Welcome back for another great day of nanoscience at the Foundry’s Annual User Meeting! Some participants signed up for a tour of the Foundry facilities early this morning, but returned to the auditorium in time for the start of today’s program.

In the Foundry’s inaugural Poster Slam hosted by staff scientist, Nate Hohman, students who entered in the poster competition presented their work in the form of a single slide. Each slam participant presented a preview of their poster in just 60 seconds!

In the afternoon session, we were introduced to new members of the Foundry staff, along with a quick primer about each of their research programs that they’ll be starting. 

Carolyn Bertozzi, formerly director of the Molecular Foundry and now the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, gave an inspiring talk about how work started at the Molecular Foundry has led to new developments in creating new cancer therapies and to spinning out a company to bring their discoveries to market.

Following the morning plenary talks today, users interacted with the User Executive Committee in a town hall meeting. Below are a few of the suggestions that came up during the discussion.

Supriya Jaiswal of Astrileux Corporation gave a refreshing talk today on a start-up’s effort to tackle a ten year industry problem. Jaiswal explained that we live in the era of zettabye computing – we use 10 nm chips (what your fingernail grows in 1 second!) and we’ve manufactured more chips than there are stars in the Milky Way!

David Awschalom, professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, gave a humorous spin on quantum mechanics during his keynote address (no pun intended!).

Jeffrey Neaton, Director of the Molecular Foundry and Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences, kicked off the User Meeting with a Molecular Foundry update. In case you missed it, here are some highlights from the update: