Collegiate Times

A: Professors don?t work in a vacuum. Without Ph.D. students and post docs we?re dead, we are dead in the water. I had a wonderful research group at Stanford and the one here is every bit as good or better. I usually have six Ph.D. students at a time and one or two post docs; although we have our own independent research projects we still work together to help each other, to learn from each other, to develop new ideas and pursue them. They have succeeded beyond even my optimistic expectations. They?re very young creative minds and I just try to channel that energy into workable projects, maybe that?s my most important role with them and at the same time they give me wonderful ideas that I pursue in my own projects. The bottom line is, going back to we don?t exist in a vacuum, for me that?s especially true, I would not be very good as an independent, alone scientist. I really thrive in a group setting and my research group provides that very creative setting that makes me want to come to work in the morning as refreshed as ever year after year.

Q: What does your family think of the work you?ve done?

A: My wife has reminded me of this, and she?s right, by the way my wife is a professor in this department as well who?s brighter than I am, she?s reminded me that even though this is attributed to me, it?s just not one person. Science doesn?t work that way. Science works by legions of scientists, all very bright, working very hard and the few people that are lucky like me who are just at the right place at the right time get more credit than they deserve. It?s true that I was one of the first players looking at very small things that control very big things on the earth, I am responsible for naming it, nanogeoscience is my term, but there are many other scientists who have contributed enormously. My wife is the greatest because she provides rationality to the world I live in and as a fellow scientist that I respect as much as any scientist I know, that makes our relationship very special. And we have two young children. We have just a fantastic family life, just the four of us.

Q: Where do you hope nanogeoscience will go from here?

A: Already a lot of labs have taken it on and I hope that many more will because there?s so much that needs to be done and so much we don?t know; we?ve just barely started. I believe one day that so many of the earth?s processes that we see on such a grand scale will be better interpreted and better explained by the understanding of what happens on such small scales with the nanomaterials we know so little about. These particles that we?re looking for now, we find everywhere. And they?ve been there all along, we just never looked for them. Right now, my kind of scientist is rare, but in the future, the kind of science my group does, I predict will be relatively common.

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