The PAM Talks
Transcript: Dr. Claudia Gomes da Rocha
Dr. Claudia Gomes da Rocha - My Laboratory is a Computer
Dr. Claudia Gomes da Rocha: This conception of, "Oh, you're a scientist, a super genius." *scoffs*
Jane Cohen-Wallis: *laughs* Exactly.
Pamela Freeman: Hello and welcome to the PAM Talks. The PAM Talks is a student-led podcast showcasing the voices of researchers who are members of traditionally underrepresented groups in physics and astronomy. Each episode, we interview a new physics and astronomy mentor exploring the universe through the lens of diversity.
I'm Pamela Freeman, a producer for The PAM Talks, and today we are sharing an interview from our original PAM Talks video series. This is part of our season 1.5 of re-releases of these videos, which you can also go watch on our YouTube channel. In this episode, Dr. Claudia Gomes da Rocha, Associate Professor, Associate Head of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and theoretical condensed matter physicist at the University of Calgary, is in conversation with Jane Cohen-Wallis, an engineering physics undergraduate student from Queen's University. They discuss choosing a research path, how computers are integral to physics research, and what the words condensed matter physics mean. Please enjoy!
JCW: Hi, I'm Jane, I'm an undergrad student and today I'm going to be interviewing Claudia Gomes da Rocha, an assistant professor at the University of Calgary.
CGdR: Well, very nice to meet you.
JCW: Thank you.
CGdR: My name is Claudia, I'm an assistant professor in the University of Calgary affiliated with the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
JCW: When in your life did you know that you wanted to pursue physics after high school?
CGdR: At the end of my high school I realized three things about myself: that I did like math, I did like computers, and for whatever reason, I was able to solve typical physics textbook problems. Putting these factors together I thought oh maybe physics is a good option for me, and it ended up being the career that I decided to follow.
JCW: How did you decide where you were going to go after that? Because there's so many universities, I think to someone having been in one country their whole life they might be overwhelmed and not know how to choose where to go.
CGdR: What really determined my very first move from Brazil to Ireland was networking. I did my undergrad in Fluminense Federal University in Brazil and I did my whole undergrad in physics there. I also did my graduate studies there. It is also where I found, really, a very supportive team of professors and colleagues to do lots of networking and get really passionate for research and teaching physics as well. My PhD supervisor had networks in Trinity College Dublin and there was an opportunity for me to apply there and which I did and it was when I started my first postdoctoral after the PhD and in a more international career. And then once you do this big jump then you start to develop more independency to also start picking your own network and it was when the other opportunities also appeared, when I also started developing my own network of collaborators, scientists, to see which other opportunities would come next.
JCW: With all those moves, how are you sure that staying in research was the right place for you?
CGdR: That is a very good question. I always enjoyed the research aspect. I also enjoy a lot teaching and I wanted indeed to do something that I could exercise both aspects of an academic career. I also started enjoying attending networking events, career advising events. It was when it started also broaden my horizons that academia was not the only path. There is more than a scientist can do beyond academic life and even I considered doing something else, but when the opportunity appeared, I pick it because at the end of the day it is what I have been doing all these years but it was good to know that there would be also other options.
JCW: As a researcher, what does your day-to-day work look like? Like, are you working alone or with a group?
CGdR: A very important question. Yes, I do my research mostly, as I said in my laboratory is a computer. And there are obviously the scientists, the collaborations that we establish, to kind of join forces. Everybody have their specialties and we combine the forces and in many aspects this research in nanoscience, nanotechnology, is also very interdisciplinary it can also come people to participate from other disciplines from biology, chemistry, engineering, so no. There is the moment that I'm doing my focus coding alone, but there's a lot of integration and networking with collaborators, computer support team, students. No, it's not it's not a lonely job.
JCW: So when did you realize that computer science and computational work is a key part of research and physics?
CGdR: Very early in my undergrad, it was at the end of my second year. There are some fields in physics that in fact outcomes and answers can be obtained using a tool, computer. Yes, there is a computer science but then there is this field of computational science that is the field that we use the computer to solve physics problems. And then, hm, maybe this is a good option for me. Only at the end of my undergrad I realized that I like also a particular field in physics, call it condensed matter physics, that uses also a lot of computers and then it was when my decision for my graduate studies was made.
JCW: Can you explain just a bit what condensed matter physics is?
