- Welcome all.
I'm Kathy Mykleby.
I'm a local journalist
with a television station in Milwaukee, WISN 12,
and I have a great appreciation for science,
so I couldn't be in better company.
I also love the idea of anything
that brings people together,
and this event is indeed inspired
by the love of science around the world.
From the Dutch city of Groningen?
- Correct.
- All right, to the Wisconsin the city of Milwaukee.
Correct? All right.
(chuckling)
They are known for riding bicycles,
those two wheeled things that you pedal
with your own feet. - That's right.
- We have our Harleys, which is something else,
but both cities are surrounded by industry,
and farmland, and an appreciation of the old world.
Groningen and Milwaukee
are proud to have campuses and faculty
dedicated to scientific expertise.
Our panel today, our distinguished guest,
Dr. Bernard Feringa,
who is the Jacobus van 't Hoff
Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences
at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry
at the University of Groningen.
Among his honors,
well this is tough,
Professor Feringa was awarded
the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2016.
That's pretty wonderful in itself, isn't it?
Dr. Marija Gajdardziska.
- Yes.
- Pretty close, Dean of UWM Graduate School,
and professor in the Department of Physics,
and Dr. Douglas Stafford,
director of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery
and executive director of the Shimadzu Laboratory
at UWM's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
I should point out that the lab is behind us,
and it's exceptional.
It is fitting that this panel is meeting at UWM,
a Tier I research university,
ranked among the best nationally,
and a key contributor also to home
to Milwaukee's entrepreneurial vitality.
Importantly, UWM works hard
to make research approachable
which is also, I believe, what Dr. Feringa is all about,
so that it can be an inspiration
in science, and learning,
and it will increase science literacy
for virtually everybody.
With this in mind, our goal today is to
get deeper insights into scientific inspiration
and the impact on science learning.
I get to ask the first question,
because I get to lead this discussion,
and keep the molecules running in the right direction
and get much done in a short period of time.
On the scale of discovery,
I worry a little bit that people are thinking
there's nothing to wonder about anymore,
but really in your regard,
there were a scale of say nano to 10,
where are we in discovery these days?
- I think we are at nano of course.
We have just scratched the surface.
If you think of the possibilities of science,
what we have learned over the past 100 years,
or 150 years, and what we are heading towards
it is absolutely fantastic.
There is a whole world in front of us
that we have not discovered.
We have to go beyond the borders
and to go in this unknown territory
where we can discover.
It's amazing what is still possible, you know?
And what will be possible.
You will see amazing, amazing discoveries
in the years to come.
- Along that line, you made a comment several years ago
that nature provides all the inspiration that you need
when thinking about science.
How do we connect young people with nature
and to get that inspiration?
- Yes, I grew up on a farm as a small boy,
and I got inspired by nature a lot,
but yeah, think about mother nature around you,
and then try to translate it into the world's problems
that we want to solve.
I use always this example as I will do this afternoon.
We looked at the flying bird,
and the Wright brothers did slightly over 100 years ago.
They were able for the first time to fly,
and now we have the Boeing 747s.
I came with this a big plane here.
It's completely artificial.
The flying principle is completely distinct from the bird.
We admired the bird
before the purpose of carrying 350 people
from Amsterdam up here.
It's better to have a Boeing 747,
(laughing)
and it works perfectly well,
although we also have to be modest
talking about what we don't know.
We cannot build a bird.
We cannot build a single cell of a bird yet
or a part of that cell of the bird.
There is a loss to be invented and discovered,
but yes, admire the beauty of mother nature
and translate that in concepts of science
and then we will move forward.
- You mentioned that you were born on a farm
and I actually saw that in Wikipedia,
in your Nobel presentation.
It really is very important and very meaningful
because the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
is a top-tier research university,
but our mission is also to provide access
to students from all walks of life.
We have a lot of first-generation students,
students from underrepresented minorities,
and we're always trying to figure out
how to engage them in science.
What is the right time?
Is it the undergraduate research experience?
Is it that Masters thesis, the goal of dissertation?
What really got you hooked to science
and what works for you to get other people
engaged in science?
- That is a fairly important question.
I think first of all you mentioned it.
I am also from a rural area.
My parents were farmers.
We got the opportunity to study,
and I think it's really important
that everybody has a talent,
that he can employ his talent
and go into studies.
In high school I had excellent teachers
and that helped a lot.
