Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Convocation at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study….

Krasnow’s convocation was yesterday. We celebrated our new PhD graduates with their families. This was one of those wonderful occasions when the years of hard work, often uncertain, and fraught with risk, come into full fruition.

 The setting is the Institute’s beautiful great room with its backdrop of modern art and tulip poplar trees…and yes, that’s me in the academic regalia behind the lectern.

Earlier in the day, the entire University came together for commencement. The Patriot Center was a sea of green, my colleagues were resplendent in their dean’s regalia and our dynamic new President presided over the awarding of thousands of new degrees.

So now, it’s on to summer! I’m off to New Mexico tomorrow for a series of meetings at Sandia National Laboratory. On the way to the airport, I’ll stop off at the National Science Foundation for a morning orientation meeting–I’m beginning a three year term on the SBE Advisory Committee.

I hope to post along the way….

The Closing of academic years and the promise of Summer….

As another year draws to a close, I’ll be spending this weekend grading final exams. A week from tomorrow is commencement and with it, both the end of another academic year, but also the beginning of Summer, replete with its promised change of pace, time for travel and above all acting as a punctuating space before we begin again.

Here in Washington, the Spring has been magnificent, if cool. Although the plague of the cicadas is soon to arrive, far more importantly, the outdoors is still mosquito free, and as verdant as I’ve ever witnessed. The campus is drenched in emerald, not only from the Mason banners, but now by the green lawns and leafed-out tulip poplars. The geese by the pond are raising a new family, the students are packing their boxes and soon this place will enter the quiet time….of summer.

Here, at Krasnow, the science work continues at its frenetic pace. It’s a real contrast. Our faculty take note as the graduating seniors briefly saturate the campus with caps and gowns, but then they return to the quest for  new and better knowledge–something that in itself is life sustaining.

FT’s Clive Cookson visits MIT’s Media Lab

From today’s FT, here. There are times I think of the Media Lab as the modern cousin of Bell Labs what with the common focus on communications and the notion of physical proximity breeding fruitful collaborations. In the meantime, we have the challenge of trying to do something similar in the area of basic science…