Episode Three Transcript
Gabe Spalding 0:00
There are different philosophies in the world. Some schools will say, "Oh, if you're
studying something very technical, you should focus on that. To spend a lot of time
on something like music would make you less," and we could not disagree more. We want
students to like what they like. That's the first rule. We want to celebrate, really
actively celebrate those multiple interests, and bend over backwards to make them
as rich as possible.
Andy Kreiss 0:41
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Illinois Wesleyan University podcast, where we discuss
great people and big happenings happening in and around the Wesleyan community. My
name is Andy Kreiss. I am a proud graduate of the class of 1986, a music theater major,
which may or may not be relevant now. But let me introduce you to my co-host.
Demetria Kalodimos 1:01
I'm Demetria Kalodimos, a 1981 graduate in music education from Wesleyan.
Andy Kreiss 1:06
Let me introduce you to our special guest for this episode. Please meet Gabe Spaulding.
Professor Spaulding is amazing. He is the Charles and Joyce Eichhorn Ames Professor
of Physics here at Wesleyan, Harvard trained. He is the past president of the American
Association of Physics Teachers and has a national presence on the in the physics
world for many many years. Professor, it is great to have you here.
Gabe Spalding 1:34
Well, thank you, and of course, music is a big part of our campus. It is. It is something
we celebrate, and students from all sectors of our campus participate in ways that
are really wonderful.
Andy Kreiss 1:48
I agree, and and and that leads me right off to a question. If it's okay to ask you,
one of the things that I've noticed is it feels like there is there are a lot of students
who study music who are physics students, can you talk about? Is there a relationship
there that you see?
Gabe Spalding 2:05
We want students to like what they like. That's the first rule. We want to celebrate,
really actively celebrate those multiple interests and bend over backwards to make
them as rich as possible. There are different philosophies in the world. Some schools
will say, "Oh, if you're studying something very technical, you should focus on that.
To spend your a lot of time on something like music would make you less, and we could
not disagree more. It makes you more. We want you firing on all cylinders, and that's
what gets you through things. Imagine you went somewhere for four years and could
only eat Brussels sprouts. Now I like Brussels sprouts, but four years of nothing
but Brussels sprouts, I might have a hard time getting through the meal at the end.
And the philosophy here is, it is central to really not just start with what do you
think you like? But to continue to explore the person as fully as we can and find
new things that they like and engage those. Our students are very active in music.
Is it because they like mathematical things in what I teach? We want them to like
what they like. However, it turns out. Gotcha.
Demetria Kalodimos 3:25
When did you know you were interested in how things moved and existed in the whole
world of physics?
Gabe Spalding 3:31
So I started out as an art history major when I went to college. My father wanted
me to be a lawyer, and it doesn't matter what major you have, as long as you're learning
to think critically and make an argument, right? And so I was trying things, and I
took physics because I wanted to know how to do radiocarbon dating on relics and ancient
artifacts and such. I was not particularly pleased with that first chorus. I didn't.
They didn't teach me that. But there was a discussion section where the rule was:
we're not going to talk about the class. We'll only talk about cool things, and that's
what hooked me. And that's what I do with my students. My students have to find four
cool things a week and enter into conversation. My job is to open the door. Cool.
Demetria Kalodimos 4:24
Okay, what's a cool thing that came up this week?
Gabe Spalding 4:26
Well, I'm on sabbatical right now. Oh, well.
Andy Kreiss 4:29
That's just cool in itself.
Gabe Spalding 4:31
right? Well, no, but I did, in spite of being on sabbatical, which means I'm not teaching
right now. I'm off trying to add experiences that I could bring back to my teaching
next term. I just got off of a chat, a Zoom chat, with a student who's about to present
her work on exoplanets. And how did she get excited about exoplanets? Well, we say
go find cool things, and I've had. So many conversations with her about so many things,
ranging from neuroengineering to you name it, and right now it's exoplanets. And
Demetria Kalodimos 5:11
Question, Professor, what's an exoplanet?
