Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Marwa El-Diwiny: Using Soft Robotics to Solve Hard Problems (#089)

Episode Date: November 8, 2020

Marwa A.ElDiwiny, an early stage researcher PhD, working on modelling and simulating self-healing soft materials for industrail applications at VUB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, Professor Brian, thanks so much for joining IE Soprobotics, what's cost. Such an honor, having you. It's honor is mine. I've been following you for six months or more now and listening to your podcast as part of my regular podcast diet. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Such honor. So I would like to ask you first, how you would like to define yourself? Well, I think firstly I define myself as a father and as a husband, as a friend, as a human being, somebody who is curious about the nature of the universe, somebody who is relentless and a scholar, and someone who's very lazy and doesn't get around to all the things and all those categories that I want to. But hopefully I'll have more time as my kids grow up a little bit more and it gets a little bit easier. But what I really love to do is learn. That's the thing I've always

loved about life. My mother tells me since I was a two-year-old, I wouldn't sleep at night, and that comes in handy as an astronomer. That's interesting. So actually, I have a lot of interesting thing, but I would like to go back with a child. Do you have any members about your childhood? You were interested in science or technology. I was very interested in science and technology. I grew up outside New York City on Long Island, it's called. And in that area, It was very kind of peaceful, very nature, filled with nature, natural beauty, the ocean. I was always mesmerized by the ocean. I love collecting rocks and shells and kind of just looking at them and seeing what kind of

patterns they make. It's funny because my kids will do that too nowadays. They'll pick up a sand dollar. They'll pick up a, you know, a jellyfish. And they want to see what makes these things work. And I think the interface between kind of the curiosity that, one has when one is young can be translated into a career. And I often, I was asking one of my sons about this yesterday, you know, what are you, what do you lose track of time doing? So in what,

in what activity that you do, do you lose track? And besides video games or besides YouTube, it's really, he loves to read, he loves to think about big questions and he loves to kind of teach things. So I said, you know, we'll keep that in mind. And maybe someday you will be interested in something that allows you to use that passion, intense passion for your career. And that's sort of what I did. I never thought I could get paid to be an astronomer. I mean, who does that? It's like, it's like getting paid to be a cookie taster or something. And nobody's going to pay me to do it. I'll do it for free. But in truth, if you follow your passion, if you're really incredibly, you know, consumed and you can't not do it. It's something that could lead to a very valuable career.

I can't agree more with that. I think many students struggling with how you find your passion and most importantly your purpose, how you find that. And if you can tell us just one example, how you can find your purpose, either in science or science, what is it's not science? Yeah, it's funny. You know, Marwa, it's hard to know your purpose looking forward. Sometimes you only learn your purpose looking backwards. And, you know, if I think about the steps that, you know, took in my life, there might have been a few pivotal steps that define my life. I think my purpose was always, honestly, to be a father, to be a husband. I think that's what I'm naturally sort of inclined to do and I would do if they paid me less than they already do.

I would still be a father and a husband. And so I think that being a human being, being, having a human being, having. a soul, having a desire to connect to other human beings. That's sort of natural. That is sort of my passion. But beyond that, I never knew that you could combine a passion for talking to other people, for making jokes as corny and unfunny as they may be. But you could connect to the general public who has such a thirst for science for technology. People like you and me, we are sort of doing magic, Arthur C. Clark, who is the founding namesake of UC San Diego's Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, where I am the co-director, as well as the Into the Impossible

podcast, which is one of his phrases. He said, the only way to know the limits of the possible is to venture beyond them into the impossible. So I always ask my guest, and I'm going to ask you later what you thought was impossible as a young child that allowed you to then go past that boundary into the impossible. For me, it was overcoming rejection, overcoming failure. I didn't go to the Harvard's like, like Professor Darren La Pomey, who's a big fan of yours too, and George White's who you've had on your show. But I've had, you know, I had to make it a different way. And I never gave up. And I just knew that my love of the universe and answering big questions would carry me on, Even when, you know, I feel my book title, obviously, losing the Nobel Prize, that's a spoiler.

I did not win the Nobel Prize. But that wasn't a letdown to me. It was just another goal. I always say to my students in graduate school, I see them the reward for solving a problem in your thesis is a harder problem. So it's like you always do the easiest stuff first. You pick the lowest fruit first. So the harder achievements are beyond your. your grasp and they always should be. And no one really gets to the promised land without struggle,

so to speak. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. I agree with you. A struggle, I think, and being as part of a life. And you have to cope with that and makes you grow and stronger. So that's really powerful. But I'm curious to ask about your father. How will the relationship and how he affected you? I think you almost in your most of the episode, you mentioned him. So how were the relationship and how he ficted you. Yeah, my father and I had a complex relationship. Here in the U.S., it's common for fathers and sons to be competitive with baseball or football. And I was always good at that. But my father and mother divorced when I was very young, something like six or seven years old. And then I didn't see my father for 15 years until I was in graduate school. I knew he was a scientist. I knew he was a great

mathematician. I knew he won many awards and achievements, but I knew that he never won the Nobel Prize. And so for me, as a kid, having some anger towards him for, you know, having not been in my life, estranged from my life for 15, you know, long, painful years during those formative years when a kid is a teenager, you know, falls in love for the first time, gets dumped for the first time, gets rejected from the colleges that he wanted to go to, et cetera, and it goes for girls as well. So for me, it was very painful. And so I wanted to supersede him to exceed his accomplishments. And I know it's a very small-minded aspect of my character, but I want to be honest that that was an animating impulse for me to win a Nobel Prize would be to forever prove my superiority as a

scientist. And that was part of the motivation. It wasn't 100%. It was part of the motivation. It was part it and that's the psychological side of me. I admit, I don't regret, but it's not something that I would say I'm particularly proud of. That's interesting and I think it's very complex at the same time because was an incentive for you as a competition with your dad or incentive to be like a curiosity? I think I yeah. Yeah, I got a lot of character traits, good and bad for my father and especially for my mother, mostly good ones, and she's still alive. My father passed away, sadly, very young. But we had a good relationship.

