In Scholars Share, Frelsi interviews academics and researchers in Electrical Engineering on various research-related topics and their personal motivations, experiences, and views on life at large.
This time, with Distinguished Professor Andrea Alù, a founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science research center, Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Professor of Electrical engineering at the City College of New York
First, a serious and important question - can you make a proper lasagna by yourself?
No, that's too complicated. I can make pasta and some basic dishes. But my wife is much better than me at cooking. Even if she's not Italian.
Can you share a bit about your early life?
I was born in Rome, Italy, where I studied as well. I have been interested in science and math since I was young. I liked the type of topics that would later become my job. I did the Liceo Scientifico, a scientific kind of high school in Italy, where you get specialized quite early on. In college, I chose electrical engineering to do science, physics, and math based on advice from multiple people. Because physics and math on their own would be a little bit too challenging in terms of the future job opportunities in Italy.
Within electrical engineering, I got interested in electromagnetics pretty early because all the topics we were learning about in the first couple of years were mostly basic physics. By the way, in Italy, electromagnetics is mostly driven through engineering schools because it's the tradition of Guglielmo Marconi, who funded some of the top schools in electromagnetics. One in Rome, where he was based, one in Naples, and Turin.
I was lucky to already be in Rome, in the university Roma Tre which is a spinoff of the University La Sapienza, where some of the disciples of Marconi were teaching. In the last years of college, I specialized in electromagnetics. I took several mostly theoretically oriented courses in EM. Then I was lucky, which at that time didn't feel that way, but I was very interested in continuing my academic career by doing a Ph.D. in Rome. Because of a strange combination of events, there was no Ph.D. program at my university for two years after I graduated. I had to find other things to do while I was waiting for the Ph.D. program to restart. During the first year, I was lucky to win a fellowship from the IET institution in Italy - the Institute of Electrotechnical Engineers. They had a competition for freshly graduated students from electrical engineering to spend one year abroad in a research institution of their choice.
During my undergraduate thesis work, I admired the work of Nader Engheta. In particular, I studied work on fractional calculus from him. At the time he was working on an idea of using fractional calculus and derivatives for new forms of wave engineering. I contacted him and told him I was self-funded to visit his group and luckily he had the time and an opening for me. So I was able to join him for the whole year in 2002. That was my first experience abroad in Philadelphia.
I planned to go back anyway so in 2003, I spent one year taking a master's while waiting for the Ph.D. program to restart in Roma Tre, where I had studied my undergraduate. But that first year with Professor Engheta was very productive and well-timed because here, the interest in the new field of metamaterials was only starting. The first papers on negative refraction, and perfect lens from John Pendry, David Smith, and others had just come out. He also published an interesting idea of using negative refraction to make compact resonators. Given that I was self-funded and free to do work on any topic, he was interested in involving me in these early explorations.
That was great timing for me. Even if I'd gone to study something else, I ended up doing a lot of work on combining materials with different indices and permittivities. We had the first papers which got a lot of attention and I continued interacting with him. He continued inviting me for the summers while I was in Italy, so I spent a few months every year working with him in Philadelphia, and we would interact a lot over the phone. At that time, there was no Zoom or other forms of connection. We used Skype, but it worked very well.
Finally, I started my Ph.D. in 2003, and I kept visiting him, working with him in parallel, and we had some good highlights. We had the first paper on cloaking using metamaterials in 2005. Then we continued interacting with lots of good ideas and discussions coming from that. After my Ph.D. was done, I decided based on his advice that there are many opportunities in the US to expand my interests and drive in this field. I decided to join him as a postdoc.
Finally, I was a member of his group in 2007-08. In 2009, I moved to Austin where I was a professor for nine years. In 2018, I moved to New York, where I got a great opportunity to start from scratch - a research center focused on the topic of nanoscience, and photonics. We have an impressive facility, and starting from being a pure theorist, it's nice to be in charge of a large team of motivated and brilliant scientists who do both theory and experiments. It's an exciting time - the center is going very well, with good publications, funding coming in, and recognition from the communities. I am happy with how things are going and how the transition from Philadelphia to New York has been going in the last ten years or so.
Did you always know you would pursue physics, or did you try different things first?
Yes, I didn't have it clear. I was not sold out to do only physics. I was mostly driven and curious about math from the early stages of my studies. If I had to choose only based on my interests from high school, I would have maybe gone to math. Not being that experienced in life, one follows advice from all the people.
My parents happened to live in a condo building in Rome where a professor of electrical engineering from Roma Tre lived as well. My parents connected me to him, and he strongly advised me that doing electrical engineering would open more doors. And he was right, it's a broad area of disciplines. They are all math and physics related, so there is an opportunity to learn a lot in the first two years and be able to choose the specialization as you go forward.
Typically, in Italy during the first 2 or 3 years you go through many things. You do fundamental courses, but then you sample applied things. The things that interested me the most, and which I think are fundamental to electrical engineering, are electromagnetics and information theory - communications or control. I liked these topics the most. Lucio Vegni, a professor in electromagnetics, was very engaging and adamant about working together from the first course. He involved me in research projects from my second year of college and brought me to conferences. It was convincing that this was the right path.
