In the first episode of Buff Innovator Insights, we meet Dr. Margaret Murnane, one of the world’s leading experts in ultrafast laser and x-ray science. Join us to learn about her improbable journey from growing up in the Irish countryside to developing the microscopes of the future and cultivating the world’s next generation of physicists.
Terri Fiez
Hello science fans, creative thinkers and lifelong learners and welcome to Buff Innovator Insights. I'm your host Terri Fiez, vice chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Colorado Boulder. Thanks for joining me for the very first episode of the very first season of our new podcast. The Buff Innovator Insights Podcast is for science nerds, academics, renaissance thinkers, students, entrepreneurs, rule breakers, the restless and just adjust curious. In my role at CU Boulder, I get to work side-by-side with some of the brightest, most creative and most interesting people you can imagine. Getting to know these researchers, scholars and artists energizes me and gives me new ideas and inspires me every day. I've always wanted to share the amazing stories and the feeling of excitement with others and I finally found a way. Buff Innovator is sites is a backstage, behind the curtain up close and personal introduction to some of the most innovative, groundbreaking, earth-shattering ideas in the world.
Even better, you'll join me in this unique opportunity to learn about the people behind the scientific advances, how they got their start, how they eventually became world changers and how their efforts are making tomorrow better for all of us. Since this is our very first episode, it seems only fitting to choose a guest who epitomizes what this podcast is all about. My guest today, Dr. Margaret Murnane is truly one of a kind. She's a distinguished professor of physics and a fellow of JILA, which is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She also serves as director of the STROBE Science and Technology Center, a national science foundation center that is building the microscopes of tomorrow. She has been recognized with the words like the Benjamin Franklin Medal in physics, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy Inventors, a MacArthur fellowship and too many others to list.
Dr. Murnane is one of the world's leading researchers in laser science and technology with research interests that include ultra-fast laser and x-ray science, ultra-fast femtosecond to attosecond dynamics in molecular and material systems and the development of tabletop coherent x-ray sources and their application in science and technology. Wow, that's a mouthful. That sounds complicated, doesn't it? Don't worry. You don't have to be a physicist to follow this podcast. We'll talk to Dr. Murnane about those technical topics at the core of her work. After all, it isn't a stretch to say that her work is changing the future of everything from microscopes to manufacturing. But we'll also talk to her about her fascinating turning from rural Ireland to her current position as a global leader in her field, how her personal experience shaped her, not only into a renowned physicist, but into a pioneer in providing equity and opportunity through her research and teaching and how our discoveries, the work of her center and eventually the innovations of her students will change the world. Let's go ahead and dive in. I can't wait to introduce you to Dr. Margaret Murnane.
Well, Margaret, I'm really excited to talk to you today and it was fun hearing about how you grew up and ended up in the United States and have become a world-class researcher and someone that's so committed to your students. So tell me a little bit about when you were a child growing up in Ireland, you lived in a rural area. What was Ireland like at that point in time?
Margaret Murnane
Thanks Terri. I'm delighted to share some of my experiences growing up. I was very fortunate to grow up in the Irish countryside and to have amazing parents. Neither my mother or my father had a chance to attend college, but they really loved learning and they were lifelong learners and great inspirations for my brother and myself. So we had the chance of attending college at a time when only roughly 10% of high school students would be able to do that. And Ireland has transformed in the decades in between. So now roughly 50% of the high school graduates can attend college.
Terri Fiez
So what was it like for you then growing up in that environment, living out in the country outside of Limerick and clearly you had support from your parents, but what was it that drove you to be so strong academically as a child?
Margaret Murnane
I think both my parents had a huge influence on that. My father was a great school teacher and he taught 40 six year old kids for 40 years. And so each evening when he would come home, he would give me a math puzzle to solve. And then if I solved it, I'd get some chocolates or CocaCola or some kind of junk food that I really loved, which was a big treat. And he knew exactly how the young brain work, if you associate something really cool with solving puzzles, it's something that one will enjoy for the rest of one's life.
Terri Fiez
So when did you find out that you just liked science?