We were able to reconcile towards the end of his life and develop a very deep bond that according to him was deeper than any other father and son, because we kind of paused our relationship at age six or seven and then resumed it in my 20s when I was mature, when I was getting a piece. PhD when I was interested in physics. He used to joke, I don't care about playing with kids until they learn linear algebra. And that's a pretty high bar, you know, for for anybody, let alone a little kid. So he was joking. But the fact is that, as you know, when you're teaching or when you're as an educator, it's always more fun to teach the more advanced classes because at that level, the students

know almost as much as you. And your job is to have them effectively, surpass you. And so I feel like that, you know, kind of delay in our relationship meant he didn't have to have, you know, the patience to deal with me learning arithmetic. And then he could just talk to me about group theory and, and, and other advanced topics in science and math. So I don't regret it. I don't, you know, I'm sure it could have been easier for me as a kid. And I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy to go through, you know, the kind of childhood that I had to go through because I was a child of divorce, but I had a lot of great, great treasured memories from my father as well. So I think I get a lot of that curiosity, passion, anti-authority bias, you know, from my father.

Yeah, that's wonderful. And I can assume you have also the emotional side. And that's, I think, needs a question about what's the motivation behind also running a losing a number of price book. I think that you said that the same that you want to convey that scientists are people and scientists' stereotype also neglect the boast of human qualities like vulnerabilities and motion. So if you can tell us about why he started writing the book, what would have been to you? So the book was written as as an appeal to non-scientists, really. It's a memoir about what it's like to be a young scientist and feeling like you're on the verge of a great breakthrough and the emotions, the struggle,

the competition that most people don't think about. Most people get scientists wrong. in many different ways. Most people think a scientist looks a certain way, has a certain upbringing, has certain, you know, intrinsic gifts, and we'll say things like I'm not, I had Professor Jim, Jim Gates, who's the past president of the National Society of Black Physicist on my podcast multiple times. He's the president-elect of the American Physical Society. And he wrote a book about Einstein called Proving Einstein Right. And in that book, he basically says, you know, Most people say, I'm not Einstein, so I can't be a scientist. No, Einstein wasn't Einstein for most of his life. It's only in retrospect that we realize this. And this is coming from Jim Gates, the father of supersymmetry. This guy's a Titan. And he's like, I'm not as smart as that guy. But it doesn't matter because we have a place. We have a role to play. And I want to convey that to scientists for the following reason. My book is written from the perspective of an experimental scientist, someone who builds telescopes, someone who builds detectors, someone who builds detectors. I don't build cool squishy robots, but I build really cool things that can peer back to the beginning of the universe potentially.

All the books that were in existence before my book really portrayed the subject of the cosmic microwave background, etc., from a purely theoretical point of view, meaning colleagues like Lisa Randall, Max Tagmark, I'm thinking of Sean, Sean Carroll, Brian Green. all these people are brilliant and wonderful thinkers, and yet they come at it from the perspective of a theoretical physicist. And from my perspective, we needed somebody that could explain how the experiments work and how the details of the instrument work. And that was very gratifying to do that. And actually, I had two people endorse the book that really made a great, a big impact on me. One was Sir Roger Penrose, who just won the Nobel Prize.

And I actually just had a couple of emails with him today. He's going to come back on my podcast. I'm going to do a live question and answer with him. And he said it was an intriguing book. He learned something from my book. I mean, that was incredible. The other one who gave a wonderful blurb was Lord Martin Reese of Cambridge. So that's rival University to Oxford.

And Lord Martin said, you know, this is a great book. I just wish it didn't talk about the Nobel Prize. But actually, you know, the book has this, I don't know, I'm showing it for my video audience, but it's hard to see. Hopefully everybody has it out there. But there's three chapters about the Nobel Prize, and the rest is about being a memoir of my experiences, growing up, trying to learn about astronomy,

worshiping heroes of astronomy like Galileo and even Nobel Prize winners. And how does it feel to come close to your business? goal, whether it be becoming a Nobel Prize winner or winning the World Series. You know, we just had the World Series here in America. And, you know, one team wins, one team loses. Now, is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, are they not as good? Or should they be shamed of not winning or my Padres here in San Diego? Of course not. Only one team can win it. And they can only win it basically for one year. So what? The next year, they're not as good. You know, so my point is that you spend most of your time experiencing headwinds, adversity, challenge. And so enjoy that ride. Don't only focus on the

