Jess Wade on the technologies of the future | 91TV
Transcript
- Thank you all so much for being here today, and for those whose first time it is at the Royal
- Society, this is the world's oldest scientific institution in continuous existence, whose mission
- is to support excellence in science for the benefit of society. If you want to find out more,
- there are lots of Royal Society staff here today, and also, they've got incredible digital archives.
- I've not even been asked to say this. I'm just very enthusiastic about everything they put
- online, so please do go and take a look. Today, I'm going to talk to you about technologies,
- chirality, how academia is a little bit broken, and particularly what we can try and do to fix
- it. Technology has come a long way in the past 50 years, driven by innovations in material science,
- physics, and engineering, but we want more of our technologies today. We want their batteries
- to last longer. We want to be able to text and use our phones outside when it's sunny. We want
- to be able to monitor health conditions. We want to be able to detect diseases before
- they even happen, and particularly, we want to think about sustainable ways
- to generate electricity that aren't ugly or don't compromise our everyday lives.
- On top of that, we're facing huge supply chain issues. The geopolitics of critical materials for
- consumer electronics is only getting more tense, and the energy implications of data centres that
- power AI, or future quantum technologies, are completely extreme. What if we could
- design materials that don't cost the Earth? Enter molecules. I've put enter in for you,
- Emily. I feel like this is a stage call. So, enter molecular systems. Molecules have lots
- of advantages when you think about using them for functional and future technologies, particularly
- over their inorganic counterparts. They can absorb and emit very strong and very bright, and intense
- light. We can tailor them specifically using the rich toolkit of organic chemistry, so you can
- change their properties by changing their chemical structure. They can transport electrons and ions,
- which is really useful for electronics and also bioelectronics. We can deposit them on flexible
- and conformable surfaces, or we can evaporate them from powders, which is really useful if
- you're thinking about manufacturing a technology. Also, they demonstrate all of these different
- kinds of properties at room temperature, which is really, really critical if you're thinking about
- any applications where you want to be sustainable. I'm not a chemist, but there are lots of chemists
- in this room. Every single time they synthesise a chiral molecule, it's an identical replica of
- the other… Every time they synthesise a molecule, it's an identical replica of the other molecules,
- which is really useful if you want to do something at scale. They can interact with fields, whether
- they're magnetic or electric, which is really useful if you want to try and detect magnetic and
- electric fields, and they have lots of accessible electronic states, which is really useful if
- you're trying to design some kind of quantum technology. These kinds of advantages over their
- inorganic counterparts is actually why they're so used in technologies today, in things like
- the display industry, which is worth about $44 billion a year, from OLED displays that underpin
- mobile phones and televisions and games consoles. They're used particularly for high-efficiency,
- flexible photovoltaics and solar cells. In health monitoring, and things like electronic
- skins for detecting disease, and even if you want to try and do any kind of intercellular
- monitoring, these kind of materials are really useful there as well. What I'm really excited
- about, and what our research group are really excited about, is creating chiral functional
- materials. Chiral molecular systems. Chiral objects exist as a pair of non-superimposable
- mirror images, like your left and your right hand. Chirality manifests across multiple different
- length scales in the naturally occurring and the human-made worlds, from the subatomic things like
- electrons and also photons. You'll remember, if you left chemistry behind a long time ago,
- you draw a kind of spin-up and a spin-down electron. Light can also be chiral. It can twist
- clockwise or anticlockwise as it propagates towards you. We see chirality in molecules,
- and these are actually molecules that you'll see a lot throughout this talk. They're really
- exciting because if you look at these molecular structures, they can't actually sit flat on a
- plane, they spiral up or they spiral down. So we have that handedness in this molecular design.
- You actually see chirality in lots of biomolecules and things like DNA and proteins,
- which is a nice link to Rosalind Franklin, who obviously deciphered the structure of DNA using
- X-ray methods. We see chirality at macroscopic scales in things like shells, in fusilli pasta,
- in the barks of some plants, in the shells of some beetles, and even the light that comes to us from
- distant galaxies. What's really, really cool about chiral molecules is actually that we can use this
- chirality to control some of the functional properties, so it's not just that symmetry
- and shape. Actually, this chiral structure in the molecule means that the electrons inside
- that molecule are delocalised in this twisted ring, which means that these molecules absorb
- and emit slightly polarised or twisted light. So the emission and absorption from these molecules
- is twisted. They act as spin filters at room temperature, so if we push electrons, if we push
- current through them, then spin-polarised charges come out, which is really, really useful if you're
- thinking about spintronic or quantum technologies. If you assemble them on some kind of surface,
- they can induce magnetisation, and as I mentioned before, they show really interesting interactions
- when we start to put these kind of systems into fields. We're really interested in our group about
- using chirality for technology. So to generate and detect twisted lights, which has applications in
- things like next-generation displays, because we can bypass those anti-glare filters I mentioned
- before. So you can bypass those anti-glare filters and actually increase the brightness of your
- display if your pixels in your LED are emitting twisted lights. We can also use that twisted light
- to be able to detect biomolecules. We can use it to encrypt information, and you could use it to
- send information or create images for augmented or virtual reality headsets. We can also use
- chirality to control the spin of charges, which has implications in next-generation photovoltaics,
- where you might want to try and avoid charge recombination by controlling the spin of
- the electrons and holes, or in spin LEDs, where you preferentially inject controlled
- spins to boost the emission of light outwards. We can also use chirality to control spins of
- reactions that happen in chemistry. Particularly recently, it's been demonstrated as a technique to
- try and enhance hydrogen evolution in water splitting. So you control the spins of the
- chemical reactions that happen on your anode, and avoid forming hydroxyl radicals that can
- damage the electrochemistry that's going on in the device. So chirality has lots of profound
- implications for future technologies if we get it right. In our research group,
- we try and control and design chiral molecules and materials. We're really interested in the
- design and the synthesis and assembly of chiral small molecules, which are on the top, and then
- also chiral polymeric systems, and how we can generate chiral systems, where chirality manifests
- across multiple different length scales. We then turn these molecular systems into thin films,
- whether they're assemblies of small molecules or big systems comprising these polymers. I think
- these are really neat. I'll see if there's a laser pointer on here. Oh, my gosh, there's a gigantic
- laser pointer. Where did it go? You can see in the top picture they're actually really beautiful.