Margaret Murnane
So I literally had a Eureka moment when I was about eight. So my dad brought home a beautiful illustrated science book and I read the story of Archimedes and how he figured out if King Hiero's was pure gold or not. And the thing of course that captivated me as a young kid is the fact that Archimedes got so excited, he jumped out of the bath and rent through the streets shouting Eureka when he figured out how to tell if the crown was pure or not. And at the time in Ireland, people celebrated authors and musicians and poets but the idea that somebody could get excited about a concept was something that blew my mind. And I just fell in love with science at that point. And I just fell in love with ideas.
Terri Fiez
That's really neat. So were there any subjects growing up that you really did not like?
Margaret Murnane
Well, as it turns out, physics was my absolutely worst subject. I could not get an A in it, but my teachers were amazing and they supported this idea that you pursue something that you really love.
Terri Fiez
It's had a huge impact on your life clearly. So you go through school, clearly you're interested in science, how did you decide where to go to college? Now if you look at United States, people will do college tours and evaluate different universities and then decide where to go to college. How was it for you?
Margaret Murnane
So actually in Ireland, there's a point system. So as a result of nationwide exams at the end of high school, you get to compete for slots for medicine, for science, for law and such. And so essentially that was out of our hands. So people cannot do the college tour in Ireland because you actually apply through slots.
Terri Fiez
What do you think was a transformational time for you during your undergraduate college experience?
Margaret Murnane
At the time, my classes were very small between one and five students per class. So you got to know the lecturers and the classmates really well. We had to do unseen experiments for exams and all of that just really built up a cohort and community. And so we really supported each other and my professors were amazing. Most of them had done their PhD in the US so they could tell us about, give us advice about how to apply for graduate school and prepare if we wanted to do that.
Terri Fiez
That's great. That leads us into the next section that I'd like to delve into a little bit. So back at that time living in Ireland, I would guess not that many people went to the United States to get graduate degrees. How did you go about applying to your graduate program at UC Berkeley and then getting accepted?
Margaret Murnane
Yes. It was an interesting time for me because first I had to persuade parents who were very happy to support us to get undergraduate degrees, but I think there was probably one PhD in the whole county of Limerick. So this idea that one would continue one's education past an undergraduate degree was something that they did not quite understand, but fortunately they agreed. And in retrospect, they were delighted that I got that opportunity.
Terri Fiez
So were you scared at all about coming to the United States after living so comfortably in your own country?
Margaret Murnane
Absolutely. And remember at the time very few people in Ireland had the means to travel. So I had never left the island of Ireland. And from my parents' point of view, they were looking at the old sitcoms, the streets of San Francisco. So this prospect of their daughter going there, I think they were terrified actually. But the wonderful thing that helped is that a classmate of mine whose father had done his PhD at the University of Chicago, he went to Berkeley the year before and he wrote me a snail mail letter saying you have to come to Berkeley. You will love the science and the rainfall straight down. So umbrellas work. I like that.
Terri Fiez
So you get to Berkeley and you decided to study lasers and optics in your graduate work. Why lasers and optics and can you give us in lay terms that means?
Margaret Murnane
So Terri, a laser is a device that produces a pencil beam of light. So you might be familiar with checking out in the grocery store. There's a red beam that scans the barcode. That beam is very different from the light from a light bulb, for example, that spreads out very broadly. So I had loved lights since I was a kid. In Ireland it rains a lot so there's rainbows all the time. And the long summer evenings because of the Northern altitudes meant that it was really beautiful. And then I was very fortunate when I got to Berkeley that a young assistant professor was starting a research group in this area that turned out to be really fruitful for us.
Terri Fiez
Yeah. And you have kind of an unusual story about your graduate program because as you said, you came and you were one of his first graduate students and there was another student, Henry Kapteyn that was also one of his first graduate students. And not only did the two of you build up the group and build up the whole lab, you also became lifelong partners becoming married and also collaborating all throughout your career.