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6 p.m. Pacific time. Yeah, that's wonderful. But I would like to ask you about your thoughts about Nobel Prize because I think you're not the only one that we have recently witnessed some time and there's a biases in who will be awarded the award in Nobel Prize and the percentage of women as well

who would be awarded in 55 years ago. So if you can tell us, you brought some solution for that. What do you think about Nobel Prize in first place, how they have a committee doing selection. Can you tell us about your thought about that? Yeah. Well, one of my friends pointed out recently that since my book came out, the number of female Nobel Prize winners in physics has doubled. Now, it was only at two, so it's not super significant, but it's moving in the right direction. And just this year, my friend Andrea Gez at the University of California, Los Angeles, which is not far from here,

she won the Nobel Prize. I'm hoping to have her on my podcast very soon, too. So having excluded large numbers of scientists throughout the years, the most common objection I get to the Nobel Prize or in favor of the Nobel Prize is that they always do a good job and scientists aren't biased. Now, I don't know about you. Maybe you've experienced some bias in science. I mean, maybe you've realized that scientists aren't free of prejudice, free of judgment, free of bias. But I'll take you back to official records of the Nobel Committee back in the 1920s and the 19t teens. And you'll know of a scientist named Albert Einstein. We just talked about him. He came up with special relativity theory in 1905. He followed that up with an even

greater discovery in 1915, 1912 to 1915. And between 1905 and 1905 and 1905 and 1905 and 1922 when he finally received the 1921 Nobel Prize, a gentleman by the name of Gustav D'Len, who is Swedish, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for an outstanding discovery called the lighthouse automatic gas accumulator. Now, I don't know how often you use a gas accumulator there in Europe, but I've never used one myself. And yet I use general relativity every time I turn on my GPS. And without it, it wouldn't work. So, So now you have to ask why. Was there an exclusion principle at work?

And in fact, there was. There was a man by the name of Philip Leonard, and he was Hitler's chief of Aryan science. And he didn't like people that were Jewish to get recognition. In fact, he derided the science that Einstein did, this cosmology, this theoretical physics. They called that Jewish science, and they said it was empathetical to Aryan physics,

and that they had a rule, Because if you won a Nobel Prize, you could nominate the winners of all future Nobel Prizes. So Leonard was the chief of Hitler's Aryan physics campaign. And so for many years, they basically made a pretext that Einstein didn't develop anything worthy of the Nobel Prize. But secretly, they said Einstein must not win a Nobel Prize. So now ask yourself, Philip Leonard won the Nobel Prize in 1904, 1905, I believe. and he won it for the discovery of the photoelectric effect, which is what Einstein in part would win the Nobel Prize for in 1921.

So now between those times, I mean, he was a smart person. I mean, William Shockley won the Nobel Prize for the invention of the transistor and advocated for what's called eugenics. He wanted to eliminate the preponderance of African Americans. And so you can have great scientists that are also terrible human beings. And so my perspective is the Nobel's, Prize by not rectifying its past sins. It has committed sins against science, against the history of science. It has excluded people, and it continues to do so. And I claim in the book, it will do so at

its own peril. At some point, the Nobel Prize will either rectify and have redemption, or it will cease to be as prestigious as it is now. That's really very important point. I would like to stop here again about what you mentioned about being great science, but maybe you are terrible un-PEE. And first the question also here because I think how do you think maybe psychopaths or sociopaths will be in that position like PI and having a responsibility for life as with postdocs and PhD or maybe being a committee for deciding who will win and not. And he's, I think you had a sort of professor Gentry Patrick, I think, and trace on diversity in science. And I think that's something very important. But I would like to stop here again,

because when I see the comments about the subject about race diversity or inclusion and diversity, some people think that science is science and you don't have to speak about this point. Some people assume in academia and academy that it's just a cosmetic image. So if you can tell us about why they think some people in the academy think inclusion and diverse doesn't make sense, and don't believe in that subject. And you also mention that human also can be have implicit biases and explicit biases. If you can tell us about how is this really complicated, if you have someone who's psychopaths and biased and we still have this issue, but I don't know what do you think of the solution for that, for this problem in there. Yeah. No, it's a legitimate question. It's funny because I'll have people, my podcast is not political. I don't talk politics. I'll have on people on the far right, the far left. I won't have on, you know, someone who's really odious psychopath, sociopath, but I will have on,

both sides in equal abundances. I think science is very liberal nowadays. There are, you know, people of all different genders, of all different orientations, of all different colors, of all different backgrounds, religions, et cetera. But it is such a hot button issue that it's almost impossible that people won't be offended by one guest I have on versus another guest. So that's just an issue that we played. Now, I've had on, since we've had in America, the Black Lives Matter movement, and great agitation for positive changes to a very bleak history in America and science. And I think what I've tried to do is make it human, make it humanize what the struggles are of these African-American men and women, in particular, mostly scientists, you know, and haven't gotten political or whatever.

But to see that they actually do face a different struggle than I face. Now, I might face a different struggle than somebody else face. You might face a different struggle than somebody else. I think science is getting better. For example, we have explicitly policies meant to encourage and increase the enrollment of African Americans at this campus. That is counteracted, and it has been successful under our Chancellor, Pridip Koshla. We've more than doubled the number of African Americans in just five or so years. That's a historic accomplishment, but it's 3%.

It's up from 1.5%. that's not enough. And, and what will happen more or while that's so frustrating is that we're doing so good. We're attracting these brilliant people. And then we're a public university. And we don't, we're not that old. We only found it in 1960. That was 11 years before I was born. It's not like it's a, you know, this university like Harvard that goes back 300 years. And what happens, sadly, from my perspective, is that we cultivate and we get these extremely, you know, talented people of all different races, colors, and creeds, but often a public, a private school like Stanford will come along and say, well, thank you very much for identifying these wonderful candidates.

