 Good morning. I didn't get a video together last week because I spent I spent almost the whole week at home With sick kids, you know life life didn't happen But this week I'm shooting like three videos today I am so excited because I got onto the schedule of Julianne Daucanson She is the chair of our department a world-renowned scientist and expert in galaxies and stellar populations and And a very long list of other things and also an incredibly deep thinker about the profession in the and the art of Being a scientist and communicating science and an avid dog owner. And so without further ado Here's my coffee time chat with professor Julianne Daucanson I refuse to be defined by my own self-applied label, so I'm drinking tea for a coffee time, you know and on and on I Was gonna say in honor of you drinking tea, but also just because I've had three cups of coffee today already That doesn't sound like enough No, it's the day is not over. I got some interesting questions from people like what's it like being the greatest of all time I want to ask I want to talk about How do you make good ideas Which I think is related to writing. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a really good question. And you know, it's something that's like it's hard to I've been having this like meta conversation with myself and I gradually like Asked everybody this about like how do we train? People explicitly in research. Yeah, so like I started a writing class because that was something where I felt like We expected a certain level of performance and where I saw really amazing people's careers Have having struggles was when they weren't able to take their fantastic ideas and actually Submit them for publication That's kind of the currency by which the field goes and also if you have an idea and it's just in your mind and on your laptop Other people don't get to interact with it and query it and be inspired by it So, you know, I started a writing class to try to teach that Intentionally, but I've been trying to think a lot about like how do we train people in research intentionally? like as a You know you get that when you're experienced enough at it and you've and you've got the survivor bias that you've actually made It in, you know, we have periods where it's like, oh, yeah, my research is going really well Oh, I'm not being very effective in my research. You're collaborating with the student who's just you know Getting their feet wet and it's like, oh, how's the student doing? They're doing really well. Oh, they're having a hard time and Often it's very difficult about how do you? Say what makes that differentiation between when things are going well and when things are stalled and What can't can we explicitly train some of this stuff because I'm very much about, you know, there's so much potential in the field That I feel like we lose a lot of people's genius because we're not intentionally training them in some of the stuff that they know and that winds up being something where That just really compounds a lot of questions about like what kind of Capital people have when they move in that if you are the child of academics, you just sort of know how the system works You know what you can ask for and so I'm very interested in like how do you? make the Implicit explicit explicit and thus learnable and trainable and help people be better because that's the way I always felt like part of the UW program was always really good about You know admitting people from a wide Range of backgrounds that had the potential and then trying to be very mindful about helping them reach that potential As opposed to let's just admit people who are already Superstars and just not try to break them too much and hope they get out the other end Is the only way to do it have a bunch of crappy ideas first. Yeah, that's certainly that certainly is so there's a bunch of stuff so I mean one is reading really broadly and attending talks really broadly and You know allowing yourself the freedom to just be interested in a lot of stuff and I and I do worry that with some of the difficulties in the field in terms of just People feeling very very stressed out all the time for Rational it's a rational response sometimes to the incentives that are better that go on in the field But it cuts out people's feeling of joy and exploration Which is actually Something that can really fuel the kind of science that Then does make your career easier, right? So the their project that you do where it's a pretty clear track, right? I've got you know, I've got a really great data set gonna do a thing I'm gonna measure a thing and I'm gonna get the paper out And so when you're in those periods, it's very tempted to just kind of march forward very and and there's great science That comes out of that right and there's certain like ambitious projects that don't happen without a whole lot of people doing that but you do also need times when Either as an individual or as a field to allow some fraction of individuals to act that way where you know, you're Trying to forge connections between there you're going down one path But you see a talk about something else and you realize it intersects with the other thing and then you go exploring That aspect of it So I think there's a there's a little bit of attention that the more pressure people feel under the less freedom that they feel to actually explore and sometimes in that exploration is where a lot of those Innovative ideas comes in especially in astronomy where you know everything you look at its base depends on practically every other thing That's out there and so The more you know about stuff the better you can put those pieces together like I there was an old canard I don't know who it dates back to that like a lot of You know a lot of astronomers tend to do some of their most important work like in their 40s It's not like math or something where you know, you're just a kid genius and you Still got a little time left. No, you have a lot of time left for these which goes up You know runs out runs up into 50 Because because it's so many different interacting systems that the more you know about all those different pieces you really start to see those connections and find interesting