Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme, interviews Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics.
Discover why Dr. Robert Brown would like to meet the world famous concert pianist Yuja Wang and the question he would like to ask her. Learn of his human story; his inventions, blueprints and patents and his rich career to date, spanning the physics, education, defence, space, technology and music industries.
Update March 2017:
Further to the publication of this article in 2016, Yuja Wang has responded to Dr. Robert Brown’s request to meet her and invited him to one of her concerts.
Background Dr. Robert Brown FIEE, FInstP, MAE :
Dr. Robert Brown is a polymath, a whirlwind of curiosity with an ear for music and has a fascination with light.
Dr. Robert Brown’s resume is held at the American Institute of Physics.
Highly topical:
Dr. Robert Brown holds 2 Patents for blueprints of a Quantum Computer on QC – US 8,633,729 granted in 2014 and US 9,244,333 granted in 2016, both available from the USPTO or via Google Patents.
His is a scientific and technical professional with decades of experience in photonics research – the study of light, development and long-term strategic vision-direction; military, corporate and academic. His has held leadership roles as an Executive Director, Non-Exec Board member/Treasurer, Research Director, CTO and Full Professor (20 years).
Dr. Brown has extensive business experience in Asia: China, Japan, Korea – and Russia. He has expertise in theory, simulation and experimental photonics and nano-photonics: lasers, photo-detectors, optical-fibers and systems; large numbers of Patents-granted and research-publications.
He owns 65 IP Disclosures & Patents; 12 Pending and has written 125 peer-reviewed research papers which have been published.
Current positions:
He holds the position of CEO at the American Institute of Physics; also Adjunct Full Professor, University of California Irvine: Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic.
He is a Member of The Cosmos Club.
Past positions:
At the Advanced Technology Center at Rockwell Collins.
CTO at Ostendo Technologies Inc. CA.
Professor & Director of Nanotechnology for Northern Ireland, at Queens University Belfast.
Executive Director of the UK Institute of Physics.
Head of Opto-electronics Research for Sharp Laboratories of Europe in Oxford, UK.
Elected Member of the European Academy of the Sciences and Arts (Academia Europaea).
At the UK Ministry of Defence ‘Royal Signals and Radar Establishment’ Dr. Brown invented a new electronic correlator, photo-detector, laser-diode and optical-fiber technologuies that have since been developed into successful products for experiments involving jet engines, macromolecules, submarines, and aboard the Space Shuttle three times.
Principal Flutist, Chandos Orchestra. Music is the other side of Dr. Brown’s life. “I am huge fan of Yuja Wang, who some say is the greatest living pianist,” he remarks.
So, Dr. Brown is a scientist of photonics and optics, an inventor, creator and musician. He is also a traveler and excellent communicator.
Covered in Dr. Robert Brown’s ideaXme interview:
The Big Ideas:
Globalizing AIP.
Promoting diversity at AIP.
Research proposal to see into people’s brains using light technology, for which funding is sought!
3D Endoscopy as a surgical tool.
Teaching methods to tutor future creators and students of physics.
Theory stimulation, experimental photonics and nano photonics, lasers, photo-detectors, optical fibres and systems.
The Human Story:
The Spark – a book he read as a 3-year-old.
Glandular fever and a persistent maths teacher who helped to mould the course of his life.
A favourite teacher who instilled in him a love for physics.
A mentor he met in his early 20’s, “without whom none of this would be possible”.
His time as a professional musician.
The support of his parents.
20 years of teaching experience. Professor of Nanotechnology, Queens University Belfast and later Adjunct Professor, The Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Centre, California University, Irvine.
Dr. Brown’s answers to questions from:
Jaideep Prabhu, Nehru Professor Judge Business School, Cambridge University and Co-Author Frugal Innovation, Published by The Economist Books.
Gitte Pedersen, Founder, Genomic Expression.
Vinita Marwaha Madhill, Founder, Rocket Women.
And of course, his question for Yuja Wang!
Below, read the full interview transcript.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:00:00] So who are you?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:00:01] (Laughs). That’s a very good question.
