This part of examination was awarding for me.
However, the first part, the "problem", appeared to be catastrophically difficult. I could not appreciate it in advance. I received very good reports from and about the problem-solving sessions. The problem was a modification of 2008 exam, and I dared to complicate it slightly in the end retaining first two points simple. Year 2008 was decisively not bright. Yet that time everybody could do the first two points. This year almost nobody could do them properly. Because of accumulation effect, it did not make much sense to go futher, although many did attempt. Obviously, my assertion of the effectiveness of problem-solving sessions and general readiness of students was faulty. I am frustrated. Since this is my fault, I did everything to minimize the negative impact of a way-too-difficult problem on actual marks.
However, the average result is slightly below than last year. Fortunately, as mentioned, we did not have "bad" cases of exceptionally low score.
Roman Kolesov
gave a talk in our department on Jan. 25. His research mostly concerns optical and paramagnetic excitation of impurity ions in transparent crystals like ruby or diamond (these ions determine colors of precious stones). It is an active research area with a nano-twist: people are trying to make nanoparticles out of the crystals so that there is a single ion per nanoparticle, position the particles, connect them optically using metal strips, or put them into an artificial crystal (of nanometer period) that could provide localization of the photons emitted by the ion.
Several groups are (hyper)active in the area. Roman belongs to Jelezko team of TU Dresden. Roland Hanson, our yongest faculty, stands under banner of diamond quantum physics here at TU Delft.
Precisios stones fascinate and, reportedly, could even enslave your mind. As you know, there is a small nuclear reactor at TU. There were (and are) projects to make a commercial use of this rather unique facility. One of the projects was to change the color of precious stones by exposing them to radiation: sometimes a color change can change the market value of a stone by an order of magnitude (I mean, increase this value). Somehow this project did not go: was that because the diamonds shone too much after the exposure?
Sander Otte
gave a talk in our department on Jan. 13. He introduced for us spintronics of individual atoms. Using STM techniques, he was able to position magnetic atoms on a semi-insulating substrate. With the same STM, he can run currents through the atoms revealing their excited spin states. The most fascinating part of his talk described how to catch a magnetic atom at the STM tip and run the current through another atom on the substrate.
Sander Otte graduated from Leiden and has been promoted there. He is presently post doc in NIST Maryland. More about him/his research can be found at http://www.nist.gov/cnst/otte.cfm.
School of complexity in Brussels
Thursday Jan 21 and Friday Jan 22 I have spent in Brussels, Universite Libre. There was a scientific school (!) for master students. I find the idea astonishing: if something like this happens in Delft, it usually consists of two-three lectures of a VERY popular level, a sort you can read in kindergarten without risking to tire kids. There in Brussel it was entirely different: all the lecturers invited kept presentation at scientific level. The students have been warned: the school is called "Understanding and exploiting COMPLEXITY at the nanoscale". Yet the attendance was spectacular, despite the fact that it was an examination week. I really love that French-speaking people are not afraid of looking clever.
Except me, the lectures came from statistical physics community, and their definition of "nanoscale" was rather different from others: they concern situations were the fluctuations of would-be macroscopic quantities are visible. For instance, this includes population genetics presented by Luca Peliti. There was an interesting series of experimental lectures by Sergio Ciliberto. I was talking about quantum transport, as usual.
Busy
There are many things happening that should be presented in this blog, I’m sorry, I can not write about those now. I am busy, helplessly and hopelessly, with drafting an ERC Advanced Research Grant proposal. Internal TU deadline is nearing.
Such writting is by no means my strong side. I hate the present activity very much. I do this in hope to get resources for what I’d like to do and what would be a majour accomplishment of my scientific career: UNIFIED THEORY OF QUANTUM TRANSPORT.
Well. The odds that the weeks spent writting would not go in vain are thin: propability of success is estimated as 15 %. So, consciously speaking, it is not a hope: it’s rather a dream…
I promise I will be back (some day) to write about current events.
Frans Godschalk
will be a new Ph.D. student to work with me starting this year. This has been settled several weeks ago, however I could not make an announcement before I officially concluded the search (there were 57 applicants for this position).
Frans will be working on Josephson laser, perhaps with Fabian Hassler (see the post of Nov. 27). Frans graduated from Leiden and made his diploma thesis in the field of high-energy physics. He is very motivated. Still, I do not expect an easy start: too much differences in approaches.