Three bursts of charged particles ejected from the sun have merged into a wave that could lead to brilliant auroras being visible from Moscow to Oklahoma City.
Now researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), have taken it a whole new level by forming a research institute dedicated to the science of the perfect brew.
The Coffee Center will be used by more than 50 researchers and includes labs dedicated to brewing, “sensory and cupping” and the chemical analysis of coffee.
The centre has its origins in a 2013 course on “the design of coffee” by UC Davis chemical engineers William Ristenpart and Tonya Kuhl.
Two years later and a coffee lab at the university was established and in 2022 construction began on the Coffee Center, which was funded with $6m from private donors.
The official opening on 3 May was attended by over 200 people, who were treated to bean roasting and espresso brewing demonstrations.
“Think of this center as a hub of all things coffee,” noted UC Davies chancellor Gary May at the opening. “Together, we bring rigorous coffee science and cutting-edge technology to the world stage.”
The three ages of the ancient world — Stone, Bronze, and Iron — encompass the formative years of human history in most regions. Learn how we went from dwelling in caves to building civilizations over millions of years.
Graphene, the first 2D material, was isolated by Prof. Andre Geim and Prof. Konstantin Novoselov in 2004. Since then, a variety of 2D materials have been discovered, including transition metal dichalcogenides, phosphorene and mxene. 2D materials have remarkable characteristics and are making significant contributions towards quantum technologies, electronics, medicine, and renewable energy generation and storage to name but a few fields. However, we are still exploring the full potential of 2D materials, and many challenges must be overcome.
Join us for this panel discussion, hosted by 2D Materials, where leading experts will share their insights and perspectives on the current status, challenges and future directions of 2D materials research. You will have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session.
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Left to right: Stephan Roche, Konstantin Novoselov, Joan Redwing, Yury Gogotsi and Cecilia Mattevi
Chair Prof. Stephan Roche has been ICREA Research Professor and head of the Theoretical & Computational Nanoscience Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2). He is a theoretician expert in the study of quantum transport theory in condensed matter, spin transport physics and devices simulation.
Speakers Prof. Konstantin Novoselov is the Langworthy Professor of Physics and Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Manchester. In 2004, he isolated graphene alongside Andre Geim and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his achievements.
Prof. Joan Redwing is a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University where she holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research focuses on crystal growth and epitaxy of electronic materials, with an emphasis on thin film and nanomaterial synthesis by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition.
Prof. Yury Gogotsi is a Distinguished University Professor and Charles T and Ruth M Bach Endowed Chair in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. He is the founding director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute.
Prof. Cecilia Mattevi is a Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. Cecilia’s expertise centres on science and engineering of novel 2D atomically thin materials to enable applications in energy conversion and energy storage.
About this journal
2D Materials is a multidisciplinary, electronic-only journal devoted to publishing fundamental and applied research of the highest quality and impact covering all aspects of graphene and related two-dimensional materials.
Editor-in-chief: Wencai Ren Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Physics is a constantly evolving field – how do we make sure the next generation of physicists receive training that keeps pace with new developments and continues to support the cutting edge of research?
According to Carsten P Welsch, a distinguished accelerator scientist at the University of Liverpool, in the age of machine learning and AI, PhD students in different physics disciplines have more in common than they might think.
“Research is increasingly data-intensive, so while a particle physicist and a medical physicist might spend their days thinking about very different concepts, the approaches, the algorithms, even the tools that people use, are often either the same or very similar,” says Professor Welsch.
Data science is extremely important for any type of research and will probably outlive any particular research field
Professor Welsch
Welsch is the director of the Liverpool Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) for Innovation in Data Intensive Science (LIV.INNO). Founded in 2022, the CDT is currently recruiting its third cohort of PhD students. Current students are undertaking research that spans medical, environmental, particle and nuclear physics, but their projects are all underpinned by data science. According to Professor Welsch, “Data science is extremely important for any type of research and will probably outlive any particular research field.”
Next-generation PhD training
Carsten Welsch has a keen interest in improving postgraduate education, he was chair of STFC’s Education Training and Careers Committee and a member of the UKRI Skills Advisory Group. When it comes to the future of doctoral training he says “The big question is ‘where do we want UK researchers to be in a few years, across all of the different research areas?’”
He believes that LIV.INNO holds the solution. The CDT aims to give students with data-intensive PhD projects the skills that will enable them to succeed not only in their research but throughout their careers.
Lauryn Eley is a PhD student in the first LIV.INNO cohort who is researching medical imaging. She became interested in this topic during her undergraduate studies because it applied what she had learned in university to real-world situations. “It’s important that I can see the benefits of my work translated into everyday experiences, which I think medical imaging does quite nicely,” she says.