We have, you know, $42 billion endowment versus, you know, San Diego has $700 million. It becomes almost impossible to retain the people. It's a very, very difficult problem. Also being a young university, we don't have alumni going back to. to the 1800s like Berkeley or UCLA or to the 1600s in the case of Harvard. And if you went to Harvard, you know, like Professor Lepalmi, my good friend, you will have a higher chance of your kids going to Harvard someday. And that's by design. So if you're African American, same too.

My friend Chonda Prescott Weinstein, she's a professor at University of New Hampshire. You know, if she has children, I don't know what her situation is, but they could have a higher chance of getting into Harvard because she went there And that means that just because there's only so many, you know, these wonderful students to get, that we would, unfortunately, not be as competitive. And that's just a reality. But again, we have to work harder and we are.

Yeah, that's a good point. But I would like, again, ask you about how the academy structure. I mean, you said in your book about this like a hunger game. And that's sad because I think, yeah, you're right. There's advances, but still we have an issue about. this power disparate, for example. I would like to stress again about the mental health issue, because I think you came across again as someone who's scared about as a human being, not only science, just neglect emotions. And I also think it's a story for your supervisor, Andrew Lange,

at this website in 2010. And you don't know why he did that. But do you think because of the pressure in academy, you have a lot of pain amount of work for the week, 60 hours you have work? Yeah. Yeah, it's a very good question. You know, the academia never turns off. It's not like I teach three hours a week and that's it. No, I'm in the classroom three hours a week. I'm preparing 18 hours a week.

I'm advising my four graduate students, you know, 20 other hours of the week. I've got a family. I've got responsibilities. We've got to hire people. We have to serve on awards committee. We have to serve on admissions committees. It never ends. If I wanted to, I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But the most important thing for my sanity, and I do want to say very briefly, after my book came out in the fall of 2018, a man who thought he was in the running for the Nobel Prize in economics took his own life after finding out that he did not win the Nobel Prize for very similar work. This is for work involving on global warming, I believe, climate change and economics. and we can't say that losing the Nobel Prize caused him to commit suicide, but his friend said he was despondent about that, and it took place right after the announcement.

So I do feel like, as I say, I don't know if my beloved advisor, Andrew Lang, took his life in any way because he was overlooked. It is ironic in some sense. His ex-wife won the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year, Francis Arnold, in 2018. And they were certainly a power couple. And I'm very happy for her.

She's gone through great pains too. And it's just amazing. You know, she lost a son. She had breast cancer. She lost her ex-husband, who she was close to, the father of her children. And so how do some people react one way and others react another way? It's hard to understand. But getting to your point of the hunger games, yes, it never turns off.

And for me, I force my students to turn it off. I say, I don't want you, I want you to work six days a week, but you may not work seven days a week. First of all, it's against my religion, Judaism to make people work seven days a week. Because our tradition is that working seven days a week, no matter how rich you are, you could be Jeff Bezos, you could be Bill Gates, you could be the richest man in the world. And if you work seven days a week, our tradition teaches us that you're a slave and that the human being, should never be a slave. You're a slave to no one but God. And not even a slave. You're a servant, but you're, you have free will. And that the way that you exercise it is in my mind, I turn off my phone, I turn off work, I don't answer emails, I don't do podcasts. And these are things I love.

It doesn't feel like work. But still, if I don't take a Sabbath, a rest once a week, who is in charge of my life? This, this device, I don't want that to be the case. So, in my mind, that's the way I hope I teach my students to have some amount of work-life balance. Now, the other side of it, in the Old Testament, in the Torah, it says that six days a week, you must work. So in other words, it doesn't say like you could work six days a week, but you have to take off Saturday because what if you don't work any day of the week, then Saturday means nothing to you.

And so it says you must work, meaning not that you're a servant, but that you are passionate and that you are researching, you're reading about astronomy in my student's case, you're learning about physics, you're learning about history, about philosophy, six days a week, and it should consume you as a graduate student because if it doesn't, then, you know, it's actually a good thing. You might find this is not the right track for your life. I really like that when you combine a religious perspective, like Judaism in science. And that's really, it's rare to find this discussion, to be honest, in different land. I'm not making a speaking journalization, but we missed this point.

And that takes a question about publish and parish model in the academy. You know, you say that you have to work for 60, that this pressure, everyone I would speak with, I have pressure to publish. And when I see that if you want to make a convention like 50 years ago, you can see who won, when Nobel Prize, that you just maybe in two decades that you don't have this amount of publications, you're just focusing in the real science. how do you see publish and parish model comes from and how we can make it perish? Yes, that's a very good point.

You know, it's not that old. It's not that long. It's not like Galileo was publishing in journals, et cetera. Most of the time they are publishing books. A lot of times they are popular books. Newton, obviously. And then, you know, finally they have the Royal Society. And eventually they had Nature magazine.