Gabe Spalding 5:14
Okay, so you know about the planets that orbit our star, the sun, but there are other
stars, and if you look really carefully, you can tell that there are planets around
those, and we're discovering more and more of these. In fact, it's an Illinois Wesleyan
physics professor who got hired away by NASA to develop the instrumentation for the
Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope, which is about to go into space and really open
the door, on it'll have more than 100 times the field of view of the Hubble Space
Telescope, and significantly more than the James Webb Space Telescope, and will really
allow us to see what's out there. So, I my job is like improvisational comedy, which
means the students will come to me with things I have no way of anticipating. My job
is to say yes, and I want to amplify your interest in this, whatever it is, and I
want to open the door for you to act upon your interest right now.
Demetria Kalodimos 6:25
The last time a student stumped you on one of those?
Gabe Spalding 6:28
Ah, well, the the thing is, I don't. So physics is just an old word that means nature,
and there's nobody that knows all of nature.
Demetria Kalodimos 6:38
Right.
Gabe Spalding 6:39
I don't know all of nature, and I don't need to.
Demetria Kalodimos 6:41
That takes the pressure off a little bit, doesn't it?
Gabe Spalding 6:44
We learn together. So the first thing we do is we we will look out there and we'll
find some of the best people in the world working on these things, and we'll invite
them into our conversations. It's a small world, it turns out, and when you express
your interest, it opens doors. As long as you have somebody there acting as your agent
to help you do exactly that, yeah, open the door and get the conversation to grow.
We're all going to learn together, and that's the fun of it.
Andy Kreiss 7:22
One of the things that I'm noticing as I was ending my tenure here was Wesleyan's
physics department was taking an exciting turn into the quantum field or quantum world.
You and Dr. Jaggi, can you talk about like back it way up and for us that are music
theater majors, what is quantum physics?
Gabe Spalding 7:45
Well, it is recognizing that things you learned about in pre-college education, like
an electron or a photon were taught in a way that made sense because it was a simple
model, but it wasn't the whole story. So, at that level, an electron in textbooks
is a little blue ball. I don't know why it's always blue, but it seems to always be
a little blue ball, and it's neither of those things. It has a sort of wave character
to it, and if you pretend it's a ball, you're leaving money on the table. A wavy sort
of character means there are correlations in space and time, and those correlations
turn out to be a ticket to a real revolution that's happening all around us in technology.
The old way, all engineering measurements, we kind of treated things like electrons
as if they were little blue balls, and the limits that we thought existed don't exist.
We can push past what we thought were the limits of measurement, the limits of encoding
information and processing it, and the limits for how we encode information generally
to keep it secret, to have safe internet purchases and things like that, so we can
do significantly better just by taking advantage of those correlations I mentioned.
Those are a resource, and they allow us to do things like lower the dosage of X-rays
a patient will receive in a hospital. It has impact on every aspect of human interaction
with technology. We know that right now this is adding billions of dollars to the
national economy, and there's one state that is dominating right now, and that's our
state. The leaders of our state were very wise and decided to leverage the fact that
we have two very important national labs just to our north, and they also took advantage
of some unutilized land right on Lake Michigan that used to house U.S. Steel, and
they said this is going to be redeveloped for what we clearly see is going to be very
important. Our students have been benefiting left and right. So last year, even our
first year students, we had 37% of our first-year students that I teach had paid summer
internships. Now, mostly a first-year student, they may not even apply to an internship.
They want to go home. They want to go travel with their family. The people that applied,
man, the opportunity is there, and we are taking advantage by essentially leading
the nation with this program that we're putting in place that's focused on the undergraduate
level that says, if you have an interest, it doesn't matter what your background is,
we have the on ramps. We'll take you there, and there's no limit to how high you can
go. These students are going right away into amazing paid opportunities, and those
just snowball year after year into more and more awesome experiences.
Demetria Kalodimos 11:28
Why was the thinking biased towards you have to be a certain at a graduate level to
to even tackle these concepts? Do we just not trust that younger students had the
capabilities, or was there no one there to teach it?