The strongly theoretical flavor of electromagnetics in Italy was a good fit for me. Well before metamaterials were a thing, in the second year of the electromagnetic field theory course, he would give us homework and exam problems in which he would deal with the tensor of permittivity, permeability, or bianisotropic media. Without much connection to reality, he'd ask us how the waves propagate in these media. Before I even knew these things could be built, I was wondering why we were studying these types of strange mathematical constructs. But it did appear to me as an interesting puzzle, kind of a mathematical problem.
That's one of the things that generally attracts my interest. The beautiful thing is that later on in my career, I could make this a reality. Now we know how to build some of these strange materials and how to connect these mathematical constructs with reality. That's actually what I've been doing all these years in the field of Metamaterials. Asking 'What if I had this material' question. Then we can go into the lab and build and test these ideas in experiments to some extent.
The Italian professor exposed you to tensor math as part of teaching students to think outside the conventional ways. Years later the dots connected. Are there any other life events, mentors, or friends that significantly influenced your direction in life?
I mentioned Nader Engheta. He was certainly a great mentor, and Lucio Vegni during the first year of my undergrad. He was also my Ph.D. advisor later on. Certainly, they had a great influence on my life. Also many random turns of events. I think everyone has these stories - if there were Ph.D. programs available at the time I graduated from college, I would not have pursued the adventure of going to the US and connecting with Nader Engheta.
Another strange set of events - during the second year of waiting for a Ph.D. program, I was interested in doing a Ph.D. at La Sapienza University in Rome. Also that for some random reason didn't work out and helped me stay more in touch with Nader Engheta and continue interactions with him. Even being here in New York is a little bit random. For nine years I was very happy in Austin.
It's a top engineering school and I didn't have any reason to move to a place with no lab, infrastructure, or colleagues. But a great former colleague and collaborator from Austin who is in New York insisted that I check out this place and the opportunity. I was quite resistant because I didn't have any real reason to leave Austin. But then I followed his convincing arguments about checking the place out.
When I came, I was amazed by the opportunity - how much space there was, the beautiful building, and the resources to build this up from scratch. And also the freedom of choosing what equipment and structure was available. At some point, I changed my mind and decided this was the right timing and occasion to get a fresh start in my career. I'm very glad that worked out as it did.
What does it mean to be successful in life for you?
I don't know if I'm successful, but what I enjoy in my life is that throughout, I've been able to do what I like. Get to solve puzzles, still even now, as I liked to do when I was a kid. But especially in the US, at least in my experience, you get the opportunity to do it from childhood. They give you resources and trust, and they are happy about the outcomes. But there is no pressure about delivering certain things or short-term vision.
So I'm very happy to be in a position where I can choose what to explore. I can have fun, learning from collaborators, the students, postdocs to join us. I like that we are recognized. Even in New York, almost every week I get visits from colleagues that go by through New York and want to visit us and discuss the science, see what we have in this lab.
I feel that from the scientific point of view, it has been a success. It's a great position that has come out over the years. As in life, of course, success is not just working. I am happy to have a supportive family and we have been happy with the move to New York. We like to live in this area. I see my family doing well, all of this is also a great success for me.
What do you consider the biggest lessons in your life? When things didn't go the way you wanted.
My feeling is that academia has been changing quite a lot. When I was a student or postdoc, there was less immediate pressure about publishing or getting into this journal versus that journal. Getting enough citations, metrics, etc. I feel that nowadays I have a large group with many great students and postdocs very successful at many things.
But some of them are bugged by: "How do I get this number of citations? How do I get this paper published here and not there?" My advice continues to be that you should not necessarily be just aiming at these numbers... My feeling is that good science gets recognized. That's my experience over the years. One way or another.
Because going with this type of metric tends to force you to explore certain things that are already evolved, or popular. Especially when someone is starting a postdoc or a Ph.D., the horizon is quite far away. It's three, four, five years ahead. And things go in a cycle. Whatever is hot and popular now may not be the thing that universities or companies are looking for after a few years.
The best is to do things one is excited about. The advantage of doing research in academia is that you can study what you are excited about, and be driven by curiosity, and passion rather than by having a short-term goal: "In six months, I need to have this experiment done and demonstrate this or the other thing".
That flexibility should be something to thrive in, not wasted on pressure or pushes coming from the environment. I don't give this pressure to my group. I try to avoid it completely. But I see it's growing. I tend to attract many driven individuals who want to be successful, especially in academia. They see our former group members have been going to good schools and they're doing well, but at the same time, there is no guarantee that this works for everyone.
The good thing about this field and the academic world is that we can follow our passion and our curiosity. My life lesson is that in general, I've been doing this over and over. Sometimes I get asked: "Do you want this large amount of funding and get involved in this project?" But if it's not something I'm excited about or want to pursue, the funding is not necessarily the goal.
The goal is to discover new things and demonstrate things that are maybe just a curiosity at the beginning. So if it's something that interests me, yes, I'm happy to be involved including the help of my group of collaborators. But the goal shouldn't be the metrics.
