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Do you have any idea of where a young person might find that sort of environment today? Did you by chance work with Odlyzko there?

by _gmax0 3y ago

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
I've been immersed in a very applied corner of industry for nearly 20 years now and have lost touch with the world of basic research. My sense (and I have no proof to offer) is that the old Bell/IBM/DuPont/GE/... era of industrial labs with a healthy exploration culture is gone and won't come back in my lifetime. - Seemed that Google had that spirit at one time with its X Lab and also the Google Labs that put out fun products but all I read here and elsewhere is that is in the past - The Janelia Research Campus may be carrying on the spirit of small, collaborative groups led by a hands-on scientist (there were no empires at Bell Labs.) Could be a very good place to be a young student that has an interest in biology, instrumentation, and/or computation. See what they expect from the lab heads here: https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders /excerpt "Group Leaders have time to focus their energy and creativity on research with the freedom to pursue long-term difficult projects through collaborative, interdisciplinary work. They are not evaluated solely on conventional academic measures, such as publishing. Rather, Group Leaders will be expected to make progress in their research areas and make contributions to the work of other Janelia scientists through collaboration, constructive criticism, or mentoring." /excerpt One of the guys I did know personally wound up at Janelia and eventually at Stockholm. I was on the other side of the very long Murray Hill building in the physical sciences area. I went to one of Odlyzko's presentations at the Journal Club circa 1992 or 1993 - I think it was on an important new result in prime numbers/factorization/encryption. I never met him, let alone worked with him, though. I do remember one of my senior colleagues (physical scientist) wondering why any of that stuff mattered. My response was that it was probably much more important than anything he or I were doing, had done, or would ever do. I had read something in Byte or a similar popular magazine about primes and encryption it seemed like the field had serious practical implications on top of being incredibly interesting. One of the few correct predictions in my career! Addendum: On re-reading this, I realized that I am taking a very US-centric perspective. The spirit/culture I was talking about could exist in other countries.

Do you have any idea of where a young person might find that sort of environment today? Did you by chance work with Odlyzko there?

by _gmax0 3y ago

Do you have any idea of where a young person might find that sort of environment today? Did you by chance work with Odlyzko there?

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

I've been immersed in a very applied corner of industry for nearly 20 years now and have lost touch with the world of basic research. My sense (and I have no proof to offer) is that the old Bell/IBM/DuPont/GE/... era of industrial labs with a healthy exploration culture is gone and won't come back in my lifetime. - Seemed that Google had that spirit at one time with its X Lab and also the Google Labs that put out fun products but all I read here and elsewhere is that is in the past - The Janelia Research Campus may be carrying on the spirit of small, collaborative groups led by a hands-on scientist (there were no empires at Bell Labs.) Could be a very good place to be a young student that has an interest in biology, instrumentation, and/or computation. See what they expect from the lab heads here: https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders https://www.janelia.org/our-research/our-labs/group-leaders /excerpt "Group Leaders have time to focus their energy and creativity on research with the freedom to pursue long-term difficult projects through collaborative, interdisciplinary work. They are not evaluated solely on conventional academic measures, such as publishing. Rather, Group Leaders will be expected to make progress in their research areas and make contributions to the work of other Janelia scientists through collaboration, constructive criticism, or mentoring." /excerpt One of the guys I did know personally wound up at Janelia and eventually at Stockholm. I was on the other side of the very long Murray Hill building in the physical sciences area. I went to one of Odlyzko's presentations at the Journal Club circa 1992 or 1993 - I think it was on an important new result in prime numbers/factorization/encryption. I never met him, let alone worked with him, though. I do remember one of my senior colleagues (physical scientist) wondering why any of that stuff mattered. My response was that it was probably much more important than anything he or I were doing, had done, or would ever do. I had read something in Byte or a similar popular magazine about primes and encryption it seemed like the field had serious practical implications on top of being incredibly interesting. One of the few correct predictions in my career! Addendum: On re-reading this, I realized that I am taking a very US-centric perspective. The spirit/culture I was talking about could exist in other countries.