Gabe Spalding 11:43
So I spent 10 years working with different. I assembled some advisors from around
the country and around the world to help me figure out how we could teach things differently
and open up the world. And I got advice from people in industry about how we could
partner with a particular manufacturer, and I tried to convince them to help us with
things. And they kept saying, "No, no, no. We don't want educationally priced equipment
of the sort you're describing. It would undercut our research market. But eventually,
that side of that company was sold to another company, and I told them, nobody's ever
heard of you. I'll make your name. I'll get your stuff into every advanced instructional
lab in the country, and I had to get loans because they had me buy these things in
bulk. So my office was full of these things, $100,000 loan at a time, and I would
ensure they would go into the teaching labs at different universities. So at Armored,
at Stanford, at Yale, at these things they got from me and my wife. We shipped them
out directly, and we kept doing it and doing it. It's on the 11th round now, I've
handed a lot of the work off to other people, and then we started training people
around the nation. We've, with the the faculty staff training program that I put in
place, that I was the PI for with NSF support. We've impacted more than 40% of all
the programs in the United States. We've been leading on how you do this for a while,
and there are more things like that. That initiative was won, and there are more like
that in the pipeline.
Andy Kreiss 13:34
Incredible commitment from you and your wife, and and this school and our state.
Gabe Spalding 13:41
Yes, that's right. All these things come together, and it does turn out you can't
do these things alone. You do these things as part of a community that wants to see
us move forward. Illinois Wesleyan has a great and supportive community, and that's
the key. That our students are not lost in a crowd. That's the key.
Andy Kreiss 14:04
I love that.
Demetria Kalodimos 14:05
Why are labs so important? You know, you can read out of a book, you can listen to
lectures, but there's got to be something about, you know, designing a discovery or
a hopeful discovery and getting there, right?
Gabe Spalding 14:20
So, what we do involves some abstraction, some math, and some concepts that are high
level. To learn math, I was also a math major in the end, as well as physics major,
and so I love math. But the power of math is in abstracting and generalizing things.
To really start learning math, it helps to know what's in front of you. When you were
very young, maybe your math teacher in grade school would give you manipulables-things
you could count, things you could add. And then it made sense because you had something
concrete and specific in front of you. The role of instructional labs, hands-on labs,
is that. And so, yes, I founded a community for advanced lab instructors nationally,
and that community I think has has done enormous good in changing how things are taught.
At Illinois Wesleyan, we co-value hands-on instructional labs with minds-on instructional
formalisms with use of computers in ways that really give you amazing tool sets. But
on that first question, the hands-on labs. It turns out we do more than anybody else
in the nation, more than University of Illinois, which is a giant place, more than
University of Chicago, more than Northeastern, more than Purdue, more than any of
them. It's a choice that we make, and we think that by co-valuing and leading the
nation on these things, we have a better way of bringing students to where they want
to be.
Demetria Kalodimos 16:08
Does it accelerate the learning?
Gabe Spalding 16:10
Absolutely, that's the point. Is to tie all these things together. There's a synergy
between trying things on a computer, knowing what you're talking about, it's right
in front of you. It's concrete and specific. You can see it. It's real. You can work
with it, and students get a great satisfaction out of building something real, and
then abstracting it to generalize and have the power that comes from that.
Demetria Kalodimos 16:39
The Fisher Center for Interdisciplinary Quantum Science and Engineering is obviously
going to be a selling point above and beyond what you're already offering. How do
you convince a family that's ready to make a significant educational investment that
this would be a place to be rather than one of these larger marquee institutions?
Gabe Spalding 17:04
Well, as we said before, many places see this as something you do at the graduate
level, right? So there are PhD programs, there are master's programs, but undergraduate
we are leading the way with a really special investment from the Fisher family, this
is a legacy-defining action on their part, which will have enormous impact upon students.
We can see how Illinois, the environment here, everything adds up, and it's just the
right time. It's a real interdisciplinary center where we are again celebrating students'
interests in philosophy, philosophy of quantum. What is this stuff you're talking
about? What is the nature of reality? Those questions fit together fairly well. You
mean it's not a little blue ball? What does that mean?
Andy Kreiss 18:00
Right with a green electro or whatever.
Gabe Spalding 18:02
If it can be in two states at once, what does that mean? So there are philosophical
aspects, there are ethical aspects that have to do with new technologies and how they
displace the world that we were familiar with. We're celebrating the application of
these tools to chemistry students last summer were paid here to develop new quantum
chemistry algorithms, which are combining the supercomputers, the world's most powerful
AI supercomputers, just to the north in these national labs, run by the U.S. Department
of Energy, with the current generation of quantum computers, we're not waiting for
something that will be developed someday. Though the developments are happening frequently
and fast, we're putting it together with thinking about finance. One of our students
got hired now and is living in a high-rise in downtown Manhattan, working for J.P.
