Presidential visit

On Friday, a Nobel prizewinner will be coming to speak at MIT. Now that's not such a big thing: I see a Nobel prizewinner around most weeks (not because I see many - although I might without recognising, they're only very minor celebrities around here - but because I recognise one and he's generally at the Thursday physics seminar). This time, though, it's a peace prizewinner: the 2009 winner in fact.

He'll be talking about clean energy, obviously an important topic in today's (and tomorrow's) world, and an important field of research at MIT. We have been told that the distribution of tickets was heavily weighted towards students, but I've also heard a rumour that there'll be ~50 students in a 1000 seat auditorium, so I'm not quite sure who to believe. I might watch his talk live in one of the MIT lecture theatres that will be watching it, or I might wait and watch it online (perhaps if I wait until Saturday, I could watch it on my new MP3 Video Player).

Now, how do I think Obama should lead the world towards cleaner energy? Well, obviously a major part of executive office is the creative investment of money in those areas that will give the greatest reward to humankind. So some money to support energy research wouldn't go astray. But to whom should it be directed? Clearly climate change is primarily a young people's problem, so I think fellowships for graduate students would be the right place. As for the students' personal backgrounds, such a global problem needs fellowships offered to students all around the world, not just US students like most fellowships at the moment. A student from a country with close language, cultural and political ties to the US would be good, though, because such a student is more likely to be able to stay in the US or return to their own country as their research needed. And their academic background? Well, clearly combatting climate change needs fundamental scientific advances that are applicable in the real world, so the students should be coming from the physical sciences, looking to apply pure science skills to applied contexts. Transport phenomena, applicable in technologies like batteries and also to other less directly climate-related situations (eg. desalination), sounds like a good example. I wonder if there's anyone around here who could make use of such a fellowship?

I have indeed been trying to work out whether I'll be able to find sufficient funding to work with my preferred professor. I'm not as optimistic as I was previously, now that I've explored the teaching opportunities and found they're not as straightforward as I had hoped. I'll go to my first group meeting tomorrow, but it will be a long time before I can be sure that Martin will indeed be my supervisor.