In some sense it's a natural progression that the mainstream focuses on performance, delivering, developing, and meeting deadlines. It's bringing a lot of stress to students and postdocs generally. In the end, the venues where you publish, how many papers you publish, and how much funding you acquire are metrics you're measured against when trying to advance your academic career. Isn't it?
At least in the US, and I don't know about other countries, but what I keep preaching to my group is that when applying for a faculty job, my experience over the years is that hiring is very holistic. We do not look at the number of citations or other numbers. And if we do, it comes only after many other things. What I keep telling my group is that the fundamental key to success is that you have a story to tell.
That you can convince the recruiting committee you are very good and have a valuable idea of where you want to go. You have done 1, 2, 3, or 4 groundbreaking discoveries and you have a vision forward. They don't even necessarily want to bet on one thing that you have already done, but they want to invest in the person. They want to count on the fact that you will do many more exciting things you haven't even started.
I have a good anecdote about this - a couple of years ago, we were recruiting one of our faculty that is now here. We had over 200 applicants and shortlisted ten. We did the Skype interviews and selected three for the on-site interview. I was having lunch with a colleague from another university. I was discussing them with him on their selection. Who were we considering and what topics or fields we were looking at, because the call was in photonics.
The first thing he asked is, what is their H-index? We have gone through all these rounds of interviews and I had no idea. No one in the committee had asked and no one had looked at what the H-index of these three finalists was. So it didn't play any factor in the decision. We were going for people that would be a valuable addition to what we already have here.
In Austin, it was the same. I know that other communities and other countries have much different approaches. Sometimes they look only for numbers. In the US, I see it a lot less. At least for now. I don't know if that will change, but I feel it's a healthier way of hiring. It is based on looking at the person. Reading even one paper and if it's an amazing paper, I don't care that you don't have another hundred behind you.
But if there is an amazing thing you have done, that fits with what we need, that's enough. I've seen people in Austin being hired with one paper published. Yet it was a groundbreaking paper, the reference letters were from very strong people saying this guy is the next big thing and you want to hire him. That's much more valuable than having ten extra papers that don't fit in.
It's admirable that you apply this way of hiring in your group, but there is a committee. So it's not just you and the people in your group who are deciding. This means that this approach to hiring is faculty-wide.
It is applied here in CUNY, which is a complicated structure. A federation of 23 universities that are across New York City. We are a very tiny campus. We have only 20 faculty in our center but there are 22 other bigger campuses around us. Given the visibility of our center in terms of research, when we hire, it's not just me choosing. It's a committee that comes from different campuses of CUNY. We want to hire someone who can be beneficial for CUNY at large, not just for our center.
By the way, CUNY is not necessarily known as a top research institution, even if they have brilliant people around all the campuses. But Austin, which is recognized as a top engineering school, also had a very similar type of approach to hiring. You may look at some of these numbers, but typically the committee was very holistic.
If we want to interview someone, we would want to read their top 5 papers before we even start discussing. There was always a champion for the person we were discussing who would read the papers and describe why this person would be an asset. And that plays a much bigger role than any number you may have.
In the Netherlands, they started spearheading the way the academic hiring processes should be going. And that's exactly what they're doing, switching to a more narrative process - that the story is the most important because the committee is composed of people who are mostly not in your field. So it's more about the story and the person. But it sounds like in the States it's already a common thing. Or would you say it's not as common and you happened to be in the right places?
My experience is that that's the case. I don't know if it's true in every school and discipline. But especially in engineering-oriented disciplines, with hiring, I feel that the raw numbers are not important at all. Even in grant funding, they do not ask what is your H-index. What is your number of citations? They want to read a good proposal. They want to understand what you are going to do with the money.
When I served in review panels no one discussed what the past production was. Of course, it is a factor, because if you are well-known in the community, that's great. It's a positive thing. But if you write a bad proposal, it's not going to be funded.
Another anecdote I can tell - especially more senior postdocs feel the pressure of getting higher metrics in Google Scholar. This year I want to write two review papers because they bring hundreds of citations which will help me get to the next level. I'm not against writing review papers, it's a good exercise to enter a new field and understand what has been done. If you write review papers and get thousands of citations because of them, going to an interview, what do you say? What have you done, what are you going to do next? Are you going to keep writing review papers?
As I said, a huge factor in being hired is the final interview where you have to give a one-hour presentation to the broad faculty and get them all excited. If you get to that stage, the people in your field are already excited because they selected you. But you need to make sure that everyone else in the department or school gets excited too. And you cannot tell them - I've studied this field and written a review. It is completely irrelevant.
It's a lot more important to have a key, cool result that you have championed and driven forward than having high citation numbers. In that presentation you don't list your Google Scholar statistics, no one will care about that. That's my experience in being in a large electrical engineering department for many years. There are fields in the department that don't even submit journal papers. They only submit conference papers and have very different metrics compared to what we're used to in the field of optics, and electromagnetics.
You cannot even impress them by saying, I published two papers in Science. They don't even know what Science is, almost. It's much more important you can tell a cohesive story of your career to date and show what you did, what no one thought about before. And now joining your department and working with you, I'm going to get into a new, exciting step in my career, and demonstrate another great thing. In my opinion, that's how one should strategize for Ph.D. studies and postdoc as one is getting more mature.