Morgan Chase, doing theoretical quantum computing, developing what this is going to
impact for their market. It's across such a wide range of impacts that again it it
can amplify whatever a student's interest is, and that's our role. Remember, they're
in charge. You are not on a conveyor belt somebody else made. You're in a conversation
about what lights you up. That's the difference.
Andy Kreiss 19:42
That's the Wesleyan difference.
Gabe Spalding 19:44
That's the difference. That, and it's all the difference. It makes every bit of difference.
If you're on somebody else's conveyor belt that they made, it does not have the same
energy.
Demetria Kalodimos 19:55
With that said, can you recall a moment of super clip? When a student made a breakthrough,
or it finally made sense, or I'm sure those moments come a lot.
Gabe Spalding 20:08
Every day. Really, every day. That's the fun of it, is that every day things fit together,
and that's the surprise about the world. It's not surprising that there are still
things to learn.
Demetria Kalodimos 20:21
Right.
Gabe Spalding 20:22
It's surprising that so many things fit together as you try to learn. So that's why
I love my job. Is because we see this all the times. The students are working at things
that are not easy. You know, we take in students who, developmentally, a typical high
school student, if they're in a in an instructional lab and things are not working
in the first six minutes, they're going to be frustrated. That's just a developmental
part of being human. And of course, what we want to produce are professionals who
want to do good in the world, and it might take them six years. In order for them
to persist and have that impact, they have to love the small steps along the way.
Yeah, process. They have to enjoy the process, and that's what we teach: is finding
the joy in that small step worked. Let's celebrate. Let's celebrate a lot, and the
more we celebrate, the more it snowballs. Does that make sense?
Andy Kreiss 21:26
I can feel your zeal. One of the things that, when I came back to take my job, that
blew me away as as director of marketing at Wesleyan was you had created a database
of graduates from his program that went with hundreds of names and where they work
and what they're doing and the names of their kids and I mean it was the investment.
Can you talk about what it is? And it comes as I'm watching you now. I could get a
tear in my eye that you care so much about your students. Can you talk about that
investment?
Gabe Spalding 22:00
So I collect stories, right? And it is important not only because it's a very enjoyable
activity, but to share a wide range of stories with our students. We don't want them
to become somebody from the class of 1981. Although your story is wonderful and to
be celebrated, we want them to become themselves. But hearing your story and your
story and the next story and the next story gives them permission to write their own.
Andy Kreiss 22:30
Yes.
Gabe Spalding 22:32
Hearing about life in more of its many aspects is important for them as they write
their own lives. That's what it's about. So yes, I collect stories. So far, I only
have back to 1909. The stories of what they did while they were here, the stories
of what they did after they left here, and for those that are still living, I have
their contact information, and as I tell these stories to my students, I say, "Would
you like to talk to them now? Would you like to talk to them? You put students in
touch with them right away. So again, when they come to me and find interest on the
internet, I found this crazy thing. So often I'll say you're not the first to find
that interesting thing. You're going to add to that interesting thing more than anybody
else has ever done something new. But let's talk to some people who've done it, and
it'll include yes, some of the best people in the world who may have no connection
to Illinois Wesleyan, but surprisingly, some of the best people in the world come
from Illinois Wesleyan.
Andy Kreiss 23:45
So great!
Demetria Kalodimos 23:46
I was reading, and correct me if I'm wrong, that there's like a dozen majors graduating
every year out of physics. With the new center, those numbers are bound to increase.
Will it change your approach? And is there any danger in that? The intimacy of 12
people, you know.
Gabe Spalding 24:05
So I said that I'm on sabbatical, and I'm doing some collaborations. One of the collaborations
is with a large state university, where one of the professors I'm working with just
got tenure, and he was talking to me about this course he's teaching that has 900
students. So it's one of the smaller sections because normally the sections have 1000.
And even if you go up to graduate level quantum mechanics, they have more than 100
students in those. And he asked me, "What about you? And I said, "Well, you know,
we make choices on some important pipeline classes. So, for example, last term I had
a class with 20 people, so I broke it into two sections, and he about fell off of
his chair.
Demetria Kalodimos 24:52
I'm sure.