It was really the first journal. And I always point out, you know, there's there are many instances where, someone like Einstein after he won the Nobel Prize, he would write a letter to the editor. He would say, you know, actually a few days ago, a young man named Mr. Mandel came to my office and asked me a question, and this is what I thought about it. And then he went through what's called weak gravitational lensing, which he thought would never be detectable, like many things he said were wrong and mistaken because we ended up did that we did detect them. In fact, we measure him with the observatory pictured behind me at the Simon's Observatory is going to measure that, and we already have

with many of the instruments there currently. And so it's funny, great people can have great flaws. And certainly Einstein did. He was not rumored to be a great father to his kids. I wasn't there for him. Now, he didn't have this publisher parish. He made a lot of, you know, great accomplishments younger in life. And then later in life was kind of a little bit to overcome as my colleague, like Sabine Hassenfelder says by being lost in math, trying to, you know, find a theory of everything from purely mathematical principles, essentially. But the work, the publisher-perish model is not that old. I think a lot of it is going aside because of media like this. I had on, you know, the other day, Sean Carroll, Professor Sean Carroll of Caltech in Pasadena. And we talked about a

recent result, an abstract that we both read about what's called cosmic biorefringens. It's not so important. It was submitted to physics review letters, which is arguably top one or two impact factor journal, a result of many, many years of work by Ichiro Camacho and his student, co-worker in Miami, and Utah, Miami. And that work generated a lot of controversy. And then so we started to analyze it. But because it wasn't put on the archive, which is an open source, free publication, no barriers, no hurdles, no hunger games, we couldn't analyze it. it because it's not public. And I think that model is going to go away. I don't think, I think the journals like nature, like science, are going to have to adapt that science is done nowadays by people working,

you know, in large groups and working on very important projects. And this idea that you have to put the stake in the ground or else you won't win the Nobel Prize should it arise in some cases, as it did for me, I think that model is going to eventually be replaced. And so I don't think it has much longer before it in its current form perishes. And also before the Nobel Prize perishes in its current form, unless it enacts some of the reform reformation that I propose and many, many other people, including Nobel Prize winners I've had on my show like Adam Reese, say they agree with this and nobody disagrees with it, which is the strange thing. Why don't they change it if all these people, including Nobel Prize winners, agree it needs to change.

Yeah, that's also good bind. And I'm curious asking this question, do you think, if nothing could change in maybe 10 years, do you think we have to think about something beyond academy and industry? That's a new institution, because I think even Erickwana's time asking us a question if we have to find something beyond academy and industry. something completely new. Do you think about that, we can make up with new ideas beyond Academy, new institution, new structures? I think it's possible.

I think right now we have this kind of educational government complex in the United States where most of the funding to do a project like the Simon's Observatory is a hundred million dollar project that I am privileged to co-lead with many other colleagues at Penn, Princeton, Berkeley, and elsewhere. and this project couldn't happen without private funding in the case of the Simon's Foundation. And in our other projects, Polar Bear, which is also pictured behind me and Alma pictured way in the distance over there, those are a billion dollar class, or the Alma is at least, a billion dollar class observatory couldn't be built without, you know, universities, without large scientific foundations that back it.

So I think in experimental science, it's unlikely to change in in terms of, you know, projects with the theoretical side like Eric is talking about frequently. And by the way, he says hi to you as well as Ben Shapiro asked me to send you a hello. So you have fans that you don't even know and maybe you'll never meet. Maybe you will. But I told them that you follow them both. And I think, I think it's a sign that media. like this are going to be more prominent and that we are going to, you know, basically have an

overwhelming obligation. Because if you want to get funded outside of the academic industrial complex, then you need to bypass it. You need to go to the people that are actually paying for it, right? The NSF in America and the CRC in Europe or whatever, they don't have millions of dollars. They get it from taxes. And who pays those taxes? Well, it's the citizens. And so if you and I and others like us and Eric, if we can take our message to the citizens, that will start a groundswell. And that will say, hey, look, Marwa Aldweeney is doing this amazing work. Eric Weinstein is doing this amazing work. Why not support it? And maybe we'll need to have, you know, like Patreon for physics, you know, or what have you. I don't know. But I wouldn't

have predicted, you know, what 10 years ago that someone like me could be talking to someone like you instantaneously across the continent and then tens of thousands of people will hopefully see our conversation and share and benefit from it. So I believe there are opportunities and it's going to take a smart young person, maybe not young, I don't know, to think of a model outside of the academic industrial complex. I think that's really one of the question about the podcast, into impossible podcast. And I, perfectly before asking the motivation, I think I listened to Professor Gatz's Sire in your podcast and he said that how the effect of podcasting or YouTube can influence people in maybe under-privileged countries. And that's really powerful if you look for publication

and you look for the podcast and the influence of that. So if you can tell us about the motivation for your broadcast, why do you think maybe broadcasting can be a life-changing experiences for people interested in science? Because some students cannot really afford the fees we're studying. Yes. Yes, I've had that thought a lot, especially with COVID, that the model of education needs to change. And again, these are all existential threats. If academies don't react and take the challenge and just try to keep the old way where there's a professor on Zoom talking to a class on Zoom, that's going to be the end of academia as far as I'm concerned. We need to be active. We need to be doing virtual reality, doing augmented reality. I mean, as I said, Professor, I'm not Professor, Dr. Peter Diamandas came on my show at the beginning of the pandemic, and I said to him, look, I'm a pretty good teacher, but I'm not as smart as Galileo or, you know, Isaac Newton or, you know, people of that nature. And wouldn't my students like to talk to them?