Are you spiritual in any way? If not, what are your life's bigger-picture beliefs?
I'm a Roman Catholic as are many Italians. I grew up in Rome, close to the Vatican. I've even played for the Vatican basketball team. I'm religious in that sense, I don't have any more specialized beliefs. Also in the US, there is a good community of Catholics, especially on the East Coast with many Italian-Americans in the area. Sometimes there are stronger traditions than even in Rome, it's kind of rooted in the culture.
It feels to be more of a choice and cultural thing here in the US. In Italy, essentially almost everyone has a similar background. Here instead, of course, there are many different religions and cultures, and I try to instill this in my son. It's a good culture and tradition, in my opinion.
What does the balance between work, family, friends, or hobbies mean for you?
I work a lot because I love it. I like the thrill of science. It's a competitive environment in which many smart people are thinking about similar problems. At the same time, I have a family, my wife is very supportive and she also has an academic job. These days, I'm alone at home. My wife is at a conference. Typically she takes care of the activities of my son after school. So I have to plan more to keep the timings and pick up and drop off at various other activities.
At the same time, we try to have a good balance and make sure that we're not forgetting that we are a family. The most important thing is having a balanced and successful life on all fronts. We spend time with our families in Europe during the summer and during the winter break. We are lucky in the sense that our jobs allow us to continue in different locations and travel, which helps to keep the connections to our cultures.
It's obvious why you went to the States - at the time it seemed like one of the few options you had in a way. I did an interview previously with Andrea Neto, who is in the Netherlands. He said the Italian funding system is rather generous - when you get funding, you can also do whatever you want. There is trust. Did you ever consider going back to Italy?
To clarify, I had the opportunity to stay in Italy. The support from my undergraduate advisor and then Ph.D. advisor, Lucio Vegni was very strong. I could have stayed in Italy, in Rome, and waited for a Ph.D. in Roma Tre, or explored other Ph.D.s in different schools. It was simply a turn of events - because the Ph.D. was not available, I decided to apply for quite a prestigious award given out once per year. It was full funding for a whole year to go wherever you want with no strings attached.
When I got it, despite the ties with Italy, my family, girlfriend at the time, it was not necessarily an easy choice, but I thought it was an amazing opportunity to take advantage of. Maybe I wouldn't have done it if there was a Ph.D. opening but I was not forced to leave.
I had many opportunities to stay after my Ph.D. degree as a faculty or a senior researcher in Italy as well. Right now, I don't think at this stage I would consider going back because the center I'm in now finally reached a steady state after five years, which is pretty amazing in terms of opportunities. I can see a lot of scientific breakthroughs coming out of this. We have amazing facilities, and a lot of support from CUNY, from the US government, and foundations also based in New York.
I don't think it would be easy to transition this to another environment in Italy or somewhere else. At some point, I spent a sabbatical year in Holland, in Amsterdam in 2015. I had a beautiful year with many great colleagues in AMOLF and I still collaborate with many of them. I had the opportunity to stay there and move to Holland.
My wife is Dutch, so there was also a family link. But when I started exploring what the environment or the opportunities would be, it would have been very difficult to get this level of support for curiosity-driven, basic research. I think the US is particularly good to keep going with this type of profile and research. Also in terms of inertia, right now I have many connections, know how the system works, and know whom to ask if the money runs out. Going to a different system wouldn't be straightforward. I would love to be closer to my family and friends, but it may not be realistic at the moment, at least in the near or mid-term future.
At the same time, I do think Italy is doing great. I ended up recruiting a lot of Italians - my group is full of great junior scientists who want to join as Ph.D.s, postdocs, and are very active. Education is fantastic. I feel that the background they get in Europe is great. The system there seems to be doing excellent. Yes, resources are more limited, but the education is amazing. The research also - there are many great research groups. I have many collaborators there doing excellent work with the resources they have.
Last summer I visited the La Sapienza group of Claudio Conti and other groups in physics and engineering. I was very impressed by the level of science they carry out. Maybe some of the equipment is a little bit outdated than what we have here. Of course, this is a new center so everything is new. There are a lot of great people, which is true all over Europe. In Amsterdam, there is a great community and many other communities across Europe that are doing very well.
Western Europe has the highest quality education. For example, I've studied in the Czech Republic and I can tell you that in the former Soviet countries, education is more application-oriented.
For me, it's more difficult to recruit domestic US students. The background in terms of education at the college level in electromagnetics or optics is often not the most appealing to the brightest students. That's maybe a difference compared to Europe. To give an example, my former electrical engineering department in Austin has essentially no faculty that is hardcore electromagnetics at the moment. It is surprising that out of the 70+ body of people teaching all disciplines of electrical engineering, no one is teaching electromagnetics (EM). They do have courses in EM taught by people with expertise in acoustics or optics.
This is an indication why for the type of research I do, I prefer to get someone from Europe. With five years of strong preparation and courses relevant to electromagnetics. Or China, which is growing tremendously in this field. Today, I think because of financial reasons, people here are attracted to other types of disciplines like AI, machine learning, and software engineering.