Gabe Spalding 24:53
Because he had 15 seconds. I said, but if the point is for me to really. Explore that
student's interests beyond what they even know they're interested in, and find new
interests and expand upon the interests they have. That just cannot be done in bulk.
We will not lose that. We are not going to become that large state institution, and
we will make sure it's promised that these students will get the attention of the
sort that I just mentioned. It's who we are.
Demetria Kalodimos 25:35
And isn't it true that you sort of stagger or change the lab offerings so that nothing
gets stale. I don't know if that's the right word to use. Stale.
Gabe Spalding 25:44
Well, it it is true that we we have rotation. We have new ideas. We're always trying
new things, right? Because our students are bringing are always bringing new things
that are independent projects. Right. They build things, and we say, oh, other students
would love that, so it folds into the curriculum. So it is a dynamic environment.
There are also some things where you say this is working really well. Let's keep that.
Demetria Kalodimos 26:15
Yeah.
Gabe Spalding 26:17
But somehow, even with those things that you're keeping, it's fresh every time the
way we do it, because you're not doing it with 1000 people. You're doing it with individuals
as a conversation, and trying to really respect their interests. So you can't do it
the same way, even twice. Does that make sense? There, it's always fresh because every
new student makes it so.
Andy Kreiss 26:46
Professor Spaulding, how do you see the addition of the Petrick Idea Center enhancing
the experience of a physics student?
Gabe Spalding 26:56
It's been wonderful. Now, I should say that the The Petrick Idea Center is not just
a building. There is a new building that is attached to our School of Art and Design,
and every term I have taken my students over to the School of Art and Design to say,
"You are a maker. See yourself in this." There are all sorts of tools there. We have
our own on-campus metalworking foundry where you can pour molten metal into investments
of your own design, molds. We have all sorts of capacity, amazing glass blowing, and
the students when they go take these classes, they love Carmen Lazar. Totally, they
love the different design professors over there, and we've built this building that
will be opening this summer as the Petrick Idea Center. But the programming precedes
the building. The programming is in place right now. Right now, our students can say
to me, "I'm interested in this kind of thing, and then I kind of say, "Okay, what
kind of technical competencies do you think you need to build within yourself to do
that?" And they have a team of people waiting for them to teach them that technical
competency that day. They do not need to wait to take a class. They go over to the
Idea Center and say, "I've got an idea. Professor Spaulding said, uou might be able
to help me with this technical competency right now." That's what it's about. It's
an extra support system, regardless of students' interest, right? I don't tell them
what's cool. I respect you. I respect what they tell me.
Andy Kreiss 28:44
Right.
Gabe Spalding 28:46
And then we try to pull together connections in terms of these just-in-time resources
in the Petrick Idea Center to make their ideas come to fruition and to leverage all
the different on-campus communities, professors, but also student organizations, and
then these conversations about the larger community outside of our campus borders.
That's what the Idea Center is about. Now the Fisher's were also a supporting family
of that, and when we broke ground for the center, I made a promise that we would be
looking at our community, looking at its needs, but also its capacities, and celebrating
both and connecting our students to both. We want to do good, which means looking
at the needs, but it also means looking at the resources, and we have amazing resources.
People don't realize that the state of Illinois, depending on the year, is number
three or number four in the nation in manufacturing. Advanced manufacturing is here,
and this town is just so rich. In terms of this, you. Might not know it, but we do.
And connecting our student, well, right here I have a mug that says Rivian on it.
Have you ever heard of this company? Yes, we have. This is an advanced manufacturing
company that is making electric vehicles. Now, they purchased what before they moved
into it, was the world's sixth largest automobile manufacturing plant and the most
roboticized in the world, and they have not stopped building since they bought it.
This is an amazing resource right here. Now these electric vehicles, the the bottom
of it contains all of these battery packs. 8000 battery units go into a battery pack.
That means 8000 laser welds that have to be perfect. The world expert on laser welding
is an Illinois Wesleyan graduate, Of course, we connect the dots, and it works very
well. To know the stories of our students enhances the opportunities of the next student
and the next.
Andy Kreiss 31:15
Right? Can you feel what Dr. Z has brought? Is something different? What do you feel
that Dr. Z and his team have brought to this campus?