I mean, how cool would it be to talk to them or have them here, have them directly there? And there's no reason that you can't. And some say that we are in a simulation. I don't want to talk about that yet, but the fact is we have the technology nowadays with Oculus, with very inexpensive things, much cheaper than a textbook. An Oculus is cheaper than some of my textbooks that are used in university. So we have to adapt, or again, it's going to be an existential threat to the Academy. Look, the Academy has been in place. There was a university in Egypt in, I think the year, 1,000, and then there was a university in Bologna in Italy in the year 1082. And essentially, it was some guy standing up and scratching a piece of rock on a blackboard, another rock. And

that hasn't really changed that much in a thousand years. Now, how many other things haven't changed in a thousand years? Very few. And so if we don't change it, that's the risk. And so I agree with Professor Sadd and people like Eric, who are reaching into and thinking about different approaches and including going popular. Like GAD has been on the Joe Rogan experience. Eric's been on that many times. And Eric says to me, like, I don't think that people are going to understand the, you know, 14-dimensional hot vibration that's present in his theory of everything. But physicists are terrible at using the public relations material that they have. And by him going on Joe Rogan, 9.4 million people saw a fiber bundle, you know, for the first, probably the only time they'll

ever see it. Did they understand it? Absolutely not. And he knows that. But to show them that, and maybe they'll be 0.1%. You know, you'll get 10,000 people, kids interested in the hop vibration, if maybe only to prove them wrong. But still, Marwa, isn't that a magical thing? And so I always think back, I had on Carl Sagan's daughter, Sasha Sagan. She wrote a book. I had on his widow, And Druryan, who's the Cosmos Next Generation series producer and writer. And both of them, I reminded that Carl said, he said once that a book is proof that humans can work magic. A book is the words of an author who might have died centuries ago, and you're hearing their voice in your head today. Now, you and I, this conversation will be available for

generations. And so I say nowadays a podcast is proof that human beings can work magic. Yeah. That's really a wonderful point. And I agree with everything you say. Yeah. And if you can tell the best about, do you think ego sometimes is important as you science as ego is important? Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in. It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh. And free waffles on are yours to claim. Book direct at sourcevilletales.com. Yeah, I definitely do. Again, I'm very, I'm very influenced by my Judaic culture. And in Judaism, we believe we have two different inclinations. We have an inclination to do good

and we have an inclination to do evil. Remember, I don't know if you ever saw these cartoons, it'll be like a little devil over here, a little angel over here. And that's kind of the way we think about it. So, but sometimes it's some of each. And I think this is like the Chinese yin-yang symbol. within the black, there's a bit of white. Within the white, there's a bit of black. We have a hybrid nature. We have a dualistic spirit. And I don't care people believe or not. That's really not. I'm not proselyizing. I don't care. But that sometimes your inclination to achieve, to win a Nobel Prize, sometimes that can do good. Even though at heart, I believed it was a form for myself of idolatry, of worshiping idols, a gilded, graven image. Literally has a picture of Alfred Nobel that you bow down to in front of a king to receive. In my mind, there's one king, and it's not on earth. And so thinking about the, but still, we can do great good. And I don't, I don't criticize the people that want it. And I think, you know, I'm just talking to Sir Roger Penrose, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. He's worked for 70, you know, 50, 60 years, work with Stephen Hawking.

He's using the prestige of the Nobel Prize to advance his cosmological model. And now he got a paper accepted that had been rejected for many, many years. Hmm, I wonder why that is. Marwa, isn't that interesting? And I'm hopefully going to work with him, you know, to look for trying to prove him wrong. And I've told him this to his face. I said, Roger, I don't think you're interpreting the analysis of Bicep 2 data properly, but I love you. I love what you do. And I want to help you. And even if it means proving you're wrong, and he's all for it. So I think that's the good that can be done from an ego, from a, from a perspective, not of haughtiness, because no good can come of that. But instead of honest use of the gifts, blessings, and prestige that you have, I think

good can come of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious to ask you also, because I know you don't have too much time. How we deal with criticism? Because I thought that if, you know, some people just, for I don't want to sign, for example, and Stephen Wilframa, there's all the controversy about they are not science. I mean, not an academy, sorry. So, and some people don't accept their source of ideas. And you are open about that. You open for discussion. How we do with criticism? Because I think you highlight something about how you communicate with public, for example, and science communication, and how you accept people outside academy to have a discussion, because that's all something I think I respected what you're doing, that you have open

platform for anyone to discuss science. Yes. As long as it's legitimate, as long as it's not, you know, biased or prejudiced or they have some some really odious ideas. I will investigate it. And I now have a platform that with many, many treasured fans and people that subscribe and that I love and I engage with every single one of them. And now it's gone to the point where I'll have Nobel Prize winners asking me to come on my podcast. And I don't take that lightly. And I'm not saying, oh, I'm the best because I have a Nobel Prize. Look, I wrote a book that kind of criticizes it. But the point is that these people deserve respect. And the very first question that you asked me was a very important one.

How do I define myself? And remember, I said, you know, besides father and husband, curious and passionate and scholarly. I love to learn. I feel like learning is like when you were a kid, you probably play with Legos or you probably played with the puzzles. I did. And I always love solving it and then breaking it apart and then doing it again because the thrill of the solution is just so magical. and it is allowing us to take ourselves away from the pain that daily life presents us and really get back to that purity of when we were children exploring.

Children are natural scientists. I always say they're naturally curious, they're passionate. I've got a lot of kids and I love them all. And I see them playing. And then I say, well, they're kind of like scientists too because they're jealous. They're petty. They don't play well. They're possessive of their toys.