What are the essential skills for a fruitful career as a researcher?
My best advice is to follow your interests and passion more than anything. The curiosity-driven research is helping the most in driving the field forward and also to be successful.
At the same time, there's more to an academic career besides being able to follow your passion and curiosity, isn't it?
It's hard to tell. I guess it depends on the field of study. I have colleagues and good friends in different fields - from biology to math or more theoretical research and I see that we all have very different jobs. Maybe the common theme is being able to push the envelope, not only follow what others are doing. I believe that's one danger of being a scientist - sometimes we merely try to build incremental steps based on other discoveries.
Oftentimes, if we can follow ideas that may be a bit out of the general trend, my experience has been that over time they're appreciated and picked up. It's a good way of building a name and reputation. Some time ago I was visiting the American Physical Society. It was interesting because they brought up the list of papers we wrote. Not necessarily the most visible ones but also those published in regular journals like Physical Review Journals - PRB, PRE, or PRA.
It was an interesting exercise to see a posteriori they keep track of the citations and interest these papers have raised. At least for me, sometimes it would be hard to tell which papers became the top ten. At least from the point of view of the editors. I see a lot of our work as solving puzzles in some ways and addressing questions. Sometimes they are difficult to control, become interesting to the community, and get traction for future research.
Seems the impact a paper can have is not necessarily connected to in which journal it's published.
I feel this is true in general. Many people say the avenue is not as important as citations. I was referring more to the fact that oftentimes it's hard to tell if a paper will be successful or not at the time of submission. But yeah, that's also true. At the same time, it's important to stress that it's important for young scientists, especially at this point, to publish in the right avenues to get publicity. It's as important as doing very good science.
In the long run, good science typically pays off, despite being published in a journal that is not as visible as another. However, given the short-term nature of the faculty jobs application cycle and the competition, getting papers in a good journal becomes increasingly important. It was not the case when I was a student and postdoc as much as it is now.
So for early-stage researchers, it's more important where they publish. Once you are already established, you are more free to choose where you publish.
That's certainly true, I would not say you shouldn't publish in journals that are not flashy, glamorous ones. I encourage my students and postdocs to publish longer papers with more substance. Rather than only going for the flashy short papers. I believe that also has a big value when you apply for jobs. If you have a good combination - not just the surface, but also some depth.
Sometimes, well-established people have the flexibility of saying - I'm not in this game anymore, I don't want to fight for months to get the paper in this or other journal. I only submit all my papers to journals that just look at the technical content, which are not after the claims of groundbreaking advances, or other types of breakthroughs.
But at the same time, it's not feasible in the context of the group members. They typically need the visibility more than the established scientists who'd already made it. For me, it doesn't make a big difference if a paper is in one journal or another. The group needs to get into visible avenues where our work is highlighted in the short term if the research is good.
You've achieved pretty much everything one can strive for in the academic world - tens of awards, your lab, research group. For most people in academia, to get where you are is a very long-term goal. You're relatively young and you already achieved all the goals. What keeps you going?
Thank you, first of all. Yeah, you're right. There is neither a financial incentive nor a professional reason to work very hard. I have a tenured position and my salary is not linked to any achievement. I don't get bonuses for the extra papers or awards. Mostly I love the job, I'm passionate about driving the field and answering questions that are in the back of my mind.
I'm very lucky to have a great group of talented upcoming scientists. I love working with them and do more than I would on my own. Especially given the time is also limited. During the past year, I have been lucky to establish a dream and comprehensive experimental lab. I don't have much experience in doing experiments or running experimental projects. So having the opportunity to work with very talented young scientists, students, and postdocs who can help drive some of the ideas into practice is very exciting. I
am always thrilled when I see a new experiment that demonstrates some of the ideas or concepts we've been pursuing. I don't keep working hard because of financial or professional reasons. It's the curiosity and exciting possibility to work in this community. To push forward the ideas and technologies that come out of them.
It seems for you the main motivator is advancing the knowledge in your field and seeing how far it can go.
Even just for myself, by the way. Oftentimes I'm genuinely curious about how things work. And the possibility to understand it and work with other colleagues to figure things out. Sometimes it feels like these are puzzles that are posed to us and it's exciting to be able to address them.
I would guess that at this stage, creativity is quite important in your work. Is it?
Absolutely, I think in all fields of research. That's the one thing we sometimes face difficulties in. It's not straightforward to drive a project to completion. Often when discussing with the students and postdocs, especially the junior ones who want to join the group, they sometimes have the idea that it is straightforward.
I had a conversation with an incoming student. At the first meeting, he already planned on writing six Nature or Science papers by the end of his Ph.D. As if it's a norm or expected. I told him there was no reason to expect that you would publish any paper.
There is a lot of uncertainty in anything we do. Typically it's my job to give you the collection of problems, some may be more low-hanging than others. So you have a good chance to get something done. But there are always difficulties, that is the spirit of doing research. Creativity from my side, but also from the people in the group is extremely important. It can be creativity in coming up with an idea, or a question, and addressing how to solve problems.