- Maybe I'll try and go back so that you can see it. Well, it's coming up. Some of these molecules,
- when they assemble into these kinds of crystals, they look absolutely sensational from the top as
- well. Here you have these kind of twisted columns of molecules that some of our research group have
- designed and synthesised. Alongside trying to create these chiral, thin film structures,
- we have to develop new ways to characterise them, because molecules are obviously too
- little to look at with our eyes. So we have to develop different spectroscopic techniques,
- or different fancy ways to use X-rays or different kinds of microscopy, to really
- try and understand and optimise the arrangement of these chiral molecules in these thin films, so we
- can translate them into a particular technology afterwards. Then, we put those into devices and
- try and see how those devices function. What we've been really interested in for a while is trying to
- put them into electronic devices that absorb and emit twisted light. We've shown that, actually,
- if you play around with the different chemistry of the molecules that you're working with,
- work out how to process them into the precise materials, you can put them into devices that emit
- probably the strongest twisted light that anyone's been able to achieve in recent research. We've
- also generated systems and built systems where we can use a chiral host. Where we can generate
- long-range chiral order, and put a little chiral molecule inside that's really good at emitting
- light at a different wavelength, and boost the emission from that small molecule by transferring
- energy from that chiral host to that small molecule. So we can show that we can tune how
- strong that twisted light interaction is by generating the right material science
- system. Then also, that we can switch on and off different optical transitions by controlling the
- orientation of molecules. So, really thinking about how chemical design, material science,
- and the kind of structures that we create impact the optoelectronic properties of these systems.
- Our research has uncovered some really weird and wonderful things, which has inspired intense
- research activity, both in our group and then all over the world. I'm going to try and condense the
- findings of quite a few people over about ten years into two slides now, all with GIFs and
- animations. If you haven't noticed, I've tried to do that so far. We've shown that the twist of the
- light that comes out of these devices depends on the thickness of the layer. If you go from a
- thin layer to a thick layer, you control the handedness, the twist of that light. Also,
- the twist of the light that comes out depends on the direction of the current moving through
- that layer, so if you switch the direction of the current, you'll invert the handedness
- that comes out. I feel like I'm going too quickly for my GIFs now. Also,
- that the twist of the light that comes out depends on all the non-chiral layers in a device. So we
- put a lot of these different layers in when we're making LED because we want to improve
- the way that charges can move through that device to that chiral layer where they're recombining.
- Actually, we've shown that if we play around with those different layers,
- then the twist of the light that comes out changes. We've also shown that, actually,
- they do really interesting things when we put them in magnetic fields. They're really sensitive
- to the application of magnetic fields around them, and that hints at some really interesting physics
- going on in these systems that we're still trying to work out and try and optimise and harness. So
- what next? Beyond light absorption, I told you some of the advantages of these systems was the
- diversity of chemical designs that can be achieved due to the versatility of synthesis. All of these
- weird and wonderful optoelectronic effects happen at room temperature, and also that we can create
- a kind of infinite number of identical replica molecules. So now we're asking, what happens if we
- can use these precisely ordered chiral assemblies to control spins for memories, or for spin LEDs?
- What if we could use their sensitivity to fields to be able to detect magnetic fields,
- particularly, for example, those associated with brain function, because that could replace the
- type of brain imaging that we're doing at the moment, all of which requires cryogenic
- cooling and really bulky systems? What if we could generate a stream of twisted,
- single photons, which could be used for a range of different applications in quantum information
- processing? Then, couple these kinds of single photons into waveguides,
- which are like little conduits of light, and which could provide fundamental building blocks
- for ultra-secure quantum networks. What if we could create superpositions between the excited
- states of these chiral molecules for quantum computing? So hopefully, what you've learnt so
- far is that this is the Rosalind Franklin lecture, and we've spoken a lot about chirality, which is a
- nice overlap with the theme of the evening. Also, that interdisciplinary curiosity-driven science
- unlocks new technological opportunities. None of these types of things that we've been working on
- were defined when we started doing this science. It was just a journey of discovery and working
- things out and learning a huge amount along the way. Also, that the best science is done by the
- most diverse teams. I work in incredibly diverse teams, from all different demographic backgrounds,
- ethnicities, and disciplines of people coming together, and that's benefited the science that
- we've done hugely. I realise I'm not showing you any of them so far, but I promise they're coming
- up in the next part of the talk. You've also probably seen the chemical structure of this thing
- called benzene a lot. Actually, it's the kind of one of the six rings of benzene in this molecule
- called helicene. So there's six rings of benzene in there. Benzene is this beautiful hydrocarbon
- that is a six-membered ring of carbon atoms, and actually, the chemical structure of benzene,
- or the arrangement of carbon atoms in benzene, had perplexed chemists for hundreds of years,
- until Kathleen Lonsdale came on the scene, and particularly used X-ray diffraction to prove that
- the ring of benzene was flat. Lonsdale was one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the
- Royal Society. That was 80 years ago next year. That's 283 years after the Royal Society first
- elected the first white man. It would take the Fellowship of the Royal Society another 78 years
- to elect a black woman as a fellow, the pioneering nanotechnologist Tebello Nyokong, who was only
- elected a fellow last year. Her research has paved the way for safer cancer detection and treatment,
- without the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy. So I think science, and the
- scientific establishment, has taken a really long time to recognise excellence when it doesn't look
- like them. This isn't because there haven't been amazing, incredible women, or people of colour, or
- LGBTQ+ scientists. It's because they didn't look like, or sound like, what the scientific academy
- expected. Take Lisa Meitner, who was one of the people who discovered nuclear fission, the process
- where atoms split into lighter nuclei. Meitner was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times, but was
- never celebrated and was consistently overlooked for her contributions. I've put a little image of
- what nuclear fission is, in case you all forgot. Or Gladys West, the 94-year-old mathematical
- pioneer whose calculations in the 1970s underpinned the satellite navigation technology
- of today. Gladys West's contributions to science and engineering have only recently been recognised
- because a louder group of us started telling her story. Or Katalin Kariko, the biochemist
- who did the groundwork for the mRNA vaccines, the technology used by Pfizer and Moderna in
- the fight against COVID-19. After Kariko moved to the States from Hungary in 1985, she struggled to
- secure funding for her work on mRNA. She proposed it for about 20 years, continuously applying for
- science funding, and never managed to get it. She was actually told by the university she worked at
- that she should either take a demotion, because apparently, she wasn't faculty quality, or take a
- pay cut. She eventually quit to join what became BioNTech, and then she won the Nobel Prize for
- medicine, and probably saved the lives of lots and lots of people in this room. It wasn't because she
- didn't have fantastic ideas. It's because she didn't look or sound like people expected her
- to do if she was going to be a scientific leader. We really don't do enough to support or celebrate
- people from historically excluded groups. People from historically excluded groups are still
- continuously being excluded in subjects like the one that I study, which is physics, or studied,
- which is physics. Women, people of colour, and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
- are excluded from a really early age. 91TV's motto is nullius in verba, which means
- take nobody's word for it. So I'm going to give you two minutes of statistics to prove that point,
- and not just try and tell you. At school level, girls continuously outperform boys in maths and
- physics, but they're really not confident in their own abilities, and this confidence is knocked out
- of them really, really early on. By the age of three, boys interrupt more. By the age of six,
- both boys and girls consistently say that boys are really, really smart, really, really
- smart. Schools, and actually school teachers, continuously underrate and undervalue girls'
- achievements or abilities in physics. I'm not sure if you remember when our dearest social mobility
- tsar, Katharine Birbalsingh, said, 'Girls don't like physics because they won't do hard maths.'
