What a pleasure it was to witness Sylvester Gates‘ gentlemanly afro today. Check out his 53 page CV here [pdf]. The famed physicist and Elegant Universe TV star gave a talk to the students of Notre Dame and to think I never even got my copy of Elegant Universe signed! I guess that will have to wait until next week?

Preceding the lecture was a room with multiple fruit, cracker, donut, and cookie platters giving physics majors ample opportunity to anti-socialize. Obviously the room was packed. Upon escaping several dead-end conversations and a laborious explanation of where Toronto was in respect to its closest state I found an engaging group of students. They explained that they received extra credit for attending this talk. America is corrupt like that!

There’s no doubt it was the most enjoyable credits these students have ever earned because Dr. Gates knew exactly how to entertain. It was interesting to hear that his PhD thesis on supersymmetry was a topic unfamiliar to his adviser or anyone at MIT at the time. He likened his defense, in choosing a topic no one was familiar with, to James T. Kirk’s reprogramming of the Kobayashi-Maru combat simulation to beat the system! Well put.

The talk was uncomfortably compressed from 1 hour and 45 minutes to just an hour, but thanks to many futuristic 3D animations of feynman diagrams, that had been developed for the Superstring Theory: DNA of Reality teaching company series, a lot of information was conveyed.

In typical theorist fashion, Gates gave the prediction of the positron by the Dirac equation as an example where the math came before the experimental result. Analogous to this in his own field would be the predicted Higgs Boson which will be tested next month thanks to a certain 7 billion dollar experiment.

I was especially happy to hear Gates promoting the LHC rap which proves that normal people other than bloggers really do use the internet. To wrap things up, he closed by praising the physicists working on LHC as ‘Lords of the Ring’. Someone in the front immediately asked who Frodo was but I couldn’t catch the name he replied! To be honest, I’m a little more concerned about the possibility of ring wraiths…

I recently listened to the Systems Biology Nature podcast.

Systems biology is mathematical modeling of biological systems (even at the molecular/gene level) with the intention of reproducing emergent properties in complex living systems. These mathematical systems could  combine everything from gene regulatory networks to crazy metabolic networks into one glorious approximated abomination of biology. This research could lead to at least two great things:

1. Spore 2 (check out local guest blogger Kate’s Spore creature gallery)
2. Accurate evolution simulations, ie. new opportunities for creationist bashing

Systems biology is a perfect example of a new multidisciplinary field. It combines the work of mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, bioinformaticians, biochemists, molecular biologists, cell biologists, and geneticists. Even a philosophy major could probably slip into the team undetected for a little while!

As grad school selection approaches and life decisions loom above like an angry sun, it really begs the question: Should one be specializing or diversifying ones skill set?

Sure, you could diversify (your bonds) and learn about computer science and physics like me, or you could specialize the old fashion way and join some miraculous science collaboration dream team to work on cutting edge science.

The case for diversifying is argued nicely in a PLoS essay entitled: “Antedisciplinary Science“. (Hat tip!)

It turns out that antedisciplinary science aligns nicely with the ideal Jacks of Science “Jack of all trades” blogging philosophy:

Perhaps the whole idea of interdisciplinary science is the wrong way to look at what we want to encourage. What we really mean is “antedisciplinary” science—the science that precedes the organization of new disciplines, the Wild West frontier stage that comes before the law arrives.

The essay was written by a computational biologist and the topic really hits home for me. By next April I’ll have graduated with equal amounts of physics and computer science credits thanks to University of Waterloo’s free-spirited computational science program. But I’m kinda doomed. I don’t have the expected skillset of a physics major or of a computer science major if I choose to go to grad school for either.

I should have specialized in something!

Why am I currently researching computational chemistry!?

Why do I plan to study polymer physics next term!?

Who am I!?