Margaret Murnane
Yes. And it was one of those things that turned out to be a dream team. We had complimentary skills. Henry's dad had helped him build computers since he was 11 years and fix old cars. And I love puzzles. And the strange thing is that I had this gift for aligning lasers. I couldn't cook well, I couldn't sew, I couldn't do art, but for some reason I had this intuition on aligning laser. And you figure how, the chances of figuring that out are pretty astronomical.
Terri Fiez
So Margaret, it's very unusual to be married to the person that you collaborate closest with in your work. How has that worked for the two of you to be married and be also collaborating in all of your research that you do?
Margaret Murnane
So Terri, to us, we don't find it that strange. If I look at my grandparents, they both ran farms and they had to collaborate just to get the work done. So it is really not that unusual for people to work together. And in Henry and my case, once we realized that working together allowed us to move faster and further, particularly as young scientists, when our competition were very large institutes, one can actually do better because you have the trust and so one is able to discuss hard science challenges and get feedback, think about it, what collaborator would bother reading your entire proposal and giving you feedback on it? So it's really the feedback we get and combining the skillsets are just much better than working alone.
Terri Fiez
I love those examples. Those are really fantastic. So early in your career, you started at Washington State University, which is where we met as new assistant professors and then you went to Michigan and then to CU Boulder in June currently, what drew you to CU Boulder? What were some of the attributes that you were looking for at that point in your career?
Margaret Murnane
So Henry and I have always been tool builders, whether it's building lasers or x-ray sources or microscopes and CU Boulder at JILA, which is a joint University of Colorado and NIST, National Institute for Science and Technology center, they have some of the best master instrument builders in the world. And that prospect of being able to work with these amazing individuals in a multidisciplinary institute was really amazing and it made a huge impact on our career as did all of the institutes that we worked at.
Terri Fiez
Yes. Very good point. So now I'd like to transition to kind of our third area, which is really now highlighting you as a leader in your field. And we're so fortunate to have you at CU Boulder and it's been a joy for me to have you as a friend and colleague throughout these years. I remember back to when we were both starting at Washington State, there would be the next world record that you and Henry had conquered in the field. Can you give us an example of maybe what has occurred because of these world record technology advances that you've made?
Margaret Murnane
So one of the things that we did with our student is to figure out how to make the short as light pulses directly from the laser about a millionth of a billionth of a second. And so these are essentially the fastest strobe lights in existence, fast enough to freeze frame the dance of electrons in molecules and photosynthesis in material science. And so that was a very fun project that handed a new technology to a very broad range of colleagues in academia, national labs and industry. And that was a particularly fun project because the theories had predicted that it shouldn't work, but it did. And so science is always full of surprises like that.
Terri Fiez
Can you give us one example of how that's been applied and maybe change that field?
Margaret Murnane
Ah, so we used that technology then to figure out how to convert visible laser light into directed beams of x-rays. And some of that technology is now being used by industry to develop the materials needed for the next generation of, for example, cell phone or computer chips.
Terri Fiez
So it really is the fundamental step that had to be taken in order to advance these other fields that we all are going to see the benefits of over the years?
Margaret Murnane
Yes. And when the laser was first invented, people called it a tool looking for an application because they had no idea it would power the internet. It would be used for sensing and ranging and surgery and all of these applications. But laser technology has been limited to the visible. So extending that technology to shorter wavelengths so that we don't have to take the blurred images that your doctor and dentist looks at when they're taking x-rays is quite important, but it's taken 30 years. So there are Eureka moments, but it can be a long path to develop a new technology.
Terri Fiez
I'd like to hit on now the leadership role that you've taken as of about five years ago, leading STROBE, which is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. And I love the tagline, building the microscopes of tomorrow. This particular center is unique in that while you're the director and CU Boulder is the lead, University of California-Berkeley is also part of it. Fort Lewis College, UCLA, Florida Atlantic, UC-Irvine and a number of national labs and industry. Can you talk about STROBE and when you're funded for one of these majors national centers, there's huge responsibility. So what is it that you hope to achieve from STROBE?