- That was a couple of years ago now, actually. Physics, particularly, suffers from a shortage
- of specialist science teachers. Fifty-two per cent, more than half of schools at the moment
- are saying they're short of physics teachers, and particularly, they have a hard time not only
- attracting them, but also keeping them. I suppose one of the biggest challenges here is that the
- government are failing to recruit on the levels they want to. Schools are failing to get them,
- and it's not equal across state and private schools. You have this kind of driving of
- socioeconomic inequality, particularly in physics and maths education, from a really, really early
- age. This obviously impacts who thinks they can go on to study physics at university,
- and we see huge underrepresentation, both of women and of black students, actually,
- in physics degrees. Once you've got through all of those different hurdles and started
- your scientific career, the next step is to try and get research funding to build your own lab,
- or to hire your team, and this is where diversity faces a huge number of challenges, again. Women
- are consistently under-cited in science. They're less likely to have big papers
- accepted. They're less likely to win major grants. A Freedom of Information request to UK Research
- and Innovation last year, which is the umbrella body that gives out science funding in the UK,
- said that 71 per cent of their big science projects, whether they're fellowships or grants,
- go to teams led by men. Seventy-one per cent, that's not just in physics. That's absolutely
- gigantic. The success rate of black PIs for UKRI grants is eight per cent, compared to
- twenty-nine per cent for white PIs, and the average grant that they receive is less than
- half of the size. This isn't because people aren't there, or aren't brilliant, or aren't
- having fantastic ideas. It's because they're not getting the support they need to go on to bring
- these ideas to fruition. I believe that excellent scientific ideas are distributed evenly across all
- demographic groups, but obviously, other systems and award schemes have different ideas. Since
- the Nobel Prizes were created in 1901, I promise the depressing statistics will end soon. I feel
- like I'm really on a gloom spiral now. Since the Nobel Prizes were created in 1901, only
- 25 of the Nobel Prizes for science have gone to women. Fewer than ten have gone - well, ten have
- gone to people from lower or lower-middle-income countries - and pretty much all of them have moved
- to North America to be able to do the science that won them the Nobel Prize. More than half
- of the Nobel laureates in science come from the top five per cent of household incomes. Actually,
- there was a big study recently and a report that came out in Nature, and also, the Guardian covered
- it, to try and predict the ways that you could become a Nobel laureate in science. It said, 'To
- have children who are going to become a successful Nobel laureate, make sure they're a man, make sure
- that they're born into a rich family, that they're from North America, or move to North America,
- or work with someone that already has a Nobel Prize.' So even though brilliant scientific ideas
- are distributed evenly across the population, opportunity really isn't. Horribly out-of-date
- science prizes aside, what does it actually take to have a shot of becoming a researcher?
- When I was absolutely terrified, as I put together this presentation,
- I was thinking about my own academic journey from finishing high school to where I am today,
- and all of the different people who've made it possible, kind of instrumental for me to get to
- this stage. There were my teachers at school. Well, my first family, who gave me this nice
- little science set way back in the '90s. See my great joy and my very nice, tidy bedroom. I hope
- you like that one. My science teachers at school, some of whom are here in this audience, who taught
- me the building blocks of organic chemistry and physics. I found this great photograph
- of my chemistry class in A level, who've drawn us as a hydrocarbon. Actually, behind my head,
- I've written, I love benzene, which speaks to where I am today, and also, maybe what a nerd I
- was at the time. Then, the teams of professors who inspired me through my undergraduate studies, and
- then my PhD. I can't give a science presentation without mentioning Seb. He's not here tonight,
- unfortunately, but I've practised every single science presentation of my life with Seb.
- This was actually when I gave my first presentation ever, and now, here I am. So
- sorry that your NPL Christmas dinner is tonight, Seb, but you should be here. Everyone who came
- around and actually supported me through my PhD, beyond my PhD research group. When I entered this
- kind of weird and wonderful world of chirality, guided by Matt Fujita and [?Jochen 00:20:12], and
- the kind of science that we've managed to discover since. Everyone that I met on Twitter,
- and massively informed the way I think about research, culture, and science, and how to
- approach being a scientific leader or appointing a team. This was back in the heady days when Twitter
- had a code of conduct, and there was no Elon Musk. Actually, I think we learnt so much from each
- other by having this informal network of people who you could bounce ideas off. You could say,
- 'Someone's doing this really rubbish behaviour,' or 'How do I respond to these reviewers comments?'
- that we got a lot out of those different types of interactions. The broader chiral community
- that we've managed to assemble, Everyone, incredible, who supported me since I joined the
- Department of Materials, especially Professor Sandrine, who's been massively instrumental
- in me having a scientific career. The team of legends beyond Imperial,
- and at Imperial, everyone in the research group, in the spin lab that I'm building, and working up
- to. Other early career lecturers, without whom I don't think I'd manage to stay in this game,
- because we have to all navigate this complex system together. Everyone else at Imperial,
- who just makes it an incredibly fun place to be, and thinking strategically, thinking impactfully.
