University of Oslo Science Library at night

I took some photos for the University of Oslo’s Science Library in December 2011. The library is in the process of consolidating eight separate science and math libraries into one large Science Library that will be moving into the newly-renovated Vilhelm Bjerknes’ building on the Blindern campus. I was asked to take some night photos outside the new building as well as to take some indoor photos on one of our inspection tours of the building. Here is one of my photos of the Science Library at night.

(update as of March 2012--this photo was used in an announcement for the official opening of the Science Library on March 12, 2012 that was published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten)

From pimp my ride to pimp my research

I attended another interesting event sponsored by the UiO Science library this morning, a lecture about how to ‘pimp’ your research, followed by a really interesting discussion about pimping of research in general—should it be pimped, how it should be done, and who should be responsible for pimping. The scientist who held the lecture and who guided the discussion afterwards was Gro Amdam, whom I’ve mentioned before in a previous post. Professor Amdam is a Norwegian scientist who runs two research labs, one at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Aas Norway, the other at Arizona State University in the USA. She is a honeybee researcher and a top scientist, with many publications in top international journals; you can read more about her labs, work, publications and view her journal covers here: http://amdamlab.asu.edu/. Some of the scientists I talked to about this event when I was promoting it a few weeks ago were a bit skeptical; perhaps mostly skeptical to the terminology—pimping. They weren’t sure what was meant by pimping research, and instead of being curious enough to find out more about it, they didn’t attend. They should have, because they missed a really good and professional presentation about the subject and an interesting discussion afterwards. Pimping is defined as ‘giving something a smarter or more interesting appearance’; some excellent examples in my opinion are Amdam's journal covers—beautiful photos of bees and flowers that add an important visual aspect to the research work that was published inside the specific issue. She emphasized that it was pimping the (high-quality) work that was important; this was not a talk about how to pimp the scientist. But the scientist can become well-known because of the quality of the work via good pimping—and that’s a good thing. It helps get research grants, funding, and international recognition.

There was a good deal of discussion about the cultural differences and approaches to pimping between the USA and Norway. In the USA, research pimping is an accepted and encouraged activity at universities; the idea is relatively new in Norway. Most of the Norwegian attendees were very positive to the idea, some were skeptical. But that’s the point of a good discussion—to get the ideas out there and to get people started talking about them.

What struck me afterwards was that the Science library (Realfagsbiblioteket) has done a fair amount of pimping in its own right. The beautiful and professionally-done trailers about the invited scientists who come to the library to hold lectures and workshops are a good example of the library (KBH and AC) pimping the work and careers of these scientists; these trailers have been uploaded to SlideShare if you are interested in seeing them: http://www.slideshare.net/Realfagsbiblioteket/presentations. 

The New Science and Math Library at the University of Oslo

The University of Oslo will be building a new, modern Science and Math library in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building. Renovations and construction will begin in the Vilhelm Bjerknes' building at the end of February / beginning of March. When the new library is completed in 2012, it will be actively used for debate and discussion about science and the importance of science to society. 

You can find the Library's Facebook page here--https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. 

There were some wonderfully interesting Arrangements at the Library during 2010--Bill Bryson, Marcus du Sautoy, Karen Lunsford, and Drew Endy held exciting lectures that had their audiences enthralled. There was a really interesting lecture by Ellen Henriksen followed by a panel debate about young women and why they don't choose careers in math and science. There were two important, exciting, and well-attended conferences--the BioConference 2010 with its Biodiversity theme, and the Bioinformatics Conference. There will be more Arrangements in 2011.  Follow the Facebook page during 2011 to stay up-to-date on all of the new and exciting Arrangements that the Library is planning! Stay tuned......


For those of you who cannot read Norwegian, you can become fans of the Facebook page anyway! Google Translate is a wonderful tool that I use a lot now to go back and forth between English and several languages. It will help you translate the site to English. The translations may be a little weird at times, but you'll get the gist of what is going on at the Library. It is a dynamic, forward-thinking, and future-focused library headed by women who are all these things and more. 