They won't share. Even I have twins. and they fight like, you know, they're strangers sometimes. And why is that? And it's funny because the girl kind of dominates the boy. It's kind of cute. But anyway, the point that I'm making is that let's let the beautiful aspects of childlike wonder of scientists bloom.

And so when I talk to these scientists, it's like I'm talking to, I see them as little kids. I see Professor Sarah Seeger of MIT. And she's talking about life on Venus. And yes, she's taking a lot of heat and criticism for it. And but I see the playfulness in her eyes. And I'm hoping to have her on my podcast talk about her book where she talks about her childhood.

Let's try and take some of the good aspects of childhood, you know, without the petty criticisms, but take the honest ones. And in that way, get back to the purity, the essence of science, engineering, and math. That's great. So it's a question. And we end because I know you don't have so much time. I would like to see what maybe is the most important quality. you have to maintain well-being in a academy, something you have to maintain for the journey in the academy.

I think it's a long journey, and I think you cannot do it if you don't love the work. That's why I kind of use as a test when I'm interviewing a new grader student, I say, what are you doing your free time? And I love to hear, well, I climb, you know, rocks, and I go skiing, and those are great, those are important. I really am delighted when I hear I read Brian Green, Neil the Grass Tie- I read popular science. I read, you know, Carl Popper, I, you know, whatever. I love learning when I'm, when I'm, you know, just lounging around, I'm learning about science. Or I used to work on my car.

You know, one of my students, her parents have like a manufacturing business that she used to work in, and she loved tools. And she's an amazing, now she's a professor herself. And how amazing is that? Not only that, Marwa, she has a graduate student, a female graduate student herself, that's now the 19th generation of my academic tree that I can trace back to 1597. This is all because she's an incredibly passionate person. Her graduates, this is Darcy Barron at the University of New Mexico and her student Kayla. And having them in this chain is an awesome responsibility for people like me and you, because in the Russian language, the word scientist, and I think it holds for engineer too, but the word scientist means someone who was taught.

It means that you and I receive teaching. It may not have been perfect, but we were taught. That means we have an obligation. If we are scientists to create new scientists, we must teach. So I'd say the most essential quality is to be a good teacher. You need to be a good student. And to be a good student, you need to be relentlessly, passionately curious. That's wonderful.

And lastly, what was this advice was given to you, was a person, proficiently, and was life changing? I think for me, the most life-changing advice that I had really came from a rabbi. It sounds strange because he's not a scientist. But it was that there's more to supporting a family than just making money. There's more to the process of being a leader with your life partner, with your spouse, husband, wife, whatever. There's more to that than just making money and having financial stability. You have to have intellectual.

You have to have spiritual stability. You must be a leader in your family's course, both you and your partner. And because children need that. They need that stability. They crave stability and innocence, protecting their innocence. It's so incredibly important to me. And if you can preserve their innocence, then you will preserve the bandwidth, the resources for them to be curious and not have to worry about their parents yelling and fighting.

in front of them as I did. And the other challenges that many kids have far worse than I did. So for me, the best advice is strive to be a leader of your family and your community, be a mentor, and be teachable, be coachable, and in that way, you will succeed. That's really wonderful. And I think that's the core for me of problems, how you have a good human being.

So I want to know three things. In your field, what is the key core finding of soft robotics, first of all, that appeals to you. And what's like the theory of everything in your field? In our field, it's, you know, particles make up the universe. They interact by forces and fields. And they comprise the largest structures in the universe. For you, what drew you to robotics? And then what is the animating principle of soft robotics? Now, that's really wonderful question. So I think that's a debate of the field, because, as we know, soft robotics's idea that we wanted to go from traditional robots, which is rigid, and maybe sometimes not safe

for human interaction. We want to make safe soft robots. However, there are misconceptions, because not every soft robot is safe. If you imagine you have like a built or something from very elastic material and very high speed, it would cause harm. But if you ask about what is really the core, maybe everything, I think that's the debate we have in the field. If we have to make a soft material, Do we have to understand the physics of this material? And is this material intelligent? I mean that should we use passive material like silicon, which is available over the shelf?

Everyone can use it. Or we have to design smart material that can compute its intelligence and can have actuation and sensing. So if we look at the nature, like if we see inspiration from the nature, how this animals of the creature move and actuate and heal and grow their parts, This is all illustration. That's the debate here.

As robotics, you see that sometimes that's the debate we have even in the podcast. What is the missing pieces between material science who develop the material and also robotist? Because I think if you wanted to design, for example, a finger like human beings. So you ask yourself, what kind of material I have to use? It's a passive material and I have to use like a mortar and actuated with a cable and make a bending and deform and such a way. And for me, because I have this experience work in a smart material. And what I mean a smart material is for anyone who's not in the field, that this material can have responses towards stimulus.

It could be stimulus to the light. It can be responsive towards the heat. It could be voltage. And when you, this material have stimulus, it can get responses like mechanical performance. So that's a question here, how we design them, how we can design this material, to have to have a,

have a function of like actuation or sensing. So that's, I think, for my humble view, that a core point here is a material science. And if we understand the physics of the material and how we can use this material in a certain way so that we can design a finger or a trunk or any function. So that's, I think, the core. And it sometimes is underappreciated because,

as you know, in robotics, we don't have so much expertise in material. And that's make a gap between the communication between material science and robots. So now there's a trend that we need to make like material robots. So they have the both knowledge in both fields. So and then you can, if you understand what you do, you can design reproducible robotics of robotics with the function you're looking for.