- It actually takes an awful lot of people around a researcher for them to have any chance to succeed,
- and that's something I don't think you appreciate when you go and apply for a fellowship or apply
- for an award. Actually, it's that network of people around you who make it possible. This
- kind of group of scientific legends have helped me navigate this thing called the hidden curriculum,
- which are the social and professional norms in academia that are second nature to some people,
- but opaque to others, especially people from underrepresented groups. The hidden curriculum
- is all of the untaught parts of academia. They're things like applying for a job,
- writing a science proposal, doing a good interview, responding to reviewers' feedback.
- I was very lazy and tried to find a picture on the internet to sum it up, but I couldn't find one.
- I had a great conversation with Mike by text, and we came up with this. Mike pointed out, actually,
- the hidden curriculum particularly evolves over the course of your career, so I can't use this
- later. Maybe I'm too nervous to use it, but as you move through your academic career, the types of
- things that you have to learn and take in and be able to do change, and they adapt. If you start to
- fall behind on it, you've got a huge way to try and catch up with all of that learning. He also
- pointed out that it becomes really exhausting. You have to constantly teach people the things that
- you're only just finding out about yourself. So what if we could dismantle this hidden curriculum
- a bit? What if we could open everyone's ideas and pathways to all of these different opportunities?
- So what am I going to try and do about it? Anyone that knows me, knows that I strongly
- believe in helping the public better understand science, from school children to their teachers,
- to their parents, to policymakers, and to investors. I believe that science education is
- really important to helping people make informed decisions. I will continue to champion scientists
- and engineers from historically excluded groups, both my nighttime side hustle of editing Wikipedia
- pages, and then my weekend side hustle of nominating people for awards and honours. Just so
- you all know, the Royal Society awards and honours are now open, so if you want to nominate anyone
- for a prize, you can do that. Again, they haven't asked me to say that. I'm just really fantastic.
- Also, to try and unhide the hidden curriculum, but also to try and dismantle the old boys' club
- in academia, too many top-level decisions and discussions in academia happen behind closed
- doors. Where who gets invited in depends on who you know, rather than what you've got to say.
- A while ago, I was supported and pushed by a then-research strategy manager at Imperial, called
- Amy Nommeots-Nomme, to apply for the L'Oreal for Women in Science fellowship. After I got
- this fellowship, on the second time of applying, because they said, apply, apply, and I applied,
- and I didn't get it, and I was so upset, which happens a lot, and then you need that network
- of people around you to support you. So you kind of bounce back and go again. I Tweeted and said,
- 'I've got this now, and I'm really happy to help anyone. If anyone wants to apply for this, I'd be
- happy to help you put together your proposal.' I was inundated with messages from people all
- around the UK who were asking for different types of advice. When I started thinking about
- how lucky I was, actually, to be at a university like Imperial, where we have specific, targeted
- support, we have an Early Career Researchers' Institute. I'd assembled this incredible team
- of people with extraordinary expertise that could support me, could help me write proposals,
- to respond to reviewers' comments, and critically, to not give up when things get really hard.
- Now, as a Royal Society research fellow, you have access to the most extraordinary training
- that you can imagine. In America, they've had a scheme for a while called Rising Stars,
- which is this support, particularly for people from historically excluded groups, particularly
- when they're making that transition to faculty positions. It's not based on who you are or
- whether you've already got a shiny fellowship. It's something there to support you to make
- that process easier. A while ago, a couple of years ago, me and Mark Richards, and actually
- [?Izzy 00:25:08] Raby in the physics department at Imperial, and Mark's Blackett Lab Family, puts
- on this kind of summer school for black physicists and engineers, where we really went through all of
- those different parts of the hidden curriculum. And tried to introduce people to all of the
- different things they need to think about when going for academic careers, from PhD to postdoc.
- Actually, since then, I've worked with a few researchers all around the UK, and Alex,
- Katie, and also Lucy to try and put together a similar scheme for women in material science.
- We've always been limited, based on the amount of money we can get to do this kind of programme,
- and also the diversity of people we can bring into that room to make it happen. So what I'm proposing
- to do here is this UK-wide training and career development opportunities for people who want to
- enter material science from historically excluded groups, particularly where we've thought about it,
- from what we need as early career researchers, and taking it to early career researchers. I
- really want to provide ring-fenced, targeted support to people at the most vulnerable
- stages of their scientific careers, to help them navigate these parts of the hidden curriculum,
- so that the best ideas get funded. Ultimately, UK research will be more impactful, and we can make
- breakthroughs faster. That's my little symbol for that. So now I need to come to saying thank you.
- Thank you to everyone who's who provided some funding to do the science that I've been able
- to do. To everyone in the chiral crew at Imperial, and particularly to Alasdair Campbell, who was my
- postdoc supervisor, and who, unfortunately, isn't with us anymore, but was completely inspirational
- in this whole scientific journey that I've been on. Also, my growing research team, who have been
- patient with me as I've tried to work out what to do. I like this photo of Louis setting up a
- spectrometer. So this is Louis here, with Sandrine setting up a spectrometer so much. Also, to
- everyone in the SPIN lab who's made the transition to materials, and also working in a completely new
- way in engineering so exciting. To my family, and also to Emily, and to this very recent photograph
- of us all having a great time. To Ben, to Ray, to Mala, to Larry, to Marcia, and Alan and Dan
- and all of their family, and to everyone else. It's been a really exciting scientific journey,
- and I think I've had a fantastic support network around me. Before we go to questions,
- I have to say a huge celebration and recognition that five years ago today, my cousin Polly died.
- She should be here with us all. She was a researcher and a lecturer at King's,
- and an incredible person who brought so much light and wonder to the world,
- and we miss her a lot every day. So thank you so much to everyone who came, to Izzy, to [?Jennifer,
- to Leslie, to Abby, to Alex, to Katie, to Charlie, to Miju, to Ryan, to Niall, to Pru,
- Keith, and Professor Liz Socha, and also Raghav 00:27:51]. Everyone from the Royal Society who've
- made this possible. Thank you so much, also, for listening, and I look forward to questions.
- I wrote so many things on note cards, and I forgot to look at any of them!
- You didn't need to. Thank you very much for a fantastic talk, and so full of energy and
- real love of science, which I think is so infectious and, and makes everybody feel,
- I must do this. So thank you very much. Now, we're going to have some questions on Slido,
- I think, from people who are watching. While those come in, are there any questions from the
- audience? If not, if people need to think about it, I might start with one, if you don't mind.