Bacteria bubble lamps, iGEM, and future visions

This past Tuesday the New Science and Math library at the University of Oslo (in collaboration with The Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board) welcomed Drew Endy from Stanford University and a team of students from Cambridge University. They were there to talk about synthetic biology—Drew Endy defined what it is and how he envisions its future uses. He also talked about its impact on society and the potential ethical and moral issues involved in its use. The students were there to present their iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine competition) project for 2010—an E.coli bubble lamp—essentially E.coli bacteria that have been genetically-modified to become a living bioluminescent ‘lamp’. You can see their ‘product’ here in this YouTube video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=tUFscEVK5Ks. There were four students and all of them wore T-shirts with the words ‘E. glowli’ written on them. They had their presentation before Drew’s lecture, and they held their audience captive for over thirty minutes with what they had to say. They envisioned a future where London was lit by such ‘living lamps’. But what struck me most of all about them was the (high) levels of enthusiasm and interest they had in science and in what they were doing. They believed in what they were doing. They were not fanatical; they just loved their work. You could tell they weren’t just doing it for the fame and glory, even though they have achieved some of that. Mostly they were just enjoying what they were doing and they weren’t afraid to impart that message. And as an audience, you could not help but be inspired by them. You couldn’t help but smile. These students are not jaded, cynical bureaucrats; they are already budding scientists and who knows what lies in store for them? Who knows how far they can go before a bureaucratic daily life confronts them and tries to slow them down? The danger is not that they get completely or immediately discouraged. The danger is that they get slowly discouraged—a gradual, slow, insidious process that leads to a loss of morale and enthusiasm over time. I don’t know what I have to do to prevent that from happening, but whatever it is I will do it. I will be a cheerleader for the other side—the side that says let students do science and let scientists do science. Science students deserve a chance to love science. They deserve a chance to come up with new ideas, test them out, compete with others, and to learn by trial and error. We had that chance in our generation. I still love science. I just don’t love the administrative infrastructure that has built itself up around the practice of science, which has led to scientific daily life being over-administrated by budgets and accountants and unnecessary amounts of paperwork.

All of the conferences and lectures I have been to at the New Science and Math library this autumn (and helped promote on their Facebook and Twitter pages—my consulting job this autumn) have helped to restore my love of and enthusiasm about science. You’ll find the New Science and Math library Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/realfagsbiblioteket. This autumn has rejuvenated my love for science in so many forms—synthetic, ecological, marine, and polar biology, math, physics; try and explain them to me in concrete, interesting and enthusiastic ways and you’ll find a willing listener and an enthusiastic supporter. And it was clear from the public attendance at these lectures that there were many others who felt the same way. But please don’t talk to us just about impact factors, making money, patents, innovations, which research group is the best and which group is the worst. Deliver us from small-minded, petty and envious principal investigators. Give me instead the principal investigators who think big even if they have small research groups (I know a few), who have visions, enthusiasm, and ideas about the future and who like their students and encourage them rather than being threatened by their intelligence. Drew Endy did not appear to be threatened by the iGEM students from Cambridge. He was proud of them. There was a good rapport between them. There is some really good science being done at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian University of Life Science at Aas and at other research and educational institutions in Norway. But its promotion has to come from the scientists themselves (not from bureaucrats), or from scientists who don’t want to do bench work anymore but who are willing to promote the cause of science in order to inspire future generations of science students, or from science librarians, or from a combination of all three groups. The combination idea seems to be gaining support, which is wonderful—real teamwork! Hopefully, science-interested parties at the University of Oslo will set the wheels in motion to build up a UiO iGEM team after having heard about how well the lecture and iGEM presentation went on Tuesday afternoon at the New Science and Math library. All I can say is—go for it! 

A love of libraries

My parents met in a library; my mother was an associate librarian working at the Brooklyn public library together with my father (he was head librarian). I grew up in a family that loved books and everything related to books and publications of all kinds. From the earliest days of childhood, we were taken to the local library (Warner Library in Tarrytown) by our parents and encouraged to find books of interest and to explore the library. I can remember watching children’s films at the library; I can also remember the feelings of being in the library. It was an interesting and peaceful place—serene. But I knew that it contained a wealth of knowledge, all of it at my fingertips. My father wrote his Master’s degree thesis about the history of the Warner Library; after he died my mother gave a copy of his thesis to the library so they would have it for historical/ research purposes. I read his thesis and it was quite interesting. I can see in my mind’s eye him sitting and writing the thesis, mulling over specific sections and trying to best formulate his thoughts. He moved into the world of atomic energy when he went to work for a nuclear energy company in Manhattan as their chief librarian. He always came home with some interesting stories about his day and we would sit at the dinner table and discuss them in detail. And when I decided to major in science in college, he would come home with different publications from his library about different technologies and research projects being done at some of the national laboratories around the USA, e.g. at Los Alamos, New Mexico. One of those publications had to do with the technique of flow cytometry and how it was developing at Los Alamos; the quirk of fate (and synchronicity) here is that it was the utilization of this technique in the flow cytometry core facility at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that became my job during the 1980s. And to make the story complete--in 1985 I attended an excellent flow cytometry course offered by the lab at Los Alamos. I got a chance to meet a lot of interesting people and to see a lot of New Mexico together with two of my colleagues, Haika and Bob, who attended the course with me.