Then I entered into the University into chemistry
and I was fascinated by the wonderful world of chemistry,
you know, the colors, the smells,
the beautiful molecules that you can design,
and in fact in chemistry, realized in many disciplines,
you can design your own molecular world.
Think of new drugs that are also developed
in this department.
To encourage students in this way,
to go into studying and asking questions,
asking questions about what is possible, et cetera,
and to learn, I think it's really important.
This creativity that is so common to the natural scientists,
and to stimulate questions and ask about mother nature.
I think that helps a lot,
and it's our task as teachers because I feel it like that.
- You need a reality show.
(laughing)
- We should stimulate young people!
- Some kind of a reality show with scientists
living in the same room.
- Yeah! (laughing)
- Coming up with all kinds of--
Yeah, right.
- It's a lot of fun you know.
Science is a lot of fun,
and it's beautiful.
I feel often like an artist.
Isn't it beautiful?
When I made my first molecule,
I often tell the story, I got so excited.
It felt like making a piece of music or a piece of art.
- You mentioned teaching,
and I'm sure through your career
you've experienced some outstanding teachers.
What makes the great teacher in science?
- I think somebody that can make clear
the basis of your topic,
but also can go beyond that
and put it in the proper context,
and also set you thinking
that you as a student are going to ask questions
because also a teacher doesn't know--
I mean, what we teach of course
is the state of affairs
of science as it is at this moment,
but that is based upon our experiments,
on our models, on our calculations.
It's our insights that we have now.
That doesn't necessarily mean
that we couldn't go beyond that,
and I think we should train our students
to go beyond the states of what we know,
the current knowledge, yeah?
Because our destiny in the end is knowledge,
inventions, discovery.
- Engagement I kind of hear.
- Yeah, yeah.
- The professor doesn't just end up in front of the room
and tell you, "This is what I did.
"I got the Nobel Prize."
- No. - "This is what I did."
You want to engage the students to sort of
communicate with you, and back and forth.
- Absolutely, what I do is
the door of my office always open.
When new students come in,
I encourage them to discuss,
and I say, "Look, we have some ideas
"about a project to work on,
"but you are all extremely talented
"because you are here at the University
"and you are at the beginning of your career.
"Please try to be better than I am."
- Spread your wings.
Another bird analogy. - Yeah, spread your wings.
- I try to challenge them
and say, "Look, please use your talents."
- For undergraduate students,
we put an awful lot of effort
to provide an authentic research experience.
That is a requirement in our counselory department.
It seems like there's nothing quite like
being the first person in the world to have seen something.
When that result comes out of the plate reader,
you are the first one in the world,
and isn't it part of a teacher is to inspire students
for what discovery is all about?
- Absolutely, this feeling of discovery.
I think what you see when you have small kids
even in kindergarten you have the small kids,
and I go to school now,
elementary schools to talk with them
and you see this beautiful glow in their eyes
when you talk about small discoveries, et cetera.
It's wonderful, and I think we should stimulate
that kind of attitude of thinking,
being critical attitude, but also the joy of discovery.
It's really important.
- Yes, there's nothing like it.
- Well, you push graduate school though, right?
- Oh yes, so I'll ask you about the big kids.
(laughing)
The real secret of how we got you to come
to UWM is that one of your scientific children,
one of your PhDs is a professor now
here in the chemistry department at UWM,
so how important are your doctoral students
for everything that you do
and for the process of discovery?
- When I got this call from Stockholm
which is like a boy's or girl's dream of course,
the first thing I realized and I mentioned in public is
this is the work of the whole team.
All these generations of students,
undergraduate students, graduate students, PhDs,
everybody in the lab that together made this possible,
and it was of course the work of several decades
because these were complicated problems
that we had to work on,
but it's the work of everyone.
Everybody put in his or her talent to make this possible,
so I owe a tremendous gratitude
to my students who made this all possible,
and it was a joy to work with all these young talents
to be able to reach this and to do this.
There were projects that were not easy.
Reasonably we solved the problem
that we have been working on for 20 years.
Imagine, that's five--
No, that's five generations of PhD students
because a PhD at home is four years,
five generations that constantly worked on it
and finally we got the breakthrough,
so sometimes it needs perseverance.
It needs also to be a bit daring of course,
and to challenge each other.
The students challenged me a lot,
and that's really great.
