I spoke in this episode with Maynard Okereke. Maynard is a trained civil  and environmental engineer who has developed a second career in  scientific communication for young people and particularly young people  of color. He arrived at this interest from previous careers in  engineering and then acting and music. He is also a seasoned  entrepreneur, forgive the pun, with his own line of flavoring salt which  are vegan and number one selling brand on Amazon. He is the host of  hip-hop science as his alter ego, Hip Hop MD. He is a renowned public  speaker ..read more

In this video, I discuss how to write an effective and engaging statement of purpose, how to structure your essay, and how to use your  writing to compensate for potentially weaker sections of your  application. Thanks to the California Forum for Diversity in Graduation Education for the Invitation to give this talk. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation  CMMI-2135428. The views expressed are those only of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the sponsor, host, or UC San Diego ..read more

In this talk, I discuss strategies for research and writing, how to know  how much you should put in a paper, how to manage conflicts with  co-authors, and how to respond to reviewers.   Darren Lipomi, PhD Professor and Associate Dean for Students Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego lipomigroup.org ..read more

This is an unusual episode for me. Rather than responding to questions about graduate school, in this video, I responded to an interviewer performing an ethnographic survey about how researchers in bioengineering and bioengineering-adjacent fields view certain controversial subjects like human modification.  0:50 Would you be in favor of a prenatal treatment such that it would be possible for children to live 200 years?  2:04 What if we could guarantee no inequities, and anyone that would want it could allow their children to live 200 years?  2:36 Why wouldn’t you want to live 2 ..read more

0:00 How do you get your research published in high-impact journals?   2:05 Grad students and postdocs are busy. How do you vet undergraduate  researchers so that they are productive and not breaking equipment?   3:56 I noticed that you had a mini MBA on your resume. How valuable do you think business training is in academia?   6:25 Can you describe ways in which criticism from your students has  landed particularly heavy and changed your approach to teaching and  mentoring?   9:58 What is a Venn diagram and how has your Venn diagram showing the overlap of te ..read more

The pillars of academia--research, teaching, and service--often seem  like very separate activities. However, it can be really rewarding to  find ways to make connections between these areas to get more out of  parts of academic life that may seem mundane. Here are some thoughts I  collected and delivered at the Asian American Association for Scientists  and Engineers (AAASE) in October, 2022 ..read more

0:00 What does your group work on?   2:20 How is your work funded?   3:25 Is there one project or grant you’re especially excited about?   4:13 How many students are in your group?   4:25 Is that typical?   4:54 How do you communicate with your lab members?   6:01 The roundtable sounds like great idea, does that work well?  7:44 How long have you been doing the shoutouts?   8:16 How have shoutouts and other cultural elements you have implemented influenced climate in the lab?   9:08 How do you hire new lab members?   10:06 What do you look for ..read more

This episode is a crossover with the Teach the Geek Podcast, hosted by Neil Thompson, engineer, author, podcaster, and speaking coach. Here, we discuss my academic path and approaches to public speaking. You can learn more about Neil at teachthegeek.com and askuncleneilbooks.com ..read more

This is a bit of an unusual book review for the book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. I'm going to focus on Walter Isaacson's portrayal of how scientific research happens in academic settings and provide some context for the comments he makes on scientists, the scientific method, the role of competition, fundamental science vs. technology, and the philosophy of science.   My brief bio: I did my PhD at Harvard in chemistry and postdoc in chemical engineering at Stanford. I have been in the same room with many of the individuals written abou ..read more

In this episode, I sat down with my colleague, Prof. Tod A. Pascal, of  the Department of NanoEngineering and Chemical Engineering at UC San  Diego. Tod developed an interest in computational materials science at a  young age while growing up on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean.  During his schooling, he spent significant time in Houston, New York,  Philadelphia, Pasadena, South Korea, Japan, and Berkeley, before  starting his lab at UCSD. In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about  how he became a computational materials scientist, what it was like ..read more