The PAM Talks
Transcript: Dr. Maria Masoliver
Dr. Maria Masoliver - Complex systems, more than a sum of their parts
Dr. Maria Masoliver: I really like to understand how things work, like the beginning of things, kind of, and why is that and why is that? So physics was the discipline that could answer me this question, I felt.
Pamela Freeman: Welcome to the PAM Talks, a student-led podcast exploring the universe through the lens of diversity. Each episode, we interview a new mentor, showcasing the voices of researchers from traditionally underrepresented groups in physics and astronomy. I'm Pamela Freeman, a producer for the PAM Talks, and today we are re-releasing an interview from our original PAM Talks video series, which you can also go watch on our YouTube channel.
In this episode, Dr. Maria Masoliver, a data scientist and former postdoctoral scholar at the University of Calgary, chats with Ea E, a PhD student in mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a U of C math and physics alumnus. They discuss Maria's path into interdisciplinary work. In her research, she looks at systems that cannot easily be described by their parts or the sum of their parts. An everyday example is the brain. So, how do we study these systems and how do physicists contribute to this work? Find out next.
MM: I'm Maria Masoliver and I'm doing a postdoc at the University of Calgary. It takes place in two different research groups: the complexity science in physics and astronomy together with another research group computational neuroscience.
E: That's very cool, nice to meet you. I'm an undergrad at U of C and I'm going into my fourth year of math and physics. I'm not at all really familiar with complexity science or neuroscience but I'm really interested to learn more from you today. What is a postdoc and how, from all the way from high school from the start of your education, how did you go from there to this position where now you're researching all these crazy systems and amazing things?
MM: So from high school I decided to study physics and I did my undergrad in a university close to Barcelona and from there I went to Germany in Berlin and there I did also my master’s. After my master’s I decided to do a PhD and a PhD it's a program that, in Europe, it lasts between three to five years. Here I know in North America it lasts longer. You take a topic and like a research area and you come up with novel results. The next step if you want to keep in academia (the academia is being working at the university as a researcher not at a company) are called postdocs. You continue to do research related to your PhD or to another field and you are a researcher.
E: Going back all the way to high school, how did you think physics is what I want to do, physics is what I want to go to university for?
MM: It was tough for me because I consider myself also really into arts and literature so it was actually a difficult question to do. First, I may not have been sure to take up physics but actually as how I am I really like to understand how things work, the beginning of things, kind of and why is that and why is that? So physics was the discipline that could answer me, these questions I felt. It's true that it was not easy for me because when I was in high school physics was not one of my best subjects. I liked it, and also math, I really enjoyed math too, but I had to really study both of them. It was not easy to me. I had a friend that she was brilliant in both math and physics and for me was like wow, how she can, she would understand everything in one second and for me would take time, right. But at the end I made it. So I thought, okay let's go for physics and see if it's my thing and so far it has been.
E: What is it like to work in physics research? What’s your day-to-day like?
MM: It really depends on the supervisor you have and how you are. So what I do a lot is I program a lot. So it's basically let's try this and if it works, good, otherwise I have to think about what it is that I have to change to achieve the results, which is the story that I want to tell and kind of go to that route. It happens to me a lot that I go to other paths but then I have to go back to my objective, this is it. And what really helps is to have constant meetings with my supervisors. Because sometimes you go into some route that has nothing to do with what you really need to do or you think this is important and then you step back, you need someone looking from the outside. Even as a postdoc you need this person. What I like is that it's not monotonous, I always learn new things and I can think a day or two or three to look into some other software that I think that is more useful for the research that I'm doing and learn about it and I don't have to explain to anyone that I'm doing this right it's always new inputs and and it's really nice.
E: I know you mentioned your work is mainly computational but is it always that way or is there more there is there some crossover between those other bigger sections?
MM: Nice question. There is a crossover in the sense that in computational, sorry in complex science, you use experimental data to kind of test your models. So I'm actually collaborating with a neuroscience group in Oxford and basically they are the ones doing the experiments, they are the ones taking the data, also analyzing it. With this data you can do a lot of analysis and we are applying the framework that we are using to understand what is happening and so I would say that here you have both experimental because you need someone recording the signals. They are from mice and rats and someone analyzing this data and then understanding what is actually happening and coming up with a model, a mathematical model that can describe the behavior that we see.
E: What is complexity science? How would you describe that?
MM: Complexity arises when we cannot describe a system by the sum of its parts. We also have to consider the interaction between the elements that form that system.
E: Do you have any examples of complexity that you think someone should have in mind when thinking of this field?
MM: Actually nature is complex so there are a lot of examples we can think of. Fish schooling: all these group of fishes, how they move together. You cannot tell how the whole thing is going to behave by just looking to a fish. Let's say you want to visit a friend from the university and you have your car here. You could think, okay, I know my position, I know the house of my friend. I know more or less the velocity I will take but it's not that easy, you have to look at the traffic flow. We may have a pedestrian crossing and you have to stop, you have the stop signs, you have the lights. It may have happened something ahead of the road which will affect you later on. So all these things taken together makes a simple task that you may think is simple, complex. Basically we use mathematical tools and physical tools to solve these problems. The last example, and it's related to my research, is how the brain works.You can look at the individual components of the brain which are the neurons but just looking how a neuron works it's not going to tell you how memory is functioning in our brain or how we have free will or how you remember which movie you watched yesterday, right? You have to look at it as a whole.
E: Even though you studied physics through undergrad and master’s and so forth, you still ended up now working with biologists and chemists in neuroscience. How is there this connection between the fields? From a naive perspective I would think there would be like this massive distinction that they would be working in their own realms but it seems like they really cross together in your work.
MM: Nature actually doesn't divide, like doesn't say a neuron belongs to the biologist. At the end are humans who made those divisions to understand how nature works, which is okay, but at some point those things are mixed together. With the tools that I have, with my background with physics and maths how can I make it so we can understand in my case better the brain? Instead of: “oh no you studied physics you cannot go into that area because it belongs to biologists, physiologists or neuroscientists.” At the end, science I feel it's a really interdisciplinary discipline and should be considered as such and not just stick in our little boxes. You may actually be interested in both physics and biology and maths and for going into physics doesn't mean that you will never end up studying or or working in biology because you can start with physics and then like if you're more interested into the biology as well do something like biophysics which mixes the two of them or for example also medical physics—like when you have a MRI. Engineers have to design the machines but the background that is in those machines has been designed by physicists. Going into one area doesn't mean that you will be stuck there. That even if they pick biology or maths they can always, if they like other stuff, they can look for the crossing point. Maybe at the end they even realize that they don't like it. But if you like it I feel you are going to succeed. So I would always focus on what you think you should be doing and forget about what other people tell you.
E: That's great, awesome.
Transcript copied and edited from Apple Podcasts