I couldn’t resist to share this graph. Absolutely fantastic results!

28th May, 2009 No Comments

Today I was really excited to read interview with friend of mine Alán Aspuru-Guzik at Sceptical Chymist (Nature Blogs). Alán is an assistant professor at Harvard University, and works at the interface of theoretical chemistry, quantum and GPU computing. His research is also focused on method development including but not limited to quantim monte carlo, TDDFT and quantum dynamics.

Q: What made you want to be a chemist?

A: My junior high school teacher in Mexico was an inspiration. He was a biochemist with a passion for the inner workings of proteins and enzymes. I later had the opportunity of representing Mexico at the International Chemistry Olympiad held in Oslo, Norway, in 1994. By then, I had a a tough choice between studying computer science or chemistry. The inclination for computer science, however, never faded away. For my Ph.D., I carried out large-scale computing using quantum Monte Carlo. During my postdoc years, I began working at the interface between quantum computation and chemistry, and this is still one of my current research topics as an independent faculty.

Q: If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

A: If I were not a scientist, I can imagine many other possible alter egos. On dreamy days, I see myself as a film maker, doing independent film, or as a (very) progressive politician.

Read full interview at Sceptical Chymist.

The Sceptical Chymist is a blog by the editors of Nature and the Research journals – and a forum for readers, authors and the entire chemical community. Authors discuss what’s new and exciting in chemistry and chemical biology, be it in Nature journals or elsewhere.

27th April, 2009 No Comments

College textbooks are going digital! Declan Butler, a senior reporter at Nature asks how this will shake up student reading habits and the multi-billion-dollar print textbook market:

The rumble of textbooks thumping on to the desks of a university lecture theatre, the rustle of turning pages, the groan of backpack straps hoisting 10 kilograms of textbooks — these sounds may soon be an echo of the past. This semester, 1,200 students at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) are foregoing printed textbooks in a pilot trial of Amazon Kindle e-readers stuffed with texts in electronic form.

Butler, D. (2009). Technology: The textbook of the future Nature, 458 (7238), 568-570 DOI: 10.1038/458568a

20th April, 2009 No Comments