- Okay.
- So I'm very interested, as we all are, I'm sure, in the support of early scientists,
- and I think you possibly slightly underplayed your own amazing talent and intelligence, which comes
- across, and that doesn't come… Some people are blessed with that, but I completely agree that
- the support that you get early on in your career is critical. You didn't use the word patronage,
- but I think that patronage is still huge in science. That doesn't necessarily mean the
- old-fashioned term that somebody sort of wealthy was kind of looking after you. It can mean that
- the people who train you, the people who you first learn your science from, are themselves
- very well respected in the field, and are very well connected scientifically. There's no doubt
- about the fact that that definitely helps people. It doesn't mean that necessarily,
- people who are no good do well. That's not the case at all, but it's what you were pointing out,
- that it gives a set of people who are, if you like, equally good, it gives them the chance
- because of that patronage. I'm just going to ask you, honestly, whether you think that you,
- yourself, had that patronage in the lab? I think it's important, because most of us did.
- Tough one. Let's start hard. I think that probably, yes, of course I did. I work at
- Imperial. I studied at Imperial, and I've been surrounded by, I mean, a lot of people, absolutely
- brilliant in science. I think that's given me a kind of extra energy to take that opportunity
- to other people. I don't think, especially when you're helping people with fellowship proposals
- or something like that, that everyone all around the UK has absolutely fantastic ideas. It's just
- articulating them, or it's knowing who to go to ask for a letter of support, or it's knowing how
- to put together a really strong case for why your science is exactly the right thing that should be
- funded right now. I think that if we help people, so that everyone has that opportunity, recognising
- the privilege that we have, whether that's the support network you have, or just discovering
- that you love science or whatever it is, then I think you can start to really level the playing
- field. I think it's not about - it's tricky - yes, okay. So the short answer is, yes, I have.
- No, that's fine.
- The short answer is, I want to try and extend it, and extend it to other people as well.
- Absolutely, and everything that you're doing
- is definitely in the right direction. I just sometimes wonder how we can stop it,
- the patronage, and make it that there is really equal opportunity for all.
- Well, I suppose I think the Royal Society is making steps in the right way. I know
- there's been a big effort recently to try and diversify who gets elected FRS because there,
- the lack of diversity isn't so much on… Well, it is obviously on gender and ethnicity, but also
- hugely institutionally. So, two institutions that are overrepresented in who becomes FRS,
- perhaps everyone in the audience can guess which two. So, actually, that's an effort that I think
- the Royal Society are doing, and I think there are some schemes now, the Royal Academy of Engineering
- have fantastic access mentoring schemes for people from groups that have been historically excluded,
- to get mentoring to put together a fellowship proposal. 91TV's own career
- development fellowships are also specifically ring-fenced money for particular demographic
- groups. So I think those kind of initiatives that say, we'll support you so that your ideas are
- the things that get you funded, not who's writing your letter of reference, that would be fantastic.
- Absolutely. No, I completely agree, and also, all of us,
- if you ever come across anybody who obviously is bright and eager to encourage them to
- apply for things. I think people are sometimes put off because they feel,
- oh, I won't get that. There's no point applying. So I don't know whether there
- are any experiences that people like to share from the audience of their scientific careers.
- I'm sure you've got plenty of scientists here, or do they all work with you, so they don't…?
- They don't all work with me! I'm not that popular.
- I was just wondering. Okay, so I don't know if there's anything coming in from
- outside. Anything coming in from Slido. I haven't got anything here. Oh, yes,
- I have. I'm so sorry. So, what inspired you to start your mission of creating Wikipedia pages,
- and how do you believe this has impacted visibility in the scientific community?
- What inspired me to start? I just get very frustrated when people complain
- about things all the time, like, there aren't enough women on Wikipedia, because I think,
- well, that's actually something that we can do something about. Similarly to,
- when you look around and you see there's too many portraits of old white men on the walls,
- that's something that we can change, or if you see there's not enough people nominated for prizes,
- we can start to change that. So in about 2017, I learnt how to edit Wikipedia, and I thought,
- I can do something about this. This is actually something… Well, it's really
- easy to edit Wikipedia, and so I started writing a Wikipedia page every day since the beginning
- of 2018. Since then, obviously, the percentage of women on Wikipedia has gone up a teeny, tiny
- bit. It was about 17.5 per cent when I started writing Wikipedia biographies, and now it's about
- 19 per cent, because people keep writing about men. Also, I start to see the people that I've
- written about. Actually, sometimes, if they're living scientists, they're profiled a lot more.
- They're featured a lot more. When the pandemic happened, I got very frustrated with how few
- women, public health doctors, or epidemiologists were on the television, and so I wrote about them
- on Wikipedia. Then, they were all on television and the radio really quickly because broadcasters
- often go to Wikipedia to try and find people. Actually, Gladys West, who I mentioned in the
- talk, I wrote her Wikipedia page in 2018, and she's a mathematician who was born in 1930,
- in Virginia. She did maths, and then went to work in the US Navy and did the calculations for GPS,
- and when I wrote her Wikipedia page, there was next to nothing about her online. Now,
- there's all of these kind of articles and biographies written about her. She's been
- nominated for all of these prizes. She won the Royal Academy of Engineering, Prince
- Philip medal, and prize, which had never gone to a woman before in the history of that prize.
- She's been elected to the US Air Force Hall of Fame. She's 94, and her accolades and
- honours are starting to happen post turning 90, and so, I think, yes, I don't know,
- I think it's the most extraordinary thing to do, that people start to learn these names,
- and then, even if… It's too late, but they still get that champion and that recognition.
- I quite agree. It's a fantastic thing that you did. I mean, if you go to schools and talk to
- children in schools, which I know you have done, do you think that they're excited by that concept
- of an older woman being…? I mean, what do you think excites young children about science?
- Well, I think science excites young children. I think there's no shortage of enthusiasm for
- science. You know that every young child starts off experimenting in engineering, even if you
- don't call it experimenting or engineering. They're making potions, or they're building…
- How do you stop it, that the boys always push to the front
- and ask the questions? This is not their fault.