I enjoy that.
- It's got to be daring, and we have to ask,
you get the call from Stockholm.
What do you do when someone calls you and says,
"You've just won the Nobel Prize!"
- Yeah, that was very interesting.
I was discussing with my students
just in my office about a project.
It was a tough project,
and my first reaction was a bit, "Who is disturbing me?"
- I don't believe this, this is a prank call.
(laughing)
- Then I got this call, and I realized it was the secretary
of the Nobel Committee,
so I sent the students into the corridor,
and then after four or five minutes he said to me,
I heard, "Dr. Feringa are you still there?
"It's so silent."
(laughing)
I said, "Yes, I'm completely in shock,"
and then I mumbled something like,
"I'm extremely proud of course,
"but I'm still a bit in shock,"
because it came so unexpected.
This is not something that you expect to get
because you work in the lab with students,
you teach, you do your research.
There was one occasion though
that because people asked me then,
did you expect to get a Nobel Prize?
There was of course sometimes thought about
people mentioning this field, this area
might get the Nobel Prize sometime,
but you don't really think about it
because we do our job and we teach, and we do research.
One evening in 2011,
I was called by a colleague from the United States
who said, "Did you realize you were, last night,
"on American television?"
I said, "Come on, you are joking."
He said, "Yes, you are in The Simpsons."
(exclaiming)
A week before the Nobel Prize announcement that year
there was The Simpsons,
and they had a bet on the Nobel Prize
in chemistry, and physics, and math, et cetera,
and so Moerner from Stanford,
my name, and another name was there.
Moerner got the Nobel Prize in 2014, I got it last year.
I thought this is the highlight of my career as a scientist.
It can never be any better
being on The Simpsons on American television.
- Oh my goodness, and that does promote science too
because you do see Bart Simpson
writing that same lesson over, and over, and over again.
I will love science. I will love science.
Maybe you start there, I don't know.
How funny is that?
- Yes.
- Well, you have managed to kind of
bring science to--
You're obviously a very down-to-earth person
and very charismatic,
but you have brought it to the level
that others can understand like me.
We've got some brainpower over here.
I'm the kind of person who has to try to
describe science to other people.
You make it very easy.
- Thank you very much,
but I think it is really important
that we as scientists do a better job
to bring science to the general public.
Even to the politicians,
and I don't want to talk about politics,
but also in Europe we get this question
about why is science so useful
and why do we spend so much money?
I would argue the best investment you can do
is in your youth,
because they will bring our society forward.
Invest in your future,
and that is by investing in teaching and research.
- Can we go back to one of the things you talked about
as far as research and these high-end projects,
and you also made some comments about
scientists need to take risks,
and I'm sure in your career you have taken many risks.
I mean, even made the comparison
to the Dutch explorers discovering the new world.
How can a young scientist take risks these days?
How do they get funding? How did they get publications?
How do they get tenure and universities
if you take too many risks?
How do you balance that?
- That is a really important question.
The balance between the risk and--
I always tell my young people
and I gave this advice also to Dr. Arnold
when he started his independent career
or he was a PhD student, walk on two feet.
So try at least to do something highly riskful,
but if you work only on that foot,
you might walk for five years
and don't get any results.
If you get a result, it will give you the name of course,
and it will give you your own field,
but also walk on the other foot
that you have good balance
because you have also to do something
that is maybe less riskful but will give you solid results,
will give you a grant, and will give you a publication,
a couple of publications that you need to get tenure,
et cetera, and to build the next steps.
You cannot afford, certainly not these days,
maybe it was 30, 40, 50 years ago different,
but nowadays you have to show at least some result
and that you have made progress.
Also, the students deserve it, you know?
Because when you are a PhD student, you suppose,
and you don't get any publishable result
we have also the obligation to help
our young people, our students,
to make the next steps in their career,
and so I always try to balance that,
but certainly you have to take risks
because we go in an area or in areas
where we don't know what is out there.
That is research, no?
- It's great to hear good news out of chemistry,
but there can be bad news.
Obviously things can go awry.
You can have spills, you can have bombs,
so what is it that the scientists,
what you hope from the scientists
as far as their approach to discovery?
- Obviously as you are a chemist,
and you can make all these products from drugs,
to plastics, to dyes.
We know we use plastics everywhere,
but there's also this problem,
for instance of plastics in the ocean, these tiny particles.