Creativity in running better simulations or models to match reality and creativity in doing the experiment. To get to a result is never straightforward and we always have to come up with new ways to fix challenges. I would say creativity and motivation are the most important qualities that are needed to succeed in research.
I would maybe add resilience because as you said, there's a lot of uncertainty in what you're doing. One needs that tenacity to keep going and trying.
At the very beginning, yes. This comes from passion and willingness to put the work in and the understanding that it's not something given. There are uncertainties, things you cannot control that may delay everything. We are lucky that we can follow our curiosity. In industry that's not necessarily the case. But it's also a job that requires motivation and persistence in making it work.
I've noticed you also cooperate with companies in the industry. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Especially in the past few years, our group has been funded by a variety of sources. Most are government funding. Some come from private foundations and particularly Simons Foundation has been very generous with us in the last years. There is a healthy amount of funding from the industry, and we have good partners interested in our ideas and translating them into technologies.
When we get a project, typically we work closely with the technical team. And if they contributed to the results, we offer them to be added to a paper author list. Although they don't necessarily want to be added as authors, which I find interesting. In Austin, we had a project with a company I will not name.
This project faced a lot of difficulties in getting things to work, mostly because typically, company projects tend to be applied. Also, a proof of concept is not necessarily the goal. You want something that works and meets metrics of performance that may be quite stringent. We spent several weeks, if not months trying to fix things and make sure we met the requirements.
Once the technical team we were working with flew into our lab, we showed them what we were struggling with. They just touched the experiment and they knew exactly what should be done, based on practical intuition. This was for antenna problems with pieces of metal flowing around and it was amazing to see how the practical experience of senior technical people would fix a problem that we couldn't figure out for months. In 30 seconds they fixed what needed to be fixed and we were very happy because the result was improved a lot, also for a paper.
Since they fixed our problem, I thought that contribution was strong enough to be added to the list of authors of our paper. However, they insisted not to be authors because company dynamics are different from academia. They do not get much benefit from being authors. They said sometimes this may reveal to competitors what you are interested in doing. It may bring unwanted attention. As academics we need to publish, we cannot accept projects in which we are not allowed to publish. So the agreement was that we would publish, but they didn't want to be part of the paper.
In other cases, instead, there is interest in publishing. We are starting a larger collaboration with another company and the technical team we will work with stress from the beginning they come from academia and are interested in being involved in the publication aspects as well. So as we start the project, they would love to be involved in the technical aspects so they can co-author with us. It depends on the culture of a company and I think it's healthy. It's good for us to get more in touch with reality because sometimes, especially the basic research funding agencies allow you to do things that may be far from the real problems.
Also, the students are very happy to interact with technology and do internships in these companies, to acquire more knowledge. Sometimes they even get hired after the projects. That's one of the goals of the company itself. My group specifically tends to have more people attracted to academia than industry. But in the last few years, we have had an outflux of group members going to companies as well.
How so? Since you say most of them are interested in academia.
The type of publications and research we do in my group tends to attract people driven by basic research and curiosity-driven aspects. Typically it's rare I would recruit someone who has a plan to go to the industry. I have many collaborators in my and other groups around us where a whole group of students and postdocs ends up in industry. That's the norm in other groups. At the same time, recently I've seen a trend of people leaving academia for industry - the last two graduating Ph.D. students both went to industry, to the Silicon Valley area.
And then we had a postdoc that just left, also for a company on the West Coast. I think it's a two-faced problem. One is that companies tend to pay a lot better than academia. For instance, one of the students who graduated was a very talented prospective professor in my opinion. I even offered him a faculty position in our center.
I thought he would be brilliant. He would have loved to do it, but he said he already had a family with two kids to provide for. He said three times the salary difference was a sufficient argument to move. I'm still in touch and talking to them. Sometimes they miss the aspects of academia, but at the same time, it's a better fit for family situations.
Also, the postdoc who left last week was debating the differences between industry and academia. But again, having recently married, the wife wanted to settle. Due to the fact that there is so much uncertainty as a postdoc - where you will be in a year or two, the wife was pushing to have a permanent location where she could find a job because they had moved from abroad. There is also the issue that companies started to be more interested in our research. Now there is a huge interest in metasurfaces from companies and the RF millimeter wave aspects are very big. I see there is a lot of demand and also for other groups in this area.
Often I hear stories of the students not even finishing a Ph.D. because they get recruited out by companies that can be very aggressive with their offers. It's a momentum that is good. It means that the field is thriving, but sometimes it means that the planning is not easy. In general, I want the best for every one of my group members. I encourage them with whatever feels to be the best choice, be supportive and I try to help them get the best possible outcome for their career.
It's true also in David Smith's group. He started the metamaterials commercialization center and has a lot of collaboration with Intellectual Ventures, which spun off multiple startups. Definitely, metamaterials as a field has ripened. Which is a good thing. But obviously, the flip side is that people tend to flock to industry. Do you have goals that once reached, you will move on to something different? Or is it more a continual flow of interest in the field and developing it further?
My research interests are quite broad, so I have several things I would like to push forward in parallel. Having a large group is a good thing because I can see things evolving faster than what I could do on my own. I don't have a goal that ends at a certain point. My experience is that every time you continue to investigate a problem, ten more exciting problems come up pointing to new directions. It's more of a continuous flow. So far, the field is surprisingly rich.