- I think you've got to have good teachers. You've got to have teachers who are confident
- in controlling a class, but also making the subject really exciting and engaging
- in a thing that they love. I was very lucky. My physics teacher from school is actually here,
- but I was very lucky because our teachers could take it from beyond the curriculum and make it
- something that was really exciting, and was relevant to the real world,
- and was things that were going to make a difference to the technologies of tomorrow.
- I think you need teachers who can do that part, and also recognise that children have
- different levels of confidence, and you've got to bring them in differently, but also,
- we can contribute to their science experiences outside the classroom, whether they're seeing
- science on television or watching it on YouTube, or playing with science toys or whatever, museums.
- So I think you make science something that's part of their everyday life, and school just reinforces
- that and gives them the technical concepts they need to go on and have scientific careers.
- Absolutely. I quite agree with you. Okay, so what are the most exciting
- possibilities that your research offers? Anything out of Star Trek,
- somebody has asked, sorry, I'll maybe skip that bit?
- No, I don't know. I think you could probably make some kind of chiral laser. Well, very
- short-term opportunities. We're very excited about using these types of chiral molecules
- to be able to detect magnetic fields. I think that example I gave of being
- able to detect brain function is really cool. I'm the daughter of a neurologist,
- and also a sister to a neurologist. They're different neurologist, crucially, but actually,
- the ability there to do something really transformative in brain imaging,
- where you can do optically detected magnetometry. So detecting magnetic fields with light, rather
- than the way that we have to detect magnetic fields at the moment, with all of this bulky,
- expensive, unsustainable instrumentation, would be really incredible. Actually, some of these
- optically detected magnetic field systems are used to detect brain function in children,
- who it's often quite hard to image their brain, or when people are going about their day-to-day life,
- when it's quite hard to get kind of information while you move around. So I think that's a really,
- really cool application, because anything that helps in kind of medical understanding, actually,
- is something where you impact society really quickly. So I'd be very excited if that happens.
- Yes, absolutely. I quite agree.
- It's not Star Trek, though, but they need brain imaging in Star Trek as well, so…
- So has there ever been a time when you felt you would like to leave science,
- or would have to leave science?
- Okay. No, I don't know. I've got, I think I've had difficult times in the last few years where I've
- been supported to help do very big proposals, which were probably way too far. Well, I felt,
- were way too far away from where I was at the stage of my career to be working on something
- so big, but someone high up had confidence in me to be able to do these things. That was a huge
- privilege and a huge opportunity to do it. I think it's very hard in science when you put so much
- effort into something and it doesn't work. You can put months of your life, your creative thoughts,
- all of those evenings when you could have been writing fantastic Wikipedia pages. You put those
- into writing these big science proposals, and it can't always work. You know, I told you that
- statistic, that only eight… The success rate for black PIs is only eight per cent, compared
- to twenty-nine per cent of white PIs. That shows you that science is really hard to get funded,
- and increasingly hard, especially when the government is facing such big economic challenges.
- I think that when that happens, you really do feel like I should give up. I'm not good enough. You
- know, every feeling that everyone in this room probably feels when they feel like they're doing
- badly in their job, but you feel it, particularly personally, when you've put your whole passion
- and enthusiasm and creativity into that. Then, it's about having that extraordinary network
- of great people that I showed those pictures of around you, to be able to pick you back up again,
- and to say, 'This is still really exciting. This is still a really big research challenge. This
- is still a big, exciting science question that we have to answer together.' So even if you're
- completely heartbroken because that one thing didn't work, actually, remember, you've still
- got the best job in the world, and you can go into the lab and do this other thing afterwards. Then,
- foolishly, start writing another one of these failed proposals a month later. So yes,
- the highs are really high, and the lows are really low, but I think it would be foolish
- to think that doesn't happen in every job, where you're passionate about what you do.
- You know, I think if you're a musician, or if you're an actor, if you're a lawyer,
- and you care a lot about getting something right, when you put effort into something,
- and it doesn't come out the way you think it will, that's really painful. I think in academia,
- we think we're unique, but actually, everyone who cares about their job feels like that.
- Yes, I agree, but I think you have to be quite a resilient person, and women do leave science.
- They leave science in droves, and there would be a lot of reasons for that. The lack of security,
- as you say, the trying and getting the funding. Climate is very, very competitive, and also,
- within universities, women get given far more of the caring jobs. They do loads of
- that. Loads of teaching. I personally would like to see some stats on that,
- actually, because you need time, don't you, to do science and think about it and write grants?
- Yes, I saw a really fantastic person speak once who called it all the dishwasher tasks.
- Yes.
- It's like someone else pulls out the roast beef from the oven,
- but you're doing all of the dishwasher tasks. That's a dig at you, [?Jack 00:42:30].
- So are you exempt from…?
- I do agree with you, but it's not only women; it's everyone from a historically excluded group.
- I think that I kept using black research as an example there, because I think the challenges they
- face are particularly unique. The kind of minority tax on having to not only do fantastic science,
- do it so fantastically that people ignore the fact that you don't look or sound like they expect,
- but also do all this advocacy work to support other researchers from other demographic
- groups. That's a lot. It's a lot to carry, and I think institutions, some institutions,
- recognise it better than others. I think award schemes that are starting to pop up,
- to recognise the contributions people make to research culture, beyond academia,
- beyond academic study. I mean, the first time I ever had to talk in this terrifying room,
- the only other time I've spoken in this terrifying room was at the Royal Society's Research Culture
- conference in, I think, 2018. There, I had two minutes, and I still got as nervous and as
- sweaty as I am right now. That really said, we need to change research culture to reflect how
- much people do beyond the science and teaching that we usually think of as being research.
- So I do think those conversations are happening, but this organisation has been here since 1662.
- Some academic institutions have been around for that long as well, and they're slow to change,
- but if everyone keeps the fire up, that we should change it, then I believe it will happen.
- Yes, and I think that women have to say no. I mean,
- I think if your head of department asks you to take on a whole new programme of teaching,
- you have to say, no, and certainly, in my own experience, men are much better…
- My head of department's right there, so I feel like I'll say no…
- Well, just don't ask her, all right?
- I think there's saying no, but there's also being a team player,
- and I think science is a team thing, and the more you say, no, you just push it on
- to someone else. So I think there should be fair and equal distribution of work.