We as scientists have a duty
to take a critical attitude to watch what we produce.
We try to make our materials that we use in everyday life,
be it in our cars, or in our drugs, or in our smart phones,
as safe as possible
and produce it in a sustainable way,
but of course there are, like with many other things,
there are also the downsides of it,
and we better be aware and train our students
and educate about these kind of things,
and try to find solutions
like I see here for instance, water treatment,
analyzing how much metals there are in the wastewater
or what are we going to do
with biodegration of plastics for instance?
All these things are important,
and this offers tremendous opportunities also for science
to move forward.
We should not deny it,
we should take it as an opportunity, a challenge
because we have to do better in certain aspects.
- Once you discover something,
you shouldn't give up on discovering something
at a new level.
- Of course not.
- The Shimadzu Lab here is working on
asthma medication right now
to try to make it easier,
to try to make it faster and more effective.
That's amazing!
- How fantastic can it be,
and how rewarding and on the way
to solve this asthma problem
which will help a tremendous number of people?
You might find completely different things
that can help to solve other medical problems.
- Serendipity! (chuckles)
I love serendipity, that's always--
- Yeah, I mean you sometimes stumble on something
that you think, "Wow,
"This is also science."
- Speaking of serendipity,
in my work in the physics
we discovered by chance and new material,
two-dimensional graphene, which I have said
is essentially CO in a solid form,
and normally we'd publish, we give presentations,
but these days at universities,
there's also an emphasis on patenting,
on doing startup companies,
and also preparing our students
when they get their PhD's, their masters, their bachelors,
not only look at positions in academia or national labs,
but also look at companies,
or even start their own companies.
In your life, you were at a company,
and then you returned to a University.
What is your sense about the importance
of having research in these multiple environments,
and how are they to balance each other
so that we are pulling in the good direction?
- I think this is really an important issue
in the whole academic environment.
Of course universities, the academic institutes
have their own mission.
We should do basic research, and we should train students,
but beyond that there is a lot of opportunities
to cooperate with industries, to look at societal problems
and this is also an important part of our duties.
I have during my whole career worked with industries.
I started even some startup companies myself.
I encourage my students to do that.
I worked, after my PhD, 6 1/2 years for Shell,
a major oil company,
and to me at was a tremendous learning opportunity
to go out of the comfort zone of the academic world
to learn how companies operate,
how you have to make products
and put them into the market, how to run a factory.
I think you can learn a lot,
so I usually try to do is
at least at the master level,
to send our students to companies for a couple of months
or to experience this different world
and when you then go back in academia,
at least you get a flavor of
"When I work on this problem and I see an opportunity
"for application where we can solve a problem
"like in society, or make a new industry,
"or start a startup,"
I think we should encourage our students a lot
because we cannot only rely on the big companies
that have been always there.
There is tremendous opportunities
for new entrepreneurship itself.
A lot of things come out of academia these days,
so I think there is a fantastic opportunities
for universities, and I see it here in Milwaukee.
I see it also in other universities.
Honestly, I think United States is a little bit ahead of us
with this attitude of entrepreneurialship
you see it now also coming in Europe
but it's really important messages for our young people.
It's not only about academic training.
It's also about what's out there in the world.
- Right. - That's interesting.
Milwaukee actually is the home
of the invention of the typewriter.
I just remembered that. (laughing)
There's a street corner you can go to
and it'll say, "Milwaukee is the home of the typewriter."
- Also beer, right?
- Beer, oh a little beer as well, yes.
Beer too. - Just a little bit.
- But you say that America is ahead in something
and that's pretty phenomenal for people to hear
because so often we hear, especially in sciences,
that we might be slipping.
That we are not pushing hard enough.
- I cannot judge that.
There is fantastic science,
I see here also a great institute
with cutting-edge science.
In general I would say what I have experienced
over the past 25 to 30 years
is that the entrepreneurial attitude
of young people in the United States
is better present than in Europe.
Now it's catching up in Europe,
and we put a lot of effort on startups,
there are industries, or parks at universities.
People try to stimulate young people
to start their own companies,
but here it's more like an attitude.
"Start your own business. It's fine, it's great.
"Take that risk,"
and we can learn from America in that respect.
- I think that mindset is really part of what we are doing
in the laboratory behind us,
because we receive funding from the state of Wisconsin,
our regional government.