Gabe Spalding 31:24
I I love Dr. Z. I think he's perfect for this time. You know, every time in our nation's
story is a little bit different. Yep. And what he brings is a real celebration of
who we are. That's absolutely what it is. It's a celebration. He comes to our events
and he'll say right up front, "I'm going to be the first one here. I'm going to be
the last one to leave. And it's true. And he wants to meet everybody there, and he
wants to get their story. And that's the Illinois Wesleyan way. That's what we keep
saying. It's about making it personal, and he does that. Right, and he celebrates,
celebrates, celebrates, which is the secret sauce.
Andy Kreiss 32:11
When you were here, did you feel like professors invested in you? And do you remember
relationships with them now? I do, as in my theater stuff.
Demetria Kalodimos 32:20
I do, but I also remember I only came here. I was transferred here, so I only spent
two years. No, it was a total of two years, and that was when I had sort of gone through
my other required courses, and I was in my specialization of music. So I made a lot
of you know strong connections in the music school, but I didn't feel like I was taking
advantage of a science class. I'm a frustrated lab person. I would love to be in a
lab with stuff bubbling or discovering something. Yeah, and I think in a lot of ways,
investigative reporting is a bit of discovery. Oh sure. I'm listening enviously, thinking.
Andy Kreiss 32:56
I know.
Demetria Kalodimos 32:56
You know. I think I could have had a crazy idea that I wanted to explore, and you
know way to do it,
Andy Kreiss 33:02
And build it over at the Petrick is where you could do next.
Demetria Kalodimos 33:05
But how often does someone walk in that doesn't have this incredible foundation in
math and science?
Gabe Spalding 33:11
So we want to meet students where they are, and one of the things we talked about
our national environment is that, particularly with rural schools and schools that
are not as well funded? They may not have had the chance to take some of the classes
that traditionally a student would have taken when they're going into these areas,
and we've been working to build real community across, particularly the mathematical
side of STEM, where I teach, and there's a separate emphasis on the life science across
different programs to make sure that we put in place new on ramps. Part of it would
be the tools we just mentioned, like the Petrick Idea Center, where you can just in
time, pick up some technical competency, making sure that there's a lot of access
to professors, not one hour a week office hour, which is the case at some big schools.
If you come at some other, if you come at some other time, you'll be told, no, no,
this is not the time. Here, the door is pretty much open, and because it's conversation-based,
we can see very quickly what a student's needs are. So, for example, last term I had
a student, and it was clear to me he did not belong in the class that I was teaching,
and I said to him, "I'm going to drop you from this class, which is a hard thing to
hear. And I said, "But here's how we're going to deal with it, and you're going to
take this class next year, which is true. He signed up to take it in the fall, and
here's how we're going to make you. Confident, confident that you're going to succeed.
We put a plan in place. He's done the plan. He's going to succeed. It's again on both
ends. It's really all about making it personal. If somebody needs to shore up maybe
a hole in their background, right? It's the personal attention you need, but it's
also critical to find that excitement, to find that interest, to to stoke the flames
on those embers and turn them into something that is really inspiring, right?
Demetria Kalodimos 35:43
You've got your big database of all your alums, and I'm just wondering where the gender
question comes in because for so long, young women were dissuaded or kept out. Are
we finding parity?
Gabe Spalding 35:57
It is frustrating that young women in the areas I teach are still told the student
I told you about that I just got off the phone with, who's looking at exoplanets and
so on. She was told, "No, no, you're you're a woman. What are you doing looking at
these things? You should care about life. Maybe biology is the right study for you.
Why are you looking at the hard sciences and engineering? Oh, I wish that it were
not true, but it remains true that young women with these interests are not celebrated.
Nationally, we've done studies with the American Association of Physics Teachers,
and what we've learned is that if only we give students permission to like what they
like, there would be no gender gap. Illinois Wesleyan is special for many reasons,
but we pull many students from the Chicagoland schools. Physics is required there,
so you have a gender parity pool. So that makes, in part, our job much easier. Last
year, in physics, we have five student clubs, five student organizations. Every single
one of the presidents was a woman. Oh, that's great! We didn't make that happen. It
just happened. So there's hope. We we we celebrate what we have done. We we'd like
to celebrate it more, but so far so good, yeah.
Andy Kreiss 37:42
Professor, what keeps you up at night?