- That's an incredibly female answer, that I've got to do it because I don't want someone else
- to suffer. No, I really agree with you, but think it's about being a bit tough,
- as well as being fair. I'm sure that you've been very successful. You evidently have been.
- So tell us about your children's books. You've written some children's books?
- Yes. Fantastic.
- I don't know where you find the time to do it.
- There's not many words in a children's book. I'll start off by telling you that. They're very good
- words, but there aren't many of them. It actually took a very long time, actually. I started writing
- it in about 2018, and it came out in 2021. It's called Nano: The Spectacular Science of the
- Very (Very) Small, and it's really beautiful, but it's really beautiful because there's a fantastic
- illustrator called Melissa Castrillon, who did this completely beautiful imagery around kinds
- of molecules and materials. How we start to build materials out of molecules, and how we apply those
- materials to technologies. I should have used her illustrations to make this presentation,
- actually, and it was the first non-fiction book that she ever agreed to do. So she's done a lot
- of really beautiful fiction books, and then she was asked to do this non-fiction, and apparently,
- all her illustrator friends were like, ''Don't do it. It will be so boring.' Actually,
- it's completely beautiful, and it's also given us a really great chance to do workshops with
- children, where she draws all the structures. We have a kind of visualiser, and she draws all
- the different structures, sometimes really complex [?crystal 00:45:53] structures, that you couldn't
- ask third year undergraduates to draw. She can't pronounce them because her training is in art,
- but she can draw them, and then that means that you can get a room full of children to draw them
- too, and I can talk about their properties. It's really fantastic to approach science from
- completely art and craft and creativity, and, yes, thinking about materials. It's been a great joy.
- Absolutely. Well, it must be amazing. So you've got a lovely question here,
- which is, what would you say to the seven-year-old Jess?
- Oh, what would I say to the seven-year-old Jess? I think I was very determined to be in a pop band,
- and if you read my leaving school book from Year 6, it said that I wanted to be in S Club 7,
- if everyone remembers that fantastic band. I would say just to keep having fun. We didn't
- do science every week at school when I was in primary school. We did science every other week,
- and I knew then it was something that I found really exciting. I think I'd just say to keep
- being curious and keep exploring in it. I had fantastic teachers at school. I was really lucky
- in that in physics, chemistry, and in art, and I would say to keep being excited by the art parts,
- even if school tries to tell you to choose between art and science. Actually,
- it's really important to be thinking scientifically in the arts, and then
- to be thinking artistically in the sciences. I think too much, now, school tries to split
- kids into one of two paths, and so I'd say, stick to it. You're doing the right thing.
- So getting back to the really very important point that you make about people from underrepresented
- backgrounds, would you have any sort of top tips, if you like, to try and encourage people
- from underrepresented backgrounds to get them to apply for positions and grants, and so on?
- I would find people around you who can support you. You know, I'd say that to
- anyone, irrespective of whether you're from an underrepresented or an overrepresented background.
- Probably, I'd say it a bit louder to people from an underrepresented background, but I think to
- find someone who's applied for that scheme before, or someone who's in that research area. If you're
- applying to go and work in a research group to write to, maybe a postdoc in that group,
- or a PhD student in that group. I wouldn't be afraid of just emailing and saying, 'I just need
- a little bit of advice for this.' People have been so generous and kind with their time to everyone I
- know who's asked for it. Certainly, for me, I've had so much help on every application I've done,
- from people often just emailing or DM'ing - as we used to do on Twitter - people to say,
- 'Can I just have a little bit of help?' I would say to not be afraid to do that, and also be ready
- to make the time to put together a proposal. Don't assume you can just do it on half a day,
- a week, or just do it in the evenings because, actually, you need space to be able to think
- creatively, scientifically. So make the time. Ask people for help and be ready to listen to
- and respond to their feedback. Don't take busy people's time for granted, but do sit down and
- think about what they've said and put it into action. I would say, don't just email someone out
- of the blue who you've never met and say, 'Can I have your research proposal?' That happens quite a
- lot more than you'd think, that someone will email you and be like, 'You know that thing that you
- spent a month writing that you, like, went crazy for? Could you just send me your whole proposal?'
- Yes, exactly.
- I'm like, I've never met you in my entire life, or your friend, Michael, that you're asking
- for. So I would say to try to speak to people and to recognise that their time is valuable,
- and what they're putting in is valuable, and to really listen and to act on it. I truly
- believe everyone is very generous with their time when you approach it in the right way.
- Yes, I agree. So, which aspects of the hidden curriculum do you
- believe is the most critical to tackle?
- Oh, that's a really tricky question. I suppose it comes back to Mike's great insight that it
- changes so much over the course of your career. You know, I think the networking thing is really
- something that you've got to get used to in science, building your scientific network,
- but also that network of people who can give you that informal advice, who you can email and say,
- 'I've got an interview tomorrow. Can I go through some questions, or can you look at my fellowship
- proposal,' or whatever? I think building that network, and that's a lot about a confidence
- issue, you know, that maybe a lot of scientists are quite introverted. Sometimes, it's really
- hard to go out into a room, especially if you're really tired because you've been at a conference
- all day and do that networking. So I think that's something that it takes time to tailor and learn,
- and it doesn't come naturally to anyone. So everyone has to try and work out how to do it,
- and then it's about having a group of friends around you who make it possible.
- I think writing proposals and things like that is quite tricky to get your head around at first. I
- think probably writing so many Wikipedia pages has benefited me there, because I have to read so many
- different parts of science, and try and explain them in this kind of jargon-free way, that you get
- used to trying to do it. I think interviewing is quite hard. I remember actually speaking to Sam,
- who's here, about when you go for your university research fellowship interview. For those of you
- who haven't done it here, it's kind of terrifying, right? You go into a room. It's a long table.
- Everyone around that long table is probably the most eminent, expert person on that topic. There's
- about 20 of them. You go and sit at one end of that long table, and they just ask you questions,
- and usually, only two of them are asking you the questions. So you've got to make this weird,
- awkward eye contact with everyone else in the room while you direct answers to these
- people. It's the biggest opportunity of your entire life, and you're very conscious of that.
- If you have been trained or have been at a university, where you have big,
- fancy dinners every night, and you're used to sitting down next to an expert and having to
- justify your science at an accessible but technical level for five minutes,
- you're really good in those interviews, because you've been trained to do that. So actually,
- that's something where I really do feel like we can support people a lot better, because
- you can come completely unstuck in minutes of an interview if you've not had that support. Really,
- that's only three of them. So I could go through all of those different aspects.