A Lifetime of Curiosity Has Created a Fascinating Career for Dr. Robert Brown
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:00:03] I sometimes wonder that myself. I am a complex personality and I’ve done many, many things throughout my life in different countries and with different institutions and institutes and such like. I’m really a creature of great curiosity and that’s not just in the sciences, but that’s in the arts as well. I’m a real mixture and a model of a person in many ways. I have this insatiable curiosity about science. I’ve had, in the past when I’ve been a performing musician, an insatiable curiosity about music. I have, to this day and will probably continue until I fall over, an insatiable curiosity for travel. So, I have been all over this planet to so many different parts of the world.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:00:45] Out of all the things you’ve just spoken about, what do you love most?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:00:49] Oh, goodness. My family I have a wonderful family in England. I have children and now grandchildren recently, and they are a huge part of my life. I’d love to see them a lot more than I am capable of doing. Then beyond that, obviously professional interest is the thing that drives me every day of my life. I do enjoy getting out of bed every day and coming to work because every day is very, very different.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:01:15] Whether it’s research, which has been a mainstay of my career for the last 40 years or so, or my current position leading the American Institute of Physics, which is not research, but it’s very much underpinning what our research scientists and colleagues throughout the world are doing in the world of physics and the physical sciences. I’m still the new kid on the block, very much the newbie in this position. Every day is different. It brings very unusual and frankly, great challenges. So, piecing all that together I try to make sense of what we do as an institute in relation to our physicists, physical scientists, researchers and administrators and suchlike, not only in the United States, but around the world. That to me, is tremendous motivation and challenge at the present at this moment in time.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:02:05] So what are your objectives as the fairly new CEO of the American Institute of Physics? How will you make a difference there?
Globalising and Diversifying the American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:02:14] That’s the $64000 question. When the board interviewed me, they said that they were looking for an agent for change. This is a long established, I think, 85, 86-year-old institute. There hasn’t been a huge amount of change in recent decades. We’re a federation of member societies, including the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the astronomers, the crystallographers, the sound experts, the lot. We have about 125,000 members through our membership scheme. The question is what do we change and how do we shape an institute, so it really delivers a great value proposition to everybody into the future. And what do we change? We want to be an agent of change.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:02:56] So, I really have three platforms which I’ve initiated since I’ve been here, very much with the board approval. Clearly, one has to have very strong forward support to make any significant differences at all. I’ve been driving the institute in these three directions, firstly, to generate more for the societies, to be even more inclusive across the physical sciences. So, to grow the membership and to supply an ever-better value proposition. We do for our member societies what they cannot do for themselves. For example, media operations, global media operations are something which no single member society is large enough to undertake on its own. But, as a collective, we can make a very significant impact and raise the visibility and value of member societies, not only in this country, but overseas as well.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:03:52] So that’s proposition one. Proposition two is something that I’ve spent a good deal of my life doing, and that is globalizing the American Institute. America for decades has been the rock, the real mountains of physics, the leader of physics in many ways in the world. In the last 20, 30 years, we’ve watched physics and physical sciences gravitate more and more to Asia. Now you find a huge number of scientists and a vast amount of investment in China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and all places in that direction. So, we must maintain our relevance and our connectedness and our leadership roles in physics. We have to be totally integrated as best as we can with our Asian colleagues as they’re in the ascendancy and we’re not in the descendancy, but we’re certainly declining to some degree. I’m trying to think of a very long-term vision, and we have to be as connected as we can with the sciences, physical sciences and engineering, particularly in Asia, which is where the current powerhouse is developing. Last, but by no means least, I think a focus on these activities which make life for the physical scientist as good as possible. That’s where we address the issues of minorities, women, the LGBT community, where we address the framework within which we as scientists operate and how we can make that better and better, particularly the communications aspects globally. So, then you look at the information that might be translated, for example. If we translated all our material into Mandarin and Spanish, we’d reach another two thirds of the planet.