Recently I was interviewed by a journalist about a paper we recently published and he was asking how come there is so much excitement around the waves, such an old problem. Maxwell's equations are over 150 years old. Is it something quantum or a new angle to electromagnetic waves? Because the specific problem of this paper is a completely classical one, there is not much of a technological breakthrough. It is an idea that works and no one has done before.
It is surprising how much can be done and still needs to be done even in areas of classical wave physics. It's also true that with the new technologies, and the progress in the fabrication of quantum materials, the horizon is even bigger and more exciting. I also enjoy working with companies, I have been involved in a couple of them directly as a CTO of a startup and also as a strategic advisor to a larger company. I consult with other companies when useful, which is something I enjoy.
It's not necessarily a goal for me. My main priority is curiosity-driven research. But the fact that I can also help companies be successful on a practical level and commercialize some of these ideas is something that makes me feel our work has practical use in the shorter term.
How do you see the landscape of metamaterials evolving in the next decade or two? What are the major goals to achieve?
I think that metasurfaces are still lacking, and I think the next big thing is reconfigurability and active responses. That's probably the next big breakthrough in this area that will make it more mainstream. The angle of time is something into which we're investing a lot of energy in my group and generally in the community, adding reconfigurability.
This can go from wireless communications to optical frequencies. That's my bet. The other one I think is very exciting and promising is the idea of using metasurface concepts for special, less mainstream materials - for photonics.
Phononic materials and excitons are very popular, magnons, or generally polaritonic responses combined with photonic engineering. That's an aspect in which we're investing quite a lot of energy and resources.
Journals are central to spreading the research results. The publishing system itself has not changed much besides digitization and everything speeding up thanks to the Internet. Are there any changes you would like to see in the current publishing system?
An aspect I find interesting is that I'd say it's difficult to define what the current publishing system is. This world has been evolving so fast it's hard to tell what will happen next. Sometimes it seems like we are in a bubble in many ways. There are so many things being readjusted and the numbers are growing, so hopefully we will settle into a new equilibrium at some point.
When I was a student or postdoc, it was a lot easier to find the material one wants to read. You publish in your community journals and everything is a bit less stressed. Now, between predatory journals and conferences, the race for citations, impact factors, and the geopolitical challenges within countries that create their journals and want their scientists to publish in them, it's hard for me to predict what will happen next and where to put our bets. I like to publish in reputable journals and professional society journals.
At this point, it's impossible for me to even respond to requests for review from lower-tier journals, or requests to write papers or contribute to special issues. It's a continuous race to grow numbers for everyone. It's an interesting moment in time. There is also an issue of recognition for the work we do. There is a lot of volunteer work we do - editing, reviewing, writing. It's all subsidized by the government at the moment.
I don't know what will be the future of this world. At the same time, I also see many good players that are interested in benefiting science. I try to put my energy towards working with people that have an interest in this. Not in profits, or personal interests, but in facilitating science and promoting the next generation of scientists.
Seems you strongly perceive the disproportion between the amount of papers published and those you're interested in.
That's one aspect. I don't know what the solution is. I think generally it's good we have more people doing science and interested in producing scientific results. For society, it is healthy to invest in science, have more research funding, and research groups that produce good science. It's not just about the discoveries. It's also about education and building the next generation of our society that understands the problems at stake and can think. That's a big part of why we get the research funding.
It is not meant to only create a new technology. It's about educating the next generation of scientists, as a university. Recently I fell for one of the scams for a conference. It looked legitimate and we receive so many emails that are clearly predatory and you delete probably ten a day. This one was done better and they had listed the people I know are good. The conference was in Boston with a good offer of waiving the trip and registration costs. Then I got many emails from colleagues saying you are now listed as a speaker here, are you sure this is a good conference? Then I realized it's not black and white anymore.
There is a gradual range of being predatory, both in conferences and journals. The obvious ones are unbelievably bad and I assume these conferences don't even take place. But there are also existing conferences, to which we have all been, that try to increase the number of talks, invited people, etc. The overall goal is to increase the profits of whoever is organizing the event and charge large registration fees while offering minimum support.
For journals it is the same - there are amazing ones, scammy ones, but also gray area journals with a clear goal to publish for the sake of charging authors publication fees. I'm not complaining, I think we have many tools at hand. I like Google Scholar, for instance. I get alerts on many things from authors and topics, and I feel I'm up to date.
I am more interested in where this is going in terms of open access, the charges we are paying to publish, and companies that publish for the sake of maximizing profit. Using much of the resources coming from the taxpayer's money.
They even charge the taxpayers twice. First when the researchers pay for the publication and second for the access.
I'm not a big proponent of this Plan S. I know in Europe it's a big deal, but to me, that problem is easily solved through the fact that most journals allow you to publish some version of your papers on ArXiv. To be honest, I doubt an average taxpayer cares about reading the journals. I agree it's a wrong idea.