niches where other people aren't currently occupying it or Taking the tools from one area and applying them to some other some other area. I think the other thing is definitely being Just absolutely brutal on your idea. The idea is that you have in terms of just assessing whether or not they're Actually any good. It's easy to fall in love with your stuff hmm and Just because something's exciting to you doesn't necessarily mean it's going to pan out And this is what I like about proposal writing is putting stuff through that rigorous stress testing about is this exactly the right thing at the right time this is actually going to be fruitful because I think that For there are some kinds of projects where you're very much like resource limited like if you don't have the biggest glass It's just not going to happen But I would say that in most people's just intellectual life. You're more limited by the amount of time you have to do Stuff right like you have ideas, but nobody gives you the time to actually follow it up and so if that's your limiting resource you have to choose your path really why wisely and so being kind of hard on your ideas and trying to do some Credible assessment about whether or not this is actually going to be a useful fruitful direction Early will save you a lot of your time because the time really is I think for a lot of us like our most especially as you go on is is like your most limiting thing and so sometimes like there that comes from Talking to people. It's also very common for people when especially when you are thinking broadly When you look at a field that you're not familiar with everything seems New and you assume nobody's Yeah, right. We have a little bit of ego. We take to it. It's like was everybody anybody ever thought About where bulges come from that's a really interesting question It's like yeah, it's an interesting question They've been like infinite conference proceedings and your conferences on it and papers written and so like you sort of have to So sometimes just talking to people is really good. It's sort of trying to figure out those niches Sometimes fast prototyping you push something all the way through and this is really good for proposals When you do like the the quick and dirty thing just to show that the scale of the answer is something that's actually Interesting because sometimes if you make a measurement and you can only make it to 35 percent That's actually revolutionary because that's enough to really clearly distinguish between models whereas if it's You know is the difference between these models something that needs a five percent precision measurement Are the systematics good enough and sometimes if you work something through you can kind of really see like it's not really in The end going to be exciting to write about do you think it's more important for young person to try to publish the most impactful thing whatever that means or the thing they find the most fun It's like an impossible false dichotomy Yeah, right it's hard right because sometimes the fun thing leads to the you know generally you don't write Your most high-impact work just I'm just gonna sit here and ponder I'm gonna come up with an idea and then do that. There are some people who do work that way But especially an experiment. It's like not the it's not the easiest way and so often There's a sequence to stuff and so sometimes that fun thing is enough that you Acquire the insight you get a better knowledge of the field you develop some new tools and Then that takes you somewhere if you just do fun fun fun little you know two-page research notes over and over again That's maybe not building towards a larger expertise about something. What are young people doing wrong these days like? You are Already You're doing great sweetie Are there are there trends that you worry about at this point with a level of seniority now to look back on I worry about early over specialization in that the field changes all the time and So I've had this experience of having taught a graduate extra galactic class every two years for pushing 20 years And I have to overhaul large sections of it every second time that I teach it Which is a four-year cycle. So what happens is something? So I go to I go to teach it and there will be something new that people are talking about So I need to make sure that people that that goes in there then two years later. There's usually That the questions crystallized like it's come down to Okay, people have really figured out how to talk about this and now people are really trying to decide if it's this or that and then The time after that that I teach it. So it's four years from the beginning It's a one. It's like a bullet point about how something behaves, right? There was all of this work and all of these people madly publishing and fighting with each other sometimes You're trying to fire. Oh, no, it's this way. It's that way. Oh, and then it just becomes this is like that I think because of that if you only know about That thing or you think that so like that thing you're spending all of your time thinking about right now within five years that is Generally not the most interesting question anymore. I like your summary that you know within five or six years The thing that is like keeping up at night has become Like nobody even references what the measurement is anymore. Oh, yeah, commonly. No, no, no, no I have I have things where it was like, yeah, that was a really big discovery and nobody knew that and now it's just like Oh, yeah, that's just how it is. That's like conspicuously close to like your mean PhD time as well in most institutions like from from the time that you walk in the door just post to start this apprenticeship or this training program to become an expert is About the same time scale that people will no longer care about the thing that we tell you on day one is like Except that there is a lot of like lead time Well, it's not it's the mentoring that goes into making sure that you're in the right process there That you can't grab that bolt of lightning the day you walk in here You do the right you have to build the skills, right? I mean that's the thing is like you have to build enough skills that you can you can participate