The Importance of Women Scientists and Leaders in Physics
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:05:37] You mentioned women a few minutes ago, which leads me on to a question from Vinita Marwaha Madill, who is the founder of Rocket Women.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:05:47] She’s particularly interested in hearing what the American Institute of Physics and you leading the American Institute of Physics are planning to do to encourage more women to study physics and to move into physics as a profession, whether it’s research or whether it’s leading an institute like yours.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:06:10] It’s a great question. we’re very fortunate to have some fabulous women, women scientists, physicists and physical scientists. It has been difficult to move the needle to get more and more women to come into the profession.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:06:24] So we work for our member societies and I would point to the program, the very substantial program for the American Physical Society, which is one of our member societies where they work hard to have a department devoted to developing women, minorities, members of the LGBT community and such like activities. They have a whole program of activities which draws people in, particular outreach activities, which allow us to catch scientists very young and give them the enthusiasm and the opportunity to get involved in what we do every day as a part of our profession.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:07:00] So there’s the outreach to try and catch them young. We try to catch them young through the Society of Physics students, which is an undergraduate body. We have many thousands of students, many hundreds of chapters throughout this country and elsewhere in the world where we can really give opportunities to our young scientists, down through high schools.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:07:24] We can raise awareness through these organizations of women who’ve made it, women who are in great leadership roles in the physical sciences today. Here in the United States, the leader of the National Science Foundation (NSF) is France Cordova, who’s an outstanding scientist in her own right. So, this country, the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF), is led by a woman scientist. Then look at the physicists that we have leading our member societies. We have Beth Cunningham, who’s a physicist who leads as the chief executive of the American Association of Physics Teachers. She has a very aggressive program that is very valuable in trying to move forward the role of women and the opportunities for women in physics and physics teaching.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:08:10] The American Physical Society (APS) itself has two women leaders. We have Kate Kirby, who’s the chief executive, a terrific role model for women. We also have the incoming new president Laura Greene, who’s down in Florida, a great research scientist in her own right. These women are fantastic role models and examples for women as to what they can achieve. They can go right to the top. There isn’t a glass ceiling. These people have made it off their own efforts and they’re bringing a lot of women forward at this time. They’re working very hard individually to try and raise awareness and create opportunities for women.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:08:48] I’ll just mention one or two others within my own member society cohort here. My colleague Judith Flippen-Anderson was the president of The Crystallographic Association. My colleague Judy Dubno is a past president of the Acoustical Society of America. There’s Faith Morrison from Michigan, who is a past president of the Society of Radiologists. I’ve just mentioned half a dozen scientists who are in great leadership roles within this country. In our physics undergraduate physics convention at the Bay Area in November this year, our lead speaker is Jocelyn Bell Burnell from the United Kingdom who is herself a tremendous ambassador for women in physics and such an inspiration to everyone.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:09:39] We’ve also had many famous physicists winning prizes from the American Institute and the APS. People like Helen Quinn, who is so big in this country in educational physics and is a tremendous role model for women. I don’t need to go on, I just mentioned half a dozen outstanding female scientists who are really making a difference in their everyday lives and who work passionately and very hard towards trying to create awareness that physics is a great profession for women to be in. They have a lot to offer and they really can achieve the very highest heights.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:10:13] You’ve been a professor for over 20 years of your working life for two different universities. Queen’s University in Belfast and the Beckman Institute in California. Could you tell us a little bit about your research and your specific interests?
One Book Inspired Decades of Research Into Optics and Photonics
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:10:44] Yes, of course. I’ve always been fascinated by optics and light, right from the age of three. My very first book was A Ladybird book called Light, Mirrors and Lenses. I think I’m going to blame the rest of my life on that book.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:11:01] I’ve always been fascinated by light and colour and anything to do with lenses and images and suchlike. So, my undergraduate studies were at Royal Holloway College in London. The director there then was Samuel Tolansky who used light techniques to examine moon dust in the late sixties and the early seventies, I found that very inspirational and that’s why I went there. There were colleagues that were heavily involved with early days of laser research across the late sixties and early seventies. I found that inspirational and it really drove me into a lifetime of optics and photonics.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:11:38] Did you ever have the opportunity of meeting Professor Charles KO? I understand he was a trailblazer in fibre optics.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:11:48] He was a generation ahead and I would’ve loved to have met him. I’ve met many of the great optics leaders of our era, the more modern era.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:12:00] To this day I still have a very strong interest in applied fibre optics, phonics measurements which we’ll come to in a second.