At the same time, in Nature journals, the editors do a lot of work to improve papers, and in my opinion, it's good work. I also like the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, IEEE, and AAAS... these are all great professional societies, profit or non-profit. It is true there is a dichotomy that we review for free, edit for free, we write papers for free somehow. Of course, all of this is subsidized by the money we get from the government for our salaries. One could argue that the taxpayers are eventually supporting all of this.
Should we impose limits on how much publishing houses can charge or at least profit from these activities? These are difficult questions and I don't think there is an easy solution to these problems. I'm curious to see where this goes. People propose to remove peer review completely, and I think peer review addresses a need. I wouldn't necessarily be drastic about this, but at the same time, yes, the slope of changes is so high and it seems like at some point we have to reach an equilibrium in one way or another.
The peer review is quite a useful tool. Professors take the editor positions and this function has turned into a virtue, where one does work for the community. At the same time, professors have so much on their plate all the time. I believe a skilled manager with a critical amount of knowledge can do as good a job as an editor can. This way professors can save time and focus on others from the plenty of tasks.
Absolutely. My comment is that we are a great community. I feel that in general, we're very lucky to work in the scientific community. There is a general goal of benefiting society with our work. The community is friendly and tries to share from what I can tell. Of course, there are always bad players, but it's a very nice environment.
At least my experience has been very fruitful so far. I have to say that sometimes, working with companies, I don't have the same feeling. The companies can be very aggressive on the IP, on sharing, or taking and not giving. Being used to the way we work in academia, I don't regret being here. In general, my experience has been that companies can be more cutthroat.
In your research group, a good number of papers is published in ArXiv. Why is that?
It's not necessarily my responsibility. While I'm asked by my students and postdocs about this a lot, I leave it completely up to the lead author of a paper. Some group members are eager to publish on ArXiv, others less so. When I discuss it with the younger group members, I feel there are pros and cons.
Those applying for faculty jobs, or competing for awards may want to publish on ArXiv, so they can list their paper on a CV. Those are probably the papers you see on ArXiv. In general, we don't have a policy that every paper goes to ArXiv. Sometimes I've noticed that when they see a competing paper appearing on ArXiv, they want to publish it too, while the paper has been in review for some time already.
I do not have a preference. I leave it completely up to what they want to do, as it's their work eventually. They put a lot of energy into it.
Some say that the next step in improving the editorial process would be to start paying the reviewers. What do you think about that?
I've discussed this and it's an interesting idea. Maybe there is a merit to this. I've discussed it with the editorial houses and they believe it would be unmanageable. There are so many reviewers that the money they would be able to pay is so little it's practically irrelevant.
There are also other more complex problems - if there is a financial incentive in doing a review, you may bias the system in some way. Then you would have to rate how good the review is because someone could just send in one line. I'm not sure. There are so many problems that I can understand. It's a complicated idea to put into practice. Some journals have started giving some rewards for the review.
For instance, they waive fees for future publications, if you do several reviews. Or they acknowledge the best reviewers of the year. I think these are very good activities. But the payment may not be realistic. I heard many negative opinions from the players at stake. Even if it's a popular opinion for the reviewers themselves and academics, who work on the reviews all the time. But I don't foresee this will come anytime soon.
Some accomplished researchers say that in today's productivity-oriented environment, they wouldn't be able to make the discoveries they have. Do you perceive this in any way?
I understand the comment and I believe it's right. To make groundbreaking discoveries you need the time to focus. One sometimes feels like being in a grinder with a constant flow of small things coming in and the pressure to do them. At the same time, sometimes groundbreaking ideas come serendipitously. I don't know if I would drop everything in the hope that, by sitting down and thinking, I get to it.
It is possible and certainly, many people have come to breakthroughs this way. I also wonder how many other people have not done breakthroughs or their breakthroughs are not as important. There is also a big factor of luck. I think that is not the recipe for everyone and I find these discussions a bit empty. I feel that as academics, we are spoiled. At least in the US, we have tenure, and all the freedom to drop everything and do our research. I feel privileged that I can work with a large group of great scientists.
And yes, I have less time for myself and a lot of requests for meetings from everyone who produces great results. Sometimes these meetings are a waste of time because the result is maybe not solid but having the chance to be pushing so many directions in parallel rather than doing it myself is great. Maybe the one direction I miss is an idea that I will never be able to pursue or only pursue when I retire or slow down.
But for now, I'm happy with how things are going. Seeing things moving fast and discussing ideas with a bright young scientist who takes it over, does the calculations, and discusses with me the next day is such a privilege. Because I could do it for one, but not for 40 ideas in parallel. The problem is that time is limited. I believe Higgs made this comment. One of the Nobel laureates.
It's also true that sometimes the type of stuff academics complain about are things that don't affect me directly. I'm in a very privileged position right now in which I'm not asked to do much administration or teaching. I can focus on research and mentoring of students and postdocs. I love the way my work is today. I cannot complain that my time is drained by many different things that are not science-related.
But sometimes I indeed wish to have a full day in which no one asks me anything and I can just do calculations. I do it sometimes, but it's rare. Most of the time, I prefer to respond to the group members and discuss their results. It's a tradeoff we all have to make in life - where we invest our time.
Photos are courtesy of Andrea Alu and CUNY ©
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