Margaret Murnane
Yes Terri, it's been the most demanding and most fun role I've played to date. So essentially what we're trying to solve is the fact that most microscopes now are too slow. And the images that they take are nowhere near as crisp as they could be. So for example, one of the STROBE groups worked with Moderna to image the COVID-19 vaccine, but this took several months to image because electron microscopes are currently very slow and give images that are blurred compared to what they could if they were optimized.
Terri Fiez
So what's the center accomplished so far? What's one or two examples that you're particularly proud of that our audience would understand?
Margaret Murnane
Well, I think Hangzhou helping Moderna to optimize the vaccine, that's a thing we're very proud that Hang was able to do. And the fact that there are STROBE enhanced microscopes now at national labs, at several facilities, in industrial R&D and also in the hands of other scientists. And in terms of graduate students and postdoctoral scientists, we now have over 70 graduates that are working mostly in the US in industry and national labs and some in academia.
Terri Fiez
So you bring up a good point here with graduate students and I want to circle back, cause I know that you talked about your dad being a teacher and the influence he had on you. How do you think that has shaped the importance of educating the next generation of scientists? How do you think that's influenced the way that you think about that?
Margaret Murnane
So it turns out that what my father was doing for the six-year-olds are essentially also what high-tech industry needs. You need people who like to work together, who are creative, who are innovative, will understand teamwork. And so we have a big emphasis on building a community, having the students work together, work with industry in national lab projects, and also add in soft skills training as well as the technical training. So really preparing them for the 21st century careers.
Terri Fiez
Can you talk about maybe an example or two of programs that you've put in place or created as part of the center that's not only affecting the students at CU Boulder, but all the other partner universities.
Margaret Murnane
One thing that's very important is that we want to impact all of our students, but we want that cohort to include women and first-generation university students, underrepresented groups. And one thing we do, for example, for our undergrads is we engage with them from sophomore on and arrange that they can do related research projects for multiple years with multiple groups. So the undergrads are building up a picture of what being a scientist is like beyond the classroom.
Terri Fiez
Yeah, well, I'm a big advocate for getting our undergraduates involved in research and I think the biggest reason is to get them a chance to work with really world-class people and just learn from the best. And they can use that in industry or academia or in whatever endeavor that they want to pursue. So thank you for driving that Margaret. I really appreciate that. So the final question I'd like to ask you is maybe a tough one. What do you see for the future and what do you hope your legacy will be through your career?
Margaret Murnane
So I think for any educator, it's the students we impact and the diversity of students, the changing, trying new education programs. And the thing I'm most happy about is when our team and collaborators come together and everybody's smiling, they're working so hard, but they're all smiling and helping each other because that is the way one can tackle some hard challenges in science and society.
Terri Fiez
So what do you see for the future? As you look forward to 20, 30, 40 years from now, what gives you hope and things that you're excited about?
Margaret Murnane
Oh, well, I mean, the students are smarter than we are and faster than we are. And so that's amazing. And for physics, physicists are tool builders. So one dream that many of us in my community have is being able to replace the x-ray source used in your doctor's or dentist's office with a laser light source of those hard x-rays. We could make much far crisper x-ray images to detect smaller cancers, for example. And science and technology have a way sometimes of moving very rapidly if there's a breakthrough.
Terri Fiez
Well, thank you Margaret. I really appreciated your time today. It's just so inspiring to talk to you and to hear your trajectory from rural Ireland and coming to the United States, being a first-generation immigrant and really helping to transform the scientific community but also the educational community. So thank you for your time today.
Margaret Murnane
Terri, thanks for the opportunity. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
Terri Fiez
That was Dr. Margaret Murnane, CU Boulder distinguished professor of physics, JILA fellow, and one of the world's leading experts in Ultrafast laser and x-ray science. I hope you found her story, her work and her vision for the future as fascinating as I did. You can learn more about Dr. Murnane and the STROBE Science and Technology Center at strobe.colorado.edu. For more Buff Innovator Insights podcast episodes and to join our email list, go to colorado.edu/rio/podcast. I'm your host and vice chancellor for research innovation at CU Boulder Terri Fiez. It's been a pleasure to be with you. And remember innovation is for everyone. We can all make the world a more interesting and better place. Sometimes we just need a spark. We'll see you next time.