fully in that Global discussion about what the universe is actually like and that does take time and it takes training I think where it maybe starts that where the time scales do start to become mismatched is during the postdoctoral periods where you're supposed to be showing more of more independence more sense of I'm somebody who can really shape an intellectual direction. How do we evaluate good mentorship? How do we evaluate if we're taking care of people well? Because that's something that I'm warning a lot about thinking about these days. Yeah, no, and I've been thinking a lot about it as well for You know some very very large percentage of junior scientist a Lot of the mentoring can happen Informally and you know people just naturally accrete more senior people that they can turn to for advice And they start working on a project and you know kind of just letting stuff roll Isn't isn't the worst and and completely fine, but I think the issues are What happens to the other 30% where a little bit more intentionality would make everybody More successful at reaching their goals, whatever those goals are and even in that 70% Maybe there's more that they could reach or maybe they could be better prepared For whatever the next step is with again a little bit more intentionality and so so yeah, so I mean I've definitely been working really hard since I took over his chair about trying to Identify where those holes are because I think one thing that's happened within the department the department's grown a lot and That makes you know stuff grows the gaps start to become apparent So like another big thing that I'm really I'm conscious of just like personally as a mentor is Helping younger Younger scientists figure out their own story about themselves like we all have really bad voices in our head that tell us a lot of wrong things about ourselves and We often have difficulties in our life when we try to Make our path not fit who we are like So Something I feel like my job as a mentor is to try to help mirror to people what Their actual strengths are and then to also recognize that I've always you know Another thing I've always been very keen on is the fact that usually people's greatest strength is their greatest weakness Yeah, you're a really creative person like you're you're so great at coming up with ideas. That's fantastic Right. That's a really terrific. That's a really terrific skill to have One of the difficulties associated with having a lot of really good ideas is actually finishing Them so that you can move on to the next one or letting something to Develop to kind of like the next level of mastery on that idea So helping people figure out so somebody who's super super creative about a lot of things That's not somebody who should go Down a route where That's not allowed to be seen as a good thing and likewise somebody who's super detailed oriented like that's an incredibly valuable trait On certain projects, but that's maybe not a great match for somebody who you know put them in a position where they have to work completely alone and Don't have some structure around them that could really help you know, so all of these things are Every trait is adaptive in the right environment and helping students Figure out how they like to work how they like to think what they're good at and how they can make choices that are aligned with those things or Also helping them figure out. What are areas where a little more training or more? Intentionality would get them to their their goals like maybe you know a lot of this stuff is trainable Okay, so on Twitter when I when I said that we were gonna do coffee time You represented tea. Yeah, what do you so I have to ask what are you drinking? I'm drinking very generic green tea that I found in my desk. I Am drinking Irish breakfast. I like my tea to be as close to espresso as you can possibly get Can you give me like top three tea places that you found? Okay? I could how about I how about I give you the list of the things that piss me off That's even about teachers. That's even better. I mean number one. This is very this is really big on my list These places you go where every? single tea that they offer is some unholy mixture of weird crap and this would be like if you go to a tea store and You happen to want a cup of coffee because you came along with me on an outing and they said oh Here is our coffee selection. We have vanilla hazelnut We have no that's okay It's a menu filled with tea and every one of the equivalent of vanilla hazelnut, right? You should always have at least a couple of the basics Before you add on the case that's number one. Okay number two milk versus cream Yeah, which which is it? milk, okay, I mean and So, you know you go and you said like I'd like a tea with milk cream. Okay. It's like Conferences and whatnot if you have an urn that has hot water in it for tea and it's an urn That's previously held coffee. Yeah It's really bad. I mean, it's really like you're licking the inside of an old coffee pot and try it Oh, it's terrible. It's bad coffee too to be fair It's worse I don't drink the coffee, but I can guarantee you that the tea flavor is really oh and then there are these places where the fussy coffee places sometimes will get fussy about tea and will not Let you Control how long your tea brews like they'll brew it back there and then bring it out to you and it's like No tea drinker, right? Like I mean some people like it a little and we have we're used to that measure control It's anybody in town doing it. Well, is there is their recommendation? So cafe Vita on Fremont app, so it's not all cafe Vita We didn't get the dogs People for life. I have a I'm kind of two time in my pit bulls. I have a I have a crush on a Very very weird Instagram Chihuahua mix And and I can kind of see the appeal of maybe going to the like small completely absurd Dot no, I know I know right. It's all about the temperament right sex as the owner of the absurd people Yeah, well, maybe this is continuing my intellectual journey as I started with like a reasonably sound pretty normal ish pit bull and then fostered I mean God bless her. She's put together wrong Insert picture from Julian's Instagram feed of cheers cheers. Thanks