Posts in category Organization
Julia Meyer
has been visiting tuesday-wednesday this week. She’s a faculty in Grenoble now, after being in Germany and a loong time in US. I like very much her serious, thorough and ingenious approach to theoretical physics: something rarely seen in her generation/our field.
She gave a talk about various aspects of 1d interacting electrons. I especially liked the last part devoted to ordering of classical electrons in 1d confining potential. It’s a beautiful and context-rich problem that I also touched many years ago.
Conference in Mallorca,
that’s where I’ve been sunday-thusday this week. Rosa Lopez and David Sanchez, faculties of University of Balearic islands, were so kind as to organize it, “Nonlinear spin and charge transport through nanoscopic systems” was the name, many thanks for this. Funniest thing is that we all actually work from 8 till 17, while the weather was nice almost all the time.
Things I liked included:
- the direction of the conference: it beared non-linear stochastic dynamics flavour, the taste that becomes stronger and stronger in quantum transort research
- talks, especially related to electron counting/pumping
- food, and very much
- swimming at a public beach in 1km from the hotel
- a spectacular night thunderstorm in Hollywood style
Things I liked less were:
- the conference mascot was a little red horny devil
- the fact the island seems totally covered by the city
- waking up at 2 a.m to catch the flight there
- going to bed at 4 a.m. after the flight there
Wedding in Leiden
(Posting back in time)
Frans Goldschalk, my phd student, and Denise have married today. What a perfect young couple they stroke! Having seen all these academics who do not marry before finding a “proper place” in social structure, I really admire their decision and wish them very best luck and Lord’s blessing in all the ways.
Me and my wife been to the service and marrige blessing in neat Herengrachtkerk in Leiden. Very good, detailed, everything was carefully explained. The church appreared a bit far from the station, and for the party we had to make that walk back so we did not stay long.
Getting sick of being busy
(Posting back again)
I can’t believe that: the semester, that was so difficult, time-consuming and seemingly everlasting, is over, but instead of rejoycing I am confronted with a heap of things that I’ve wisely postponed till the end of the semester. Like seven referee reports (with the deadline end of the week). Like preparing talks and promises to review the texts of articles I involed, checking calculations, thinking of running projects…
Unfair it is. Why a prominent scientist like me could not spend time in leisure, playing with thoughts about things eternal? Recall I was able to do it in a younger age. Will have to think about post doc position…
Concluding Lecture Fairy Tales
We theorists of our section have started a new course this year, Fairy Tales of Theoretical Physics. That has been inspired by the course of Khmelnitskii in Cambridge, and we made use of his material. To aim at Delft audience, we have to adjust the manner and content, so now it differs substantially: this is both good and bad. We were lucky to attract a group of enthousiastc students, eventually, bigger group that we initially expected.
I gave this concluding lecture. I wanted to show up a bit, the lecture beared the title “Yours Classically Quantum” and discused analogies between quantum d-dimensional systems and classical (d+1)-dimensional ones, mostly for d=0. I find this topic very instructive for a student, and perhaps it implicitly answers the question: “what is the theoretical physics?”.
While I think I could partially convey the message, and made a couple of instructive jokes, the technicalities and/or their presentation manner were perhaps too difficult for the audience. Yaroslav Blanter that was present pretended it was difficult for him as well, though I rather see it as his attempt for an instructive joke. I’ll need to revise the presentation manner for the next year. And there was this annoying time problem again…
Coulomb blockade of Majorana fermions: research proposal
There’s many interesting things going around, yet I do not write anything since I have to write something I have to be completely adsorbed with. This is another attempt to get a research grant in national competition, FOM Projectruimte.
Although Majorana’s is very popular topic, few works actually address the question of their interaction. See a chance to exercise my expertise since I’ve been working with superconductivity, Coulom blockade and zero-energy states in there already 20 years ago.
David Marcos
has received his Ph. D. title yesterday in Materials Science Institue in Madrid, Ramon Aguado being his supervisor. The thesis of David is almost unimaginable in our time: it consists of experimental and theoretical work, and covers topics that, although all belong to quantum transport, are so various as being more suitable for a life-time cv rather than for a phd thesis bundle. Generous Spanish Ph.D. fellowships allow this in principle: a student may be finaced to stay in a research group abroad for up to 3 month every year. However, from people I know only David Marcos managed to produce a research publication during each stay.
He had to measure C12/C13 carbon nanotubes in Harvard, compute tiny shifts of flux-qubit levels in Delft, putting diamonds (theoretically) into a flux loop in Copenhagen, and get cemented by full counting statistics in Berlin, all that with sucsess. Perhaps, David, you could go a bit deeper in each of these subjects. Nevertheless you kind of give an example of broadness and overview a modern student can achieve if he/she only wants to.
It was a pleasure to meet some old friends from Madrid and elsewhere and get lunch in a hunting club frequented by King of Spain. David is a first student of Ramon Aguado: congratulations to him as well.
Kavli Newsletter
has appeared in press today. This is an initiative of Cees Dekker and I think a nice one, at least the first issue is quite interesting. You can find it here.