Miss Eley’s project is partnered with medical technology company Adaptix. The company has developed a mobile X-ray device which, it hopes, will enable doctors to produce a high-quality 3D X-ray image more cheaply and easily than with a traditional CT scanner.
Her task is to build a computational model of the X-ray device and investigate how to optimize the images it produces. To generate high-quality results she must simulate millions of X-rays. She says that the data science training she received at the start of the PhD has been invaluable.
From their first year, students attend lectures on data science topics which cover Monte Carlo simulation, high-performance computing, machine learning and AI, and data analysis. Lauryn Eley has an experimental background, and she says that the lectures enabled her to get to grips with the C++ she needed for her research.
Boosting careers with industry placements
Professor Welsch says that from the start, industry partnership has been at the centre of the LIV.INNO CDT. Students spend six months of their PhD on an industrial placement, and Lauryn Eley says that her work with Adaptix has been eye-opening, enabling her to experience first-hand the fast-paced, goal-driven world of industry, which she found very different to academic research.
While the CDT may particularly appeal to those keen on pursuing a career in industry, Professor Welsch emphazises the importance of students delivering high-quality research. Indeed, he believes that LIV.INNO’s approach provides students with the best chance of success in their academic endeavours. Students are taught to use project management skills to plan and deliver their projects, which he says puts them “in the driving seat” as researchers. They are also empowered to take initiative, working in partnership with their supervisors rather than waiting for external guidance.
LIV.INNO builds on a previous programme called the Liverpool Big Data Science Centre for Doctoral Training, which ran between 2017 and 2024. Professor Welsch was also the director of that CDT, and he has noticed that when it comes to partnering with student projects, industry attitudes have undergone a shift.
“When we approached the companies for the first time, you could definitely see that there was a lot of scepticism,” he says. “However, with the case studies from the first CDT, they found it much easier to attract industry partners to LIV.INNO.” Professor Welsch thinks that this demonstrates the benefits that industry-academia partnerships bring to both students and companies.
The first cohort from LIV.INNO are only in their second year, but many of the students from the previous CDT secured full-time jobs from the company where they did their placement. But whatever career path students eventually go down, Carsten Welsch is convinced that the cross-sector experience students get with LIV.INNO sets them up for success, saying “They can make a much better informed decision about where they would like to continue their careers.”
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is to assemble a panel to help it decide whether to fund the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) or the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The agency expects the panel, whose membership has yet to be determined, to report by 30 September, the end of the US government’s financial year.
The NSF first announced in February that it would support the construction of only one of the two next-generation ground-based telescopes due to rising costs. The GMT, priced at $2.54bn, will be located in Chile, while the TMT, which is expected to cost at least $3bn, is set to be built in Hawaii.
A decision on which telescope to fund was initially slated for May. But at a meeting of the National Science Board (NSB) last week, NSF boss Sethuraman Panchanathan revealed the panel would provide further advice to the agency. The decision to look to outsiders followed discussions with the US government and the NSB, which oversees the NSF.
The panel, which will include scientists and engineers, will assess “the readiness of the project from all perspectives” and consider how supporting each telescope would affect the NSF’s overall budget.
It will examine progress made to date, the level of partnerships and resources, and risk management. Complementarity to the European Extremely Large Telescope, opportunities for early-career scientists, and public engagement will be looked at too.
“I want to be very clear that this is not a decision to construct any telescopes,” Panchanathan, who originally trained as a physicist, told the NSB. “This is simply part of a process of gathering critical information to inform my decision-making on advancing either project to the final design stage.”
The DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego has completed eight months of upgrades that will allow researchers to better control and study fusion plasmas.
DIII-D is the largest magnetic-fusion facility in the US and is used by more than 700 researchers at 100 institutions worldwide. The DIII-D tokamak is a donut-shaped vacuum chamber that is surrounded by electromagnets that confine a plasma at a temperatures exceeding 10 times that of the Sun, enough to fuse hydrogen to produce energy.
Since July 2023, engineers and technicians have installed new systems to better control the fusion plasma. This includes a range of new diagnostic instruments as well as enhancements to the way that the plasma is heated.
Another change is to the tokamak’s divertor system, which removes exhaust heat and impurities from the tokamak. Engineers have installed a new configuration called a “shape and volume rise” divertor, which consists of a series of modular divertor configurations that the DIII-D will now test when experiments start up later this month.
The new divertor will allow plasma shapes to be studied that are expected to produce high fusion power performance but were not possible with DIII-D’s previous divertor geometry.
Work on the upgraded facility is also expected to support experiments that will be performed at the ITER experimental fusion reactor, which is currently being built in Cadarache, France.
“The upgrades provide us with exciting new capabilities and key enhancements,” notes DIII-D director Richard Buttery. “Our scientists will be able to use our upgraded systems and diagnostics to answer key questions on commercial industry–relevant technology, materials, and operations”.
