• Question: Why did you pick your career, and how do you think it will affect the future?

    Asked by anon-207860 to Michelle, Silvia on 2 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Michelle Valkanas

      Michelle Valkanas answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      I picked my specific research because it put together one of my favorite topics (microbiology) and something I feel like is extremely important (environmental conservation). Bacteria are not only everywhere, but they are involved in most things that surround us. They are the reason you get nutrients from the food you eat, why we have some of the best cheeses, how plants can grow efficiently, and what is most important to my research, they can remove contaminants from the environment.

      I think that all around the world there is a lot of devastation occurring to our environment. This damage comes in all sorts of forms whether it is carbon dioxide emissions, mining discharges releasing metals into our drinking water, or entire plant and animal species going extinct. I want to do something to help return the environment to a healthier state. Drinking water is necessary to our survival and so my research looks for affordable ways to make sure we have clean drinking water in the future.

    • Photo: Silvia Imberti

      Silvia Imberti answered on 5 Mar 2019: last edited 5 Mar 2019 10:42 am

      I always liked how physics can explain many different phenomena with few key concepts, so for example WAVES concepts can be used to explain some of what we commonly recognise as waves (in water!) as well as sound, music, colours all the way up to signal transmission.
      In a similar way, I liked that with the same bricks, say carbon, you can build materials with properties as diverse as the graphite in your pencils and the diamonds in my treasure chest (I wish).

      See here btw for how to turn one into the other:
      the right way: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-scientists-puzzle-graphite-diamond.html
      the wrong way aka Diamonds Aren’t Forever: https://physics.aps.org/story/v22/st5

      Is it going to affect future?
      In short yes, it always does, in the sense that it advances our knowledge of what underlying structure (where the atoms are) and dynamics (how the atom moves) underpins the properties of materials. This in turn will help us building new materials and exploiting the properties of the ones we have already.

      See also this long answer here: /waterm19-zone/question/do-you-think-your-job-is-beneficial-to-society-and-the-world/

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