My mother did not give in to old age. She kept herself active both physically and mentally. During her seventies she volunteered at the Warner Library up until she began to have dizzy spells. Working at the library was an activity she loved and I understand completely why she did so. It kept her involved with other people—both fellow librarians and the many different people who frequented the library. If I was visiting her during these years on my annual trips to New York, she was always proud to tell me that she had to go to work at the library for a few hours. It never bothered her that she was not paid for her work; that is how much she enjoyed being there.

Libraries are such interesting places; there are so many nooks to explore and aisles of books to wander down. I remember that about the Warner Library from my childhood. I bring up the topic of libraries because I have spent some time this autumn doing consultant work for the science and math library at the University of Oslo. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable and fun experience so far, and I am thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with the world of libraries and to otherwise connect with a dynamic and enthusiastic group of women who are an inspiration to me. I have helped promote the library’s extremely interesting lectures and conferences through the use of Facebook and Twitter. One thing is certain--libraries now are quite different places than the ones I remember from my youth; they are digital media educational institutions and it is fascinating and fun to experience them as they are now. 

Marcus du Sautoy and the Public Understanding of Science

I had the pleasure of listening to Oxford University mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy talk about Symmetry this past Monday at the University of Oslo. The lecture was entitled Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle. The event was co-sponsored by the New Science Library (Det nye realfagsbiblioteket) and the Freedom of Expression foundation (Fritt Ord). The library building (Vilhelm Bjerknes house) will undergo extensive renovations starting in 2011, supported in part by the Freedom of Expression foundation. When the building renovations are finished in 2012, the library will be used as a center for seminars and debates about science and its role in society. Professor du Sautoy was invited to give a talk because he is also a professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and the library is interested in focusing on this aspect for the future. After listening to du Sautoy talk on Monday, I can understand why. Here is a man who can talk about mathematics in a dynamic way, in a way that captivates an audience while at the same time educating them. This is no mean feat. He is smart, clever, good at what he does, but more importantly, he can talk to people outside his profession and get them interested in his work and in mathematics. He has done this by writing best-selling books, hosting TV and radio programs in Britain, holding lectures internationally and so forth.

During his lecture on Monday, he spent a good deal of time talking about the symmetry found in the mosaic tiles of the Alhambra, a building in Granada Spain designed by Moorish architects. He also talked about M.C. Escher, whose art fascinated many of us when we were younger. He was the artist who drew staircases in space that merged into other staircases and it was impossible to know where one started and the other ended http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/back-bmp/LW389.jpg. What I didn’t know was that Escher has done an entire gallery of symmetry drawings as well http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/gallery-symmetry.htm, and that he was fascinated by the Alhambra. So I can thank Professor du Sautoy for this new bit of knowledge. Overall it was a very interesting lecture, and it struck me while he was talking that he did not have to hold an actual talk about the ‘public understanding of science/mathematics’ in order to impart an understanding of his field. His subject was complex, and this was clear to the audience, but his presentation was not obscure or unintelligible. His talk imparted a general understanding of the complex mathematics underlying symmetry (the number riddles involved—hence the name of the lecture, Symmetry: Reality’s Riddle) in a way that was fun, exciting and challenging. The other thing that struck me was that the audience had a lot of questions for him after his lecture, and that is the sign of a good lecture. People were not afraid to ask questions or to share their own experiences and thoughts, and that simply means that he inspired his audience rather than driving them away. I found myself remembering my calculus professor from my freshman year in college. He was such a poor teacher, even though he probably had a good grasp of his subject. He simply could not communicate his knowledge to his students, and the majority of students failed his class. That did not seem to matter to him. I stuck it out for the full year, but never took a math class again after that. I hit the wall somewhere around ‘integration by partial fractions’ which he could not intelligibly explain to us to save his life. But in high school, I really enjoyed all my math classes, and that was due in no small part to Ms. Moloney, our math teacher, who could explain what needed to be explained in an understandable and fun way. That made all the difference. Good teachers who know how to communicate their knowledge and who do so in interesting and motivating ways are the key to attracting students into math and science professions. Professor du Sautoy is one of them.