CGdR: Yes…
JCW: Very broad question but…
CDgR: Condensed matter physics is a very broad area and it concerns to anything that we can figure out about matter. And because yes everything that is around us is matter, it is a really really broad field. I joke a lot with Pooja that she actually wants to make me out of a job because she wants to study anti-matter and I study matter and I already joke, you want me out of a job right. So I decided to specialize myself in the part of condensed matter physics that studies matter at really tiny tiny tiny scales—nanoscale nanometer sizes—and nanoscience research but also referred also to nanotechnology. And this prefix nano means one billionth of a meter. Let me take a meter and imagine divide it in one billion parts, this is the kind of the scales of the materials that we investigate. It's just that I don't study materials in laboratory, or I manufacture the materials, or I synthesize them. My laboratory is a computer. So what we do is that we code the laws of physics of how the atoms interact and everything. We try to mimic reality into the computer, but then after that we have to process the output and everything and see if the physics makes sense. If it makes sense, we are good to go, otherwise we need to go back and revise the physics laws of the computer code. And it can go both ways, it can be that an experiment was already run and the experimentalists wish to understand further what they are obtaining, what they are visualizing—oh we got this curve, what this curve means, what is happening there inside the material. Then computer simulations can assist in this aspect and it can also go in the reverse. We create a computational model that even might not have a priori and an experiment done before and the experiment can come as a perfect verification if that computational model makes sense or not.
JCW: What are some examples of the simulations you do on materials?
CGdR: Recently we are working with other different types of nanoscale materials, now it's more towards metallic nanowires. We also test how good of an electrical conductor they are, how good of a thermal conductor they are. Because we are in a computer in synthetic materials we can do any sort of virtual experiment, we can subject them to mechanical deformation, see how they react and all of this we do this virtual experiments with computers. If we compare telephones or computers ten, twenty years ago, they were massive gadgets and nowadays we have mobile phones that are essentially computers. We can do so much with mobile phones and this is a result of this miniaturization of circuit components coming from research in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Jane Cohen-Wallis: I was actually one of those people that was a little nervous to go into physics because I had preconceptions about the difficulty. So I ended up starting in general science and I was planning on pursuing a biology degree, and then when I got to university I realized how much I really did love math and physics and so I ended up transferring into engineering. It was just a better fit for me. There is where I was introduced to computer science. I just took one coding class and fell in love with it. I'm now in engineering physics with a computer science subplan just following what I really loved and what I enjoyed.
CGdR: See, that is awesome. *laughs*
JCW: Yeah, I think they should have kids coding in high school, it just like... People are so scared of it, it's really not anything like crazy. You can learn it just like anything else.
CGdR: You practice, yeah. This conception of, "Oh, you're a scientist, a super genius." *scoffs*
JCW: *laughs* Exactly.
CGdR: It doesn't remove the merit that you are putting in pursuing the career, don't think that I'm putting you, don't take that I am putting this in a negative tone for those who pursue. It's just that as you mentioned the misconception is wrong because it ended up deviating people that think that they couldn't pursue—no, they can so let's have more, more of us.
JCW: I agree, I agree.
CGdR: So what is your favorite aspect about studying engineering physics?
JCW: I think for me, not specific to engineering physics, but just as soon as I started my undergrad was the difference in how passionate people are about what they're studying because you get to choose your program. Being surrounded by all these people who also enjoy the same things that you enjoy, I found it to be a really great switch from high school where everyone sort of like has to take a lot of classes they don't want to be taking. So I found that I'm able to make friends with people who also have the same passions as me and so your schooling starts to go beyond your classes and you start to be able to discuss these things like outside of class. And so I think that's been the most exciting part for me, it's just like really being surrounded by a lot of people that enjoy the same things.
CGdR: That is awesome. Maybe I will make a bit of a difficult question, but you don't have to answer anything, but then now that you are doing your undergrad in the scientific field, how do you see science nowadays?
JCW: Very different than when I was in high school. I guess specifically, engineering, math, and just specifically computer science, I always saw it as the stereotypical in a dark room just kind of at your computer all day and I thought why would I want to do that. So I think now that I'm within that field I see kind of that it's not like that and that there is, as you've mentioned, like so much collaboration and just like a lot of people who are really excited about like moving forward in the field. So I think that kind of everything you think you know about science is so much different once you get into that field. So personally before I even started this summer research project I didn't realize how much coding goes into even just like pure research. Even today I've learned more about the different fields that there are and I think there's way more options and like routes you can take than people would think.
CGdR: That is awesome because I truly related to that because it's the same kind of transformation I went to as well when in undergrad. And more transformations are about to come depending on what you're going to pursue.
JCW: Because physics and especially computer science is a male dominated field, like has that ever kind of made your path more difficult? And has that changed at all from being in school versus being in the research field after school?
CGdR: Yeah, tell me about it. *laughs* Yes, there are lots of work to be done for the field to be really transformative and being more supportive in terms of diverse talents and all these aspects. I can also say I also, I counted in a very supportive female faculty. My Master’s and PhD supervisor Dr. Latgé, she is even still a great inspiration to me because always her positivity and supportive personality in all aspects, it was really relevant for me to really have that. She's a big inspiration for me by the way, on how I work with graduate students, and it is still the same kind of influences even in the research as well, in doing computational physics. I would like to maybe try to answer your question with a more positive note, because for instance what you are doing right now it's really important to start balancing this aspect in the field of computational physics and many other scientific fields that is still, it needs a lot of work to balance things out. So thank you for doing this. And this is what we need to keep doing, this more to keep balancing and make the field more supportive towards diverse talents and diversity in general.
Transcript copied and edited from Apple Podcasts