With the notion of better connecting
the University resource
with the intellectual capability as well as instrumentation
that a small startup company could never buy
a triple quad mass spectrometer.
I think that's really important for universities
to have that as part of their mission,
and that seems to be a little bit different
from the traditional teaching of students
rather than being a supporter of economic development
and the industrial vitality of a region,
I think we try to do that.
- I think so,
now if I were doing a story about this right now,
I'd ask you for crying out loud,
describe what a quado-whata-whata-whata does
in real life?
- I fully agree that when you can build these fat facilities
and then have really state of the art
but it's big investments
that a small company never can do,
but then you can use this as a kind of
breeder facility for several startups,
or connect with local industries, et cetera.
You will benefit from both sides
because to maintain such a facility is also expensive,
so if you team up then with small industries
or with major industries,
you can then together invest in the future.
I think it is a very good model, yeah?
- I think too is our students understand how industry works.
- Absolutely.
- Both wheels are turning at the same time,
and I think that's important.
They can get a little bit of a taste,
maybe that's the direction they want to go
as you went to Shell after--
- They get to the contacts with industry,
they then learn about how to approach things
which is often a bit different from what we do
in fundamental research of course,
and there are a lot of parameters to develop a product.
We all know a product to the market is a bit different
game than only working on fundamental science,
so the students can automatically learn a lot from that,
so yes, I would say it's a win-win situation.
- What is the flip switch for all of you?
When did you think you went, "Oh, science
"is just awesome!"
How old are you? What was going on?
- I was always interested in asking questions
and this bit of adventure of an uncertain thing.
When I worked as an early graduate student,
I did my first small research project.
I had an American professor by the way
trained in America,
and he gave us tough problems.
He said, "We want to compete
"with the best schools in America."
That was a good driver for me,
and then I got to--
I remember that I made my first molecule
and I came to the office of the professor and he said,
"This molecule has never been made before,
"not even in America,"
and I was so excited (laughing)
that I made a molecule.
It was an absolutely useless molecule,
but I was so excited.
This is my piece of music. I made this for the first time.
- That's awesome. How about you, Marija?
- For me, I think definitely high school,
but the real moment which set me
on the trajectory for sure
was an undergraduate research experience.
I got to go to Grenoble, France
and that's a city for physics and for skiing,
and I love both of those things.
(laughing)
Having that experience when you are working on real science,
something where even my professor at that time,
Jean-Claude P.B. Parolli,
his PhD advisor had a Nobel Prize in atomic physics
so I worked with somebody
who was once the primo for a Nobel Prize
just like people who were working with
Alexander around here have that connection,
and working alongside
on something that even he didn't know
what the answer would be,
so doing something that nobody the whole world
knows what the answer is to.
It's not in the back of any book,
and I think that's the biggest privilege
you can have as a human being.
- [Dr. Feringa] Right, absolutely.
- It's almost better than falling in love, I don't know.
(laughing)
- My answer is very simple.
When I was in college starting off,
I had some really great teachers.
That's why we talked about teachers, and being inspired,
I just got, "I want to do that."
These people are in total control of the field,
they love what they are doing,
and they love being with students,
and what could be a better thing to want to pursue
as a career?
It was really an inspiration by teachers.
- This excitement of maybe making a discovery,
something that nobody has done before,
and I fully agree with you,
I consider it a privilege.
I consider it a great privilege
that I've worked my whole career
with the most talented bright young boys and girls
in the world.
It's fantastic,
and you have a family all over the world
by science, it's everywhere!
- So is that what you are doing with your science now,
traveling the world, or are you still in the labs?
- We have a big group working in the lab,
and I hope my boys and girls are working
and still get very excited.
We do cool things there,
but yes, I travel quite a lot.
I go to schools to talk with children.
There is a lot of demand now,
but I enjoy it, and as I said before,
it is a great privilege to work with them.
- Well, I'd love to talk for hours,
but I think we have to wrap up.
- I think we actually-- - Go to the real lecture.
- Have to go to the real lecture,
and in my business, we call chemistry
this sort of energy that's between
the people doing the news
and jumping out of that box with the glass in front of it
to get to people's homes.
I'd say we've got some chemistry going on here.
We should take this show on the road,
but you've got another event,
so what a pleasure, thank you.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- Thank you, my pleasure.
- Oh, it was wonderful, thank you.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- Thank you, pleasure. Thank you so much.
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