- I think the hidden curriculum is something that is really pernicious that we should get rid of.
- So I just want to make sure that there's nobody
- in the audience. There is someone. Sorry, I don't want to dominate it.
- Just going back to what you were saying a bit ago about schools and curriculums. It's got
- me thinking, like, everything we learn, at least up to about GCSE, would be kind of 200
- years or more old science, and that's obviously, like, white man hold can't get out of. So this
- feels like a problem that there's no women role models in the textbooks. What they're learning
- about puts across the illusion that scientists have to be men. So, what would be your, like,
- women that fit enough into the curriculum, that they can be mentioned in that context,
- without kind of going into some quite advanced science that they wouldn't necessarily know about?
- Yes, I think that's a good question about diversity in the curriculum and how you do it if,
- historically, women have been excluded from practising or being in science. There aren't
- that many historical examples of women scientists or engineers, but there are examples. There are
- examples of way more than just the white Western way we introduce science. Even on the way that we
- introduce topics like the golden age of optics was in the Arab world, far before it was in France,
- and how we teach optics in physics, undergraduate degree, certainly. So I think there's some kind
- of part of contextualising the types of science that we do teach. There's also using contemporary
- examples to try and introduce different topics. Sure, you can introduce Newton's laws or whatever,
- but you can also introduce people who are using that kind of science today to try and show it
- in a different way. I think if you go through, I mean, there's loads of fantastic examples online
- of people who've tried to really diversify their curricula, but I think it is about
- using different role models and examples. It's about going beyond the kind of very
- Western-centric way that we have to introduce science, and recognising that it really is
- this collaborative team effort, and it was very rarely one individual, isolated genius.
- It was actually all of the people around them that made it possible. I know that the current
- government have a big curriculum review going on, so they're looking at the scientific curriculum,
- particularly, and whether it is fit for inspiring and educating the kids of today. So,
- hopefully, well, Marlo and Larry, those fantastic children I showed you at the end,
- will have a really much different introduction to science, to the ones that we had. I do think,
- you know, I was inspired. Many of the fantastic young women scientists in this room were inspired
- because of a physics curriculum that did also feel a little bit out of date then. You can make
- it inspiring and exciting. My teachers made it inspiring and exciting. You just have to
- think beyond what's in that textbook. My friend actually did a study of chemistry textbooks.
- That example of Kathleen Lonsdale. She was obviously a fantastic crystallographer, defined
- the structure of benzene, was a hugely wonderful woman as well, a big campaigner on prison reform,
- and very pioneering Irish women chemists. My friend, [?Clare Murray 00:55:25], who was
- in one of those photos, looked at all Irish chemistry textbooks, the chemistry textbooks
- used to teach the Irish curriculum, and none of them mentioned Kathleen Lonsdale. The only time,
- actually, women are in those textbooks at all are cartoons for dyeing your hair or painting
- your nails. So there's a lot we can do beyond trying to clutch at straws for names that we
- don't know until we go and find them. There are a lot of more stories that we can start to tell.
- I think we've got time for one more. There was somebody at the back there. Yes.
- You gave us various statistics on women and minorities. How
- does the UK compare with other countries in that?
- It's a really good question, the UK comparing with other countries. We're quite similar to the US,
- particularly on progression through to university. In America, generally, you have to keep all of the
- subjects till the end of school. So actually, a lot of students start physics degrees in
- America. They have much better diversity at the beginning of a physics degree, but by the end,
- it's still got the huge challenges that we face. So you still have those kind of stereotypes and
- inequalities when people start to make choices. Eastern Europe is a lot better at keeping and
- training young women in physics, and also a lot of Asia. I think in Asia and Eastern Europe,
- it's really different the way that the culture respects and actually pays teachers. So in
- China and South Korea, teachers are a lot better respected, and a lot better paid, and they have
- a lot higher numbers of skills specialist physics teachers. So you have way more kids doing subjects
- like physics and engineering, and actually a much better diversity at the beginning in physics and
- engineering. So it's a little different country by country, but actually, from the start.
- Actually, those things about this kind of hidden curriculum and academia are common to
- all international contexts, right? These things about how you learn and how you get by are true
- everywhere. I don't know the funding statistics in America, whether they've got the same issues,
- particularly around awarding research grants to black and minority ethnic researchers or
- women. There have been various things to try and avoid having people biasing their
- own decision by looking at your resume. So there's been these kind of blind trials where
- you apply based on your… They evaluate you based on your scientific proposal,
- rather than looking at your track record and your resume, which is obviously where all of
- those kind of gender and ethnicity biases start to come in. As you specialise more
- and more in science, it's harder and harder to not know exactly who you're reviewing
- because you can usually find that person out, even if you're not looking at their CV in front of you.
- America has had affirmative action campaigns for a while, so they're allowed to have these
- ring-fenced opportunities to support people from historically excluded groups, which is actually
- why you see a lot more African-American physics pioneers and math pioneers than we have in the
- UK. So hopefully, when we start to get that kind of positive action here, that recognises that we
- need to treat people differently based on the challenges that they've had, then we'll start
- to see those numbers coming through. So I'd say it's a really hard answer to give quickly,
- and I'm aware that time is of the essence, but it's one where research culture is something that
- we need to change on a global scale. The training through school is different country to country.
- Well, unfortunately, no more questions, but there's an important thing to do,
- and that is, I am absolutely delighted to… It's a great honour, on behalf of the Royal Society,
- to present you with your award, your 2024 Rosalind Franklin Award, and that is a beautiful scroll.
- Thank you.
Join us for the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Prize Lecture by Dr Jess Wade.
From mobile phone displays to solar cells, quantum computers to brain sensors, functional materials underpin all modern technologies. The rich design space of synthetic chemistry results in highly versatile functional molecular materials with tunable optical, electronic and quantum properties. In molecular systems, chirality (when an object cannot be superimposed on its mirror image) can be used to control the spin of light and charges at room temperature, which presents transformative technological opportunities.
Dr Jess Wade will discuss strategies to incorporate chirality into future devices, how the most exciting science happens at the intersection between disciplines, and why we need to overhaul research culture to bring the most benefit to society and the economy.
About the Royal Society
91TV is a Fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.
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