So the short answer is the material science, I think. However, some robots don't think about that, so you still think, I just, it's too technical here, but I think that's the, that's the debate still in the field whether we have to understand the material. But I think everything is taught from understanding the physics of the material and how to model them and have a descriptive model. And then you can design what you want, given an application. And what drew you to it? Did you have an influence as a child? Were you the kind of kid that was playing with blocks, with Legos, with animals? I don't know. What drew you to it and what keeps you invested through the challenge?

of being a young academic? I think that's a good question. To be honest, maybe I'm not the best one to can answer this question because I didn't have a lot of exposure for that. I was more interested in art and drawing. But I think in a school I have low self-esteem. I didn't even believe in myself at all.

And maybe because I was the first engineer in my family, and I had a lot of rough time in childhood, to be honest. I didn't enjoy it. So maybe that's hard. But I think I came to understand that I'm really fascinated by mathematics, for example, in high school and physics. And that's make me a lot of post-in confidence. And I think, yeah, maybe sometimes it could be, you know, a turning moment in my life in high school that I can't do it. I am fascinated by mathematics and also biology.

So, yeah, sometimes you can't discover your, I don't say superpower, but sometimes, as I earlier, I highlighted, that how a childhood place, significant rule. I think that's absolutely right. And the teacher as well plays significant rules. So if the teacher is so thumping in you and encourage you, that's to be the momentum for your life. Do you feel like it's an obligation for you to someday become a teacher? What are your aspirations in terms of extending and leveraging your accomplishments to benefit the world? Yeah, that's a good question. Actually, I'm holding a tenured academic position in my home country. And it's different from US and Europe. And actually, I lived it.

I'm not a practical leave, but I lifted just because I want to have more expertise. And also I wanted to, like, I consider the freedom. I love freedom. And what I mean about freedom, I don't like so much politics incorporated in the academy. So, yeah, maybe it's risky for me because I know when I came that everyone is looking for a junior, but I wasn't tenure. It was for me like a prison. I know it sounds crazy for people, but yeah, I know it's, it's, it's,

security, but sometimes if you're in a position and a place and environment doesn't match what you're looking for, sometimes you can take a risk and maybe it makes you go to places you never expected to be. Maybe it's a risk. I know some people say it's crazy, but that's me. That's a beautiful way to put it. I love teaching so much. Yeah. Yeah, you have a natural gift for teaching. I've listened to many of your podcasts, the I-Triple-E soft robotics podcast. Last question that I ask all my guests, and I know I'm your guest, but it's kind of a, what do we call it, a swap. You know, in America, there's two TV shows and they'll cross over. I want to ask you, Sir Arthur C. Clark said that the only way to find out the limits of the possible is to venture a bit beyond into the impossible.

And that's how I came up with the name of the podcast for the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. I want to ask you, as a younger person, maybe 10, 20 years ago, just. starting your academic career, what seemed impossible to you? Maybe about life, faith, whatever, what seemed impossible to you that now seems possible through the lens of time and looking back? I think that's really profound and wonderful question. And I think I'm really admired the aspects that you're concerned about how the scientists have to be highlighting the emotional side. For me, I struggle a lot. I struggled. Yeah, everyone has struggled. But I think for me, because I lost my mom when I was 19 and that was a shot from traumatic disorder.

So it was hard for me and I also take care of my family and I become ill for a certain time. And then at I'm 29 now, so at age 26, my grandma, she used everything for me and she also passed away. And that was for me and my relationship with my father, I respect him, but it wasn't really great. but I think that's something to be honest I struggle with because yeah you want to do something but sometimes it's a time and events happen in your life is like dragging you and you try to challenge it's that it is hard it is hard because everyone everyone has a story and but sometimes it's so hard and you just want to hit something and yeah it's just maybe it's a growing process because I learned how to be happy with myself

Most of time, I just maybe not happy, but I think I learned that how to accept being by yourself, being independent. I think life listens is a great experience. And I think to answer the question, how to push is impossible. I think one of the things is that I like that imagination. If you have imagination, I want to be in a certain place. I wanted to achieve that. And I remember vividly that I was telling my late mom that I don't want to be an ordinary girl. I want to add something.

And that's, maybe I look ordinary for people, but inside me, I'm not ordinary girl. And maybe I'm not smartest because I know there are many smart people. I'm just trying to learn, as you mentioned. I want to learn because there's a lot of things I want to learn. But I think the most important thing, and that's a quote from the book, the power of positive thinking of normal venousal, that positive pattern assault can a change effect. And I think that's really powerful. If you imagine something in a good way and you wanted so much,

much as which it could be impossible. It would be possible because of the positive battery results. I think that's related to energy as well. Yeah. So that's how I think the answer for me now impossible to be possible. Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. And I love that you connected to imagination as Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. All of our curiosity goes in that direction. Marwaite, you are an inspiration. You are destined for great things. I follow you. And I I listen to you, I learn from you. Keep up the wonderful work on the I-Triple-E Soft Robotics podcast. And I hope we can do it again maybe in a little while.

And maybe someday we'll do an actual live stream in person. I would love to meet you someday in person and benefit from the interaction. Marwa, thank you so much. I'm going to run off to another podcast. Good luck. Can see you later. Bye. Thank you.