Fusing science and diplomacy Craig Jantzen makes a visit to a fusion physics laboratory at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. (Courtesy: Craig Jantzen)
When Craig Jantzen was a PhD student at the University of Manchester in the UK, he used to go to politics and economics lectures alongside his research into nuclear materials. Jantzen is fascinated by all things nuclear, but he also saw the PhD as an opportunity to broaden his horizons beyond science. “You’re not drained from doing a nine-to-five job every day, and you’re around people that want to learn constantly,” he recalls.
Jantzen’s PhD, which he finished in 2017, involved investigating materials for next-generation nuclear reactors. It has been proposed that molten chloride salts, which are excellent heat conductors, could be used instead of water as reactor coolants, but these salts are incredibly corrosive to metals. Jantzen was testing the corrosion of different metal alloys in molten chloride salts in order to identify optimal materials for these reactors. But he is now a diplomat working on science collaboration and policy for the UK government. Given his interest in politics, Jantzen’s job might not seem surprising, but he emphasizes that his career has “not been a straight line”.
Having worked in finance, energy and environmental policy as well as the UK government’s COVID-19 response, Jantzen is currently based in Stockholm as the first secretary and regional manager for the UK’s Science Innovation Network where he covers the Nordic and Baltic regions. The network aims to build collaboration, promote UK research and provide expertise to the government. He leads a team of trained scientists, many of whom have PhDs, using their research experience to address policy issues like AI and climate change.
Embracing change
Jantzen’s first experience of what it would be like to work as a diplomat was sparked by a chance encounter at a conference during his PhD. He attended a talk by a speaker who had worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which promotes the safe use of nuclear technologies. Jantzen was particularly intrigued to hear the speaker talk about nuclear safeguards, and in his second year, he did a six-month internship at the IAEA in Vienna, working in the same team that had responded to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011.
I realized I like talking about science a lot more than I enjoy doing science
After his PhD, Jantzen considered staying in academia, but decided that his skills would be of better use elsewhere: “I realized I like talking about science a lot more than I enjoy doing science”. As it turned out, Jantzen’s first job after his PhD was as a financial consultant for Capco in London. “I knew that I would learn a lot in that environment and that they give you a lot of responsibility”, he says, “and I felt that was a good compliment to academic research”. Indeed, he credits this experience with getting him over some of the imposter syndrome he had from his PhD. With an emphasis on meeting deadlines, he had to let go of perfectionism and admit when he didn’t know something, eventually realizing that this allowed him to learn much faster.
But after 18 months in finance, it was time for another change. Wanting to do something he’d find more fulfilling, Jantzen started applying for jobs in the UK government. However, his career in the civil service got off to a slightly bumpy start.
He had been offered a role working for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy on the proposed Wylfa Newydd nuclear power station in north Wales. However, in January 2019 – less than a week before he was supposed to start – the project was suspended. Instead, Jantzen joined the Energy Strategy team in the same department where he worked on the UK’s plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. His research experience had given him “a nuclear energy lens”, but working with modellers and policy teams across technologies like carbon capture and offshore wind gave him a valuable crash-course in the wider energy landscape.
Far-flung ambition
Having previously enjoyed his stint overseas with the IAEA, Jantzen soon started looking for more international-facing roles. With the UK hosting the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), he knew that international environmental affairs was something he wanted to be part of. In November 2019 Jantzen moved to the Government Office for Science where he worked on the development of the UK’s COP26 science strategy. He also volunteered for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) secretariat during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he co-led the epidemiology policy team and prepared advice that was given to the government.
A science background…helps you do your job more effectively because you understand the technology, you’re not intimidated by it
As it happened, when the opportunity came to move overseas, it was to return to the IAEA on a secondment funded by the UK government. In this role, he advised the IAEA on climate change during COP26 and COP27 – which was held in Egypt in 2022. This gave him the experience he needed to apply for full-time jobs overseas, which is how he ended up in his current position.
Now Jantzen’s day could involve negotiating bilateral agreements, hosting an embassy reception, or running technology workshops. Jantzen believes his science background has been valuable to his career, saying “It helps you do your job more effectively because you understand the technology, you’re not intimidated by it”. As well as technical knowledge, scientists bring a diversity of thought that is valuable to a team, he believes.
Jantzen thinks his school and university-age self would be surprised at where his early interest in nuclear science has taken him: “I never imagined being a diplomat or working internationally.” He had to gradually build up experience before making the jump to a diplomatic role overseas, and his advice to others who are interested in switching from science to diplomacy is not to be deterred if it takes time, saying “I definitely saw stepping stones. I didn’t know exactly what opportunity was going to come up, but when I did, I was just ready for it.”
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