Here is my column for the newsletter:
For a sufficiently deep physicist, time is
both relative and irrelevant. This is why
only recently I came to a new insight: neither Cees Dekker, nor me, nor Leo Kouwenhoven are just-started faculties. Even
Herre van der Zant has accomplished
his studies a while ago. The marvelous
and heretic scientific developments that
energized our early careers became a
commonplace. They have formed well-established fields, that have already
traditions, rituals, known pathways and
no-trespassing signs that indicate the subfields. They wrote about our research:
“New times ahead”. Now they’d write:
“New times long past”. Fortunately, we
have enough influence to prevent this.
The immediate reason for the new insight were new appointments made in
2010. Finally, new faces! Really new:
for a change, they are not our students
and postdocs and KNAW/NWO fellows (well, almost). From bio side, there
are Bertus Beaumont, Christtophe Danelon, David Grunwald (Sorry Sander, for
me your face doesn’t count new). From
quantum side, those are Leo DiCarlo,
Gary Steele, Sander Otte. This is a real
change of guard, the whole new generation to shape the future of our Kavli
Institute. Frankly and strictly personally,
I’d love to see you more frequently:
some I’ve seen only once. Yet this does
not count, I understand how busy you
are setting up your environment. What
does count is the long-awaited novelty
you bring, and the hope that your active research will make your novel fields
outdated as fast as ours did.
Since I was a starting faculty only yesterday, would you mind a piece of advice
(sure you need one).
a. In the course of my first year, I got a
new surprise every day. Once that
was a pleasant one.
b. Shortly after I started, they announced
budget and job cuts. (Does this sound
a history? Then it repeats itself). The
natural and just law: “last in, first
out” was not applied to me only because somebody said: “over my dead
body”. Always have somebody (disposable) around.
c. If confronted with a (scientific) no-trespassing sign, just go ahead. Yes, they
will shoot. Yet your little sacrifice will
advance science as whole.
d. If not satisfied with your working
conditions (no separate room, no
promotion rights, closed toilets, etc.),
fight for those and unite for fight. Annoy your colleague to make her/him
equally unsatisfied. Friends are nice,
allies are important.
Welcome from the deep of my heart!
Recontres de Moriond
is a name of a conference in quantum mesoscopic physics that is held once in two-three years. The conference is distinguished in its broad scope, quality and quantity of talks, as well as location. It is held in La Thuile, at italian side of Mont Blanc. There are skiing facilities, yet I do not ski and can honestly say that my time is devoted to science (and stolen from equation since it is the semester time. However, I could not miss this conference.)
There are piles of white snow that I missed not having it enough this winter. My talk will start in about an hour. I will tell about the work with Dima Pikulin, Topological properties of superconducting junctions.
Meet the rector 2011
I attended a traditional meeting of the university stuff with the rector. Last time I’ve done it in november 2009. Many things have changed since that, most importantly, the rector. Karel Luyben took this post in January 2010.
I think (thought) I know Karel Luyben pretty well since beforehead he was the dean of our department for almost twelve years. He is very assertive and energetic, can emit charisma and lead, quick to form an opinion, and even quicker to implement it. You undrestand that these qualities can be eihter good or bad for achieving your personal goals, depenging on mutual orientation of you and Karel Luyben.
Perhaps I can illustrate this with a short story. About 3 years ago we underwent a centralization of computer systems of the whole university. There was an information meeting about the development. During the meeting, I understood that if plans are implemented I will not be able to use my computer anymore. I have tried to reason that perhaps the centralization does not have to be so overwhelming. The guy responsible for this made very big eyes and said I have to talk to the dean about this. At 10 p.m. I’ve emailed to the dean. Next morning I’ve found a one-page response message dated by 3 a.m. (!). From this I’ve learned that the dean (i) strongly disproves my involvement with the centralization and warns me not to stay in the way of the progress, (ii) advises to learn more about the program, perhaps starting with correct spelling of its name, (iii) commands computer people to attend my needs. The latter has worked, I do not have computer problems anymore (many students around do have, but this is a different story…).
Coming back to the meeting on Friday. In contrast to previous setups, people gathered (about 20) have presented all layers of the university community, including assistant and associated professors. This has actually resuled in more active and multi-topic discussion. The format of the meeting was not fixed but quickly and naturally become a question-answer session: people pose questions, and Karel Luyben answered. Yet from time to time people answered each other questions.
Learned a couple of (relatively) new things. So-called “allocation model” that concerned distribution of money within the university, resulted in intense internal competetion and intense administrating of education and research, does not have the support of the rector. (Looks like we’d better compete externally. Gosh, quite some people openly complained…). Promotion of young people to Ph.D. is the primary task of this university. TU Delf will profile itself as a “broad” technical university, perhaps not pumping all money into selected research/educational activities.
To summarize, it was an interesting and lively meeting. From the other hand, on my taste it was a bit too chaotic and diverse: in fact we could only get through two points of the five-point agenda. I even complained about it in the end of the meeting: perhaps it is a good idea to have it with smaller number of participants.