 Hey everyone, this is Dr. Kiki and I'm here again at the Portland Maker Faire. Somebody actually just came and volunteered to be interviewed. This is pretty awesome. So this is Tyler Weeks. He is a physicist turned recruiter. Sort of. Yeah, something like that. Something like that. But anyway, so tell me a bit about what you studied in physics. So I did my PhD at University of California, Davis. I did too. No way! I'm an Aggie! So then you will know what the Applied Science Department is. Yes. Because no one outside of Davis knows what that is. But I know what it is. Yeah, it's like an applied physics program. So it lives in the engineering school, but they do physics. Right. It's like the real-world uses of physics as opposed to, I don't know, theoretical wormhole type stuff. Exactly. So my research was actually located at the the Medical Center, UC Davis Medical Center. And I worked at a place called the Center for Biophotonics. That sounds super high-tech in the future. It sounds super high-tech. It means bio as in like life sciences and photonics as in light. So I studied lasers and optics and microscopes and I built these new microscopes to study things like cancer and stem cells and heart disease. So we worked a lot with with medical doctors. That's really cool. So it's like kind of this cool cross-section between physics like lasers and things and and you know like humans. Yeah, well as a as a biological sciences person myself, you know, I was in, well, I did my PhD. It was NPV Neurobiology Physiology and Behavior. And then my PhD was in Molecular Cellular and Integrative Physiology. Cool. So you were in you were in Sacramento. You were at the Medical Center? No, actually, I was in Davis. Really? Wow. I was in Davis, but you know, we used microscopes, but they were, you know, as they got more and more technical it just turned into for myself as the biologist using them. It was more and more of a black box and it was like, okay, here's the instruction manual that tells me how to use it. But I don't know what's going on inside of there really. I mean, I can pretend that I understand all the physics at work, but you're the person who understood the physics to make it work. Yeah. So we would buy these really fancy microscopes from different companies, then I would tear them all apart and I would do all the things to them that you're never ever supposed to do. This voids the warranty. Do not cut tag off of mattress. Yes, exactly. That sticker that you're never supposed to peel off. I'd peel off that sticker and I would make it do all sorts of crazy things it was never designed to do. And then we would have people come over that wanted to use those microscopes and they'd bring over, you know, we had doctors that were studying fatty liver disease. So they bring over liver samples or they'd be studying a condition called Barrett's esophagus where, you know, you've had chronic inflammation or asthma. You've had problems with your esophagus and we could look at that tissue, indigestion. Or, you know, one of the cool things we were trying to do is actually look at stem cells that came from people's hearts and see if we could see differences between healthy hearts and diseased hearts and we looked at cholesterol. So all kinds of cool, anything that anyone had that wanted to take a picture of, they'd bring it over and we'd nuke it. Yeah. I mean, pushing the forefront of optics is something that I think is really interesting and especially, you know, there are places like Stanford Linear Accelerator and, you know, they've been doing interesting stuff with lasers and light and being able to try and take these femtosecond resolution images of like movies of living cells, you know, slice by slice by slice. Yeah. You know, one of the cool projects that, one of the cool microscopes that we had was a, there's a type of microscope called a confocal microscope that gives you extra high resolution. It's an optical microscope, so it uses visible light and we had a special set of mirrors that let it take movies, which was kind of a new thing. No one else, not very many other groups had that. So we had a group that we collaborated with, this wasn't a project I was working on, just one of my, one of my lab mates worked on it, where they actually took movies and they were able to watch a cell that was infected by HIV and come in contact with another cell and pass the virus cell to cell. And it was really, it was kind of a big deal that they were able to take this, this, a video of this, because no one had ever seen it happen before and they got all sorts of, you know, publicity for that and recognition, but it was a pretty neat thing to kind of be, kind of be a part of, I was there for all of that, so. Well, that's what, I mean, yeah, all the things that we know are happening or that people, you know, think are happening when you get visual proof of it. I mean, that's something, there's all, there's this whole, you know, area, people are equal, I haven't seen it, so how do I know it's true? Yeah, you know, and all of a sudden people are imaging this cell to cell contact and transfer of virus particles or they're seeing things at, you know, like the atomic structure, you know, that we've guessed that an atom looks this particular way, but oh my gosh, we're being able to see the reflected light off of an atom and actually go, oh, our structural hypotheses were correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the theory is right. Yeah, totally. Well, and then there's the flip side of that where when you're in a room with a bunch of scientists and they finally see that video and half of them, you know, you're all excited, but then immediately you're like, well, does this really mean what we think it means? Are we just assuming because the video looks like this, that that's what's happening? And so what's exciting to me about being kind of part of science and kind of in an academic environment like that is immediately everybody starts throwing out ideas for the next experiment, like nobody's done, you don't see the video and be like, well, let's go home. Okay, we're off. Yeah, it's