Gabe Spalding 37:48
Well, I do worry about the nation. We want to have that level of impact, and the world.
Andy Kreiss 37:56
Yeah,
Gabe Spalding 37:57
And our students care deeply. They really do, and they want to have impact. They want
to not only do well, they want to do good, and that's just built into who they are.
And we all see things in the world that concern us and keep us up at night. That's
a good thing. That's human. That's part of who we are. That's just. It's it's tough
to be worried sometimes about this and that in the world. But we have things we can
do. Together, we can make a difference.
Andy Kreiss 38:33
Which is how he signs every email. Together, we can make a difference. So great.
Gabe Spalding 38:39
So, that's what we keep seeing. You know, it just takes two people talking about some
idea that that really lights them up, and then others will be drawn to that.
Demetria Kalodimos 38:51
And they need the connector, though. Yes, you're doing a something that a lot of professors
perhaps are not by making those connections and saying you want to talk to this person,
I'll make it possible.
Gabe Spalding 39:02
Grow the conversation,
Demetria Kalodimos 39:04
Yeah.
Gabe Spalding 39:04
And hopefully, it grows like wildfire.
Andy Kreiss 39:06
Well, and can I just say the fact that you actually told that student it's not working
yet, you you shifted the the trajectory of their life by that. I mean, made you know
so so that it wasn't a loss. It was it will be a win ultimately, and and that's the
investment I'm talking about.
Gabe Spalding 39:24
We don't want anybody falling between the cracks. At a large school, that's unavoidable,
Andy Kreiss 39:31
Right?
Gabe Spalding 39:32
At a large school, you have to be rule based, and I understand that. And many of them,
you know, they're doing what they can. When you're doing education in bulk, it has
to be different. Here, everything is a conversation. It's a dialog.
Andy Kreiss 39:50
Right.
Gabe Spalding 39:50
Everything.
Demetria Kalodimos 39:52
Students are doing active research. I'm sure faculty are as well.
Gabe Spalding 39:56
Yes.
Demetria Kalodimos 39:56
Can you tell a lay person, a very much layperson like myself.
Andy Kreiss 40:00
And me
Demetria Kalodimos 40:01
And and Andy, what faculty are working on and what the application might be for our
lives?
Gabe Spalding 40:08
Well, so I mentioned this business of how quantum measurement could significantly
lower the dosage that a patient needs for X-rays in the hospital. Well, that's actually
something that's happening in clinical trials. That researchers doing that cited our
work. Okay, I have two students working on the basic technology that they just presented
at a research conference here on campus.
Andy Kreiss 40:41
We talked about that in the last episode.
Gabe Spalding 40:43
Well, actually, I have many students who presented, but I'm talking about two in particular
who worked on this very technology. We see it again and again. If you can expand our
capacity to make measurements, to encode and process information, the applications
are limitless. That's the, I think, important thing to convey to people who may not
have a particular interest in science and technology, is that your life is impacted
by really what is an important network of science and technology underpinning many
things you do depend upon? At our north, I keep mentioning these advanced labs run
by the U.S. Department of Energy. My students get jobs there all the time, internships
there all the time. They have a ring where they've gotten rid of the air; they pumped
it out, and in that ring, they're accelerating electrons to very, very near the speed
of light.
Demetria Kalodimos 41:56
Is that the super collider?
Gabe Spalding 41:58
No, it's called the advanced photon source because it turns out that when you do this,
you get broadcast like a headlight in front of the electron, an X-ray beam, and that
X-ray is well. It started out a billion times more intense than medical X-rays, and
they just went through an upgrade by a factor of 500 in that intensity, why is that
important? Well, when the nation was going through COVID, and most people had to then
step away from work, they did not. They used that to develop the Paraxlovid COVID
vaccine. That's how we figured out using those X-rays what would be appropriate. The
drug discovery went through that. Now, when you think about medicine, you don't think
about the technology that underlies those such of things. But now, one of my students
is in charge of those Beamlines. The network that protects us includes a lot of science
and technology. There are many other things that protect us. Music protects us, right?