like, wow, that was great. What can we do next? Yeah. And that kind of excitement is just contagious. I love being in that environment. So yeah, that's cool. So you've moved from working at Davis and finished your degree. And so I went from there. And I, well, I was about a year from graduating. If anyone's been to grad school, you'll know that there's this condition called ABD, which is all but dissertation. I put that for a very long time. When you talk to those people, they all say they're about a year from graduating for about four years. So I was about a year from graduating and I realized I'd never actually had a job interview because I'd always kind of been doing research, having internships and that those kind of thing. And so I was looking for an opportunity to have a job interview that I didn't care about. And Intel came and they were looking for people that wanted to work on semiconductors or microchips. And I thought this is perfect. I study cells and lasers. They don't care about me. I don't care about them. I can totally just blow this interview. It'll be great practice. Let's do it. And one thing led to another and they offered me a job. So I had to sheepishly go back to my advisor and say, Hey, I think I got a job. Can I graduate? And he let me put some papers together and dissertation. Well, that's a that's a good advisor. He was great. He was not forcing you know, you must stay the course and you have to do seven more papers. In case you're hearing this Thomas Hueser, you were a fantastic advisor. This makes it to the scientific community. Right. This is the moment. This is the moment. Awesome. So you got a job and that's what you've been doing. So yeah, I went to Intel and I did the the work I did for them was are you familiar with Moore's Law? It's the doubling time of technology or the exponential rate of technological advancements. Yes. So it's it's this this pace that we've been on for the last 50 years where we double the number of transistors on a microchip every about two years, 18 months, two years. So I went from Davis to working for the group at Intel that's responsible for Moore's Law. So it was really just a totally different world. All of a sudden I went from a hospital with a microscope to a giant factory with robots zipping around over the ceiling and picking up silicon wafers and taking them all over the place. And anything that I thought I knew I realized I had no idea what was going on. And it was a it was a great experience. I did that for about five and a half years. So yeah. So you know, like, I think that's one of the cool things about going in getting a degree in in the sciences is that I think what you're really learning is how to problem solve. And that's really what makes you valuable to people is the ability to look at a problem, break it down into sort of bite sized chunks, and then attack each problem in a systematic way and and thoughtfully get get to a solution. And then the other half is sort of learning learning how to communicate that process to people. And that's my favorite part of the whole thing. I loved, you know, writing and nice talks and not all scientists do. No, no, no, no, most of us don't. Mostly just staring at our own toes. Yeah, exactly. Can I just go back to the lab? Why do you keep making me talk to people? Where's the pipette? Right. Get me that pipette, men. And I am happy. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. So I think it's great that there are people like you who want to talk about what you're doing and get it out there. And in terms of your path and the things that you've learned, what kind of advice would you have for, you know, people now, kids now who might be interested in physics or optics or semiconductors? And you know what I would say is I think that the I think what drove me on the path that I went on was I recognized at some point that I got a really like this like excited feeling in my stomach whenever I solved a hard problem. And I followed that feeling. So I would follow the problems that got me excited. And sometimes that sometimes, you know, you've worked on a problem for a few years and it's time to go work on a new problem. And that's okay. And it's fun. And, you know, I don't think it's as much as about I heard some of this advice. It's not as much about as following your passion as following your curiosity and and sort of finding those things and learning to be curious and have wonder about what you're doing. And those are the best scientists I've seen, not even necessarily the best PowerPoint presentations or animations or all that stuff. I heard a Nobel Prize winner speak. And he showed up with just transparencies and markers and gave the most amazing talk I've ever heard. That's great. And it was pure just, you know, enthusiasm. I mean, he's been studying the topic for 30 years and he talked about it and he's going to draw pictures. Exactly. And I would say, you know, follow your curiosity and learn how to help people be excited about the problems you're excited about. If you can do those two things, you'll go really far and you'll do some cool stuff. Awesome. Have you seen things here at Maker Faire that are exciting you? Yeah, Maker Faire is great. I have my kids here because I want them to be curious about stuff. I know my son is running around here somewhere. I said, I want to go play, mommy. I said, go do it. Exactly. I'm sure my kids will go home and save and gather up all the toilet paper tubes and soap bottles. I've got my toilet paper tube. You guys, this is what I'm using it for. My toilet paper tube. I use it to coil my wires and it's for my wire holding all of this cord management. And I didn't even have to go to the container store. Right on. Perfect. I love it. Well, thank you so much for volunteering and coming and talking to me. It's really, it's fascinating to meet you and fellow Aggie. Yeah, that's right. You got to love it. You see Davis. Yeah. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Tyler. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. All right, everybody. We'll see you later. More podcasting to come. Stoppin.