It's an important part, and I've seen for student after student where that was the
key to them thriving and surviving, for sure. So it's not just science, but yes, what
we do is meant to have an impact on the world. That same Accelerator developed ways
to ensure that fertilizer would bind to different soil types. So now, as the tractor
goes through the fields in this state and every other state, they're using GPS. They've
mapped the field. They know the different soil types, and they're making adjustments
on the fly. This saves even a small farmer a couple of $100,000 a year, and it reduces
the runoff of nitrides into the public water system. Nitrides which would cause mental
slowness. All of us depend upon this network without fully realizing it. We don't
all have to be scientists and engineers and such, but for the ones who, for whatever
reason, that's their game, that's their Rubik's cube, that's their crossword puzzle.
Let's celebrate it, and in particular for young women.
Demetria Kalodimos 44:36
I'm just wondering. You know, we all grew up watching movies, imagining things that
we saw on the screen that would never come to be, and now they're commonplace. I can
remember when they were talking about the picture phone on a Walt Disney Wonderful
World of Disney when I was a kid, and I thought that was incredible. What is that
thing for you that you thought would never come to be? That I'm sure you understand
on a totally different level.
Gabe Spalding 45:05
Well, I mean, it's it's thrilling to see how things continue to come together. And
what I'll say is that science is a large shared conversation. That's always what it's
been, and you're guaranteed the large shared conversation necessarily moves forward,
even if the questions that you're asking as part of that conversation, somebody might
think that's a silly question. It helps that we are having these conversations, and
it's guaranteed you can't fail. The conversation, the large shared conversation is
going to move forward. I'm shocked at how many connections there are that just fall
at our feet. Things that we did not expect when we started. So, for example, my students
were playing around with the momentum of light. Light carries momentum. Yes, that's
an interesting thing. It's not much, but when you look at tiny little things like
oh, let's let's see what it does with a biological cell. We can push them around.
Hey, we can sort them. We can automate the sorting. It turns out that was of great
interest to a company that works on leukemia. We didn't think that would be the a
sensible way to sort cells. We thought, gee, why wouldn't you just use a centrifuge?
Demetria Kalodimos 46:38
Spin them around.
Gabe Spalding 46:39
That stresses them too much, and this doesn't. We had no idea, but you play around,
and then it's you throw it out into the world, and it gets applied, and you say, "Wow."
Andy Kreiss 46:42
That's so cool. We could talk to you forever. We have to have you back. I think we
should. Oh, definitely. We close the podcast by asking: Is there a book that is meaningful
to you right now that you're reading that you wouldn't mind sharing the title of?
Gabe Spalding 47:11
Well, so the book that I just finished was meaningful to me mostly because my son
wanted me to read it. He bought it for me.
Andy Kreiss 47:23
Oh, he did, Dalton.
Gabe Spalding 47:24
He, yes, my son Dalton, who just finished up here. He graduated in May, so he's now
working at the U.S. Department of Energy Argonne National Lab, designing the next
generation components for these quantum computers. He's doing the modeling. He was
a math major, and he was president of the collegiate choir. Yes, he's a singer. He's
a beautiful singer. Music was central
Andy Kreiss 47:48
isn't that powerful?
Gabe Spalding 47:51
So he recommended this book called Paradox. Paradox. He's always loved Terry Pratchett
and Discworld and the humor of that series, and so he he bought two of this book,
one for me, and said, "Dad, read this paradox, paradox. And yes, it's got time travel
sorts of issues in there. It's fun. That's that's not reading for learning physics.
It's just reading for fun.
Andy Kreiss 48:22
And that's good too.
Gabe Spalding 48:23
Yes,
Demetria Kalodimos 48:25
Thank you so much, Doctor Spalding. We really appreciate it. I learned something.
I don't know. I did too, and and don't you wish you could go back to school? I think
every time we're going to sit here and go, now I want to. Now I want to go back,
Andy Kreiss 48:36
And and I feel like education is wasted on the young.
Gabe Spalding 48:40
Well, I always have a warm beverage waiting for you. Just pop down.
Andy Kreiss 48:44
He says that to me. Maybe if you come here, we'll really go have a cup of coffee.
Demetria Kalodimos 48:48
We're going to take you seriously and take take you up on that invitation.
Gabe Spalding 48:52
One of my colleagues, the sign on his door is "Free Help to Everyone. That's our motto.
Come by.
Andy Kreiss 49:00
Thank you, Dr. Spalding.