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:12:09] I will quickly traverse through my career in optics. I went to the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern in England for 12 or 13 years and specialised in what we call photon correlation techniques. That is detecting single particles of light, single photons and looking at their statistical processes so that we could discover what was changing their colour, perhaps velocity of articles, moving in fluids, motion of little particles suspended in liquids, so we could get particle size information.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:12:39] There, I was shining laser beams and measuring light properties from different experiments and learning how to process statistical information about light.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:12:54] From there, slightly indirectly, I went to Sharp Laboratories of Europe in Oxford, which didn’t exist when I arrived. I was appointed Head of Opto-electronics research and development. We created a new research centre which exists to this day on the Oxford Science Park, specifically to look at laser diodes for DVD players and Blu ray, to look at the optics of liquid crystal displays (LCD), such as the screens that you and I are using on our laptops at the present time. So, we created a research centre there with a lot of female PhD colleagues, from 1989 to 1998.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:13:40] There was a huge focus there for 10 years, on very applied optics and photonics for technologies that you and I now use every day of our lives, routinely. A lot of it came out of my colleagues’ work in Oxford and I went to the Institute of Physics in London and Bristol as editorial director, running 37 physics research journals. That’s where I really learnt something about publishing and how research is dealt with at the very highest levels so that we select, hopefully, the best quality possible.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:14:18] I spent three years in Northern Ireland, leading nanotechnology for that region at a time when The Department of Trade and Industries (DTI), as it then was in Britain, was very much interested in industrial regeneration of that terribly war-torn region.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:14:36] How do
you get employment going again? How do you regenerate in engineering and start to build jobs and a community there? Queen’s University Belfast was a wonderful place along with University of Ulster to have as a base to do that with such very powerful people in Northern Ireland like Seagate just outside Londonderry. So, we had some great collaborations there and great opportunities to develop nano-optics, nanophotonics and applications which might lead to industrial regeneration.
Can Nanotechnology Help People All Over the World?
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:15:06] If I might interject there, whilst we’re on the subject of nanotechnology, I have a question from Professor Jaideep Prabhu, the Nehru Professor at Judge Business School. He says, “Dear Robert, I would be very interested to know what implications nanotechnology might have for developing affordable solutions for low income communities in places like India and Africa? For instance, in developing water filters, lighting and cooking solutions, dealing with pollution, etc. Your thoughts would be much appreciated.”
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:15:44] Okay, well, I’m not an expert in many of those topics. There are a lot of challenges in nanotechnology. We certainly saw this in Ireland. A lot of the nanotechnology that we’ve been pursuing these last 20 or 30 years is related to and requires a lot of high capital expenditure on very specialist equipment operating down at the nanometres and few nanometres scale.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:16:08] There are a lot of countries around the world that really cannot afford to go that route at all. We can do some wonderful research, certainly in the wealthier Western countries, using very expensive equipment and we’re lucky to be funded by our national agencies to be able to develop clusters such as instrumentation to allow us to do some very fine and very fundamental development in both science and technology. But that’s not good enough for the developing world where they just don’t have the investment or the infrastructure to support that.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:16:39] I sort of recognise that to some extent in Northern Ireland, we had a very limited budget for our work, but we also wanted to create industrial outputs for other technologies. So, some of the work that came out of there was nanomagnetics, which ended up in Seagate hard drives. Some of the work was as simple as nanoparticulates which were applied to clothing to stop smells developing, basically as biological inhibitors.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:17:09] Sometimes you have to think away from these big highfalutin experiments and pieces of equipment. There are two areas that did immediately ring out in my mind. Firstly, nanotechnology has been around forever, it’s what chemists have been doing for decades, if not 100 years. So, there’s an enormous amount of chemistry which is naturally just nanotechnology, forming colloidal suspensions by mixing chemicals and liquids together and just letting nanoparticles naturally fall out of chemical reactions is a way of generating beautiful nanoparticle situations for whatever the application. Then, sometimes you don’t want to have to do lithography and all those processes that we do in clean rooms to create nanostructures and nano samples.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:17:56] There are many people, particularly in the UK in leading universities who have been pursuing self-assembly technologies and techniques. People have been using DNA structures, 3D scaffolds and other scaffolds where you can, just through natural processes, allow nanoparticles to take up certain shapes and forms and structures because you supply them as an underlying template. This is a really inexpensive technology and it’s the sort of technology that frankly could do it probably in the poorest country on the planet and may actually allow them to keep up with everybody and maybe even leapfrog us because, in the West, so much of the work is very expensive and sometimes we really miss the simple solutions.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:18:45] I do wonder from time to time if we are pursuing aggressively enough the lower cost solutions and the self-assembly solutions. I think that’s an area which I would like to see much more investment in and research development of in the future. I think that will get us into industrial scale-up activities and new business opportunities much faster than trying to develop a lot of today’s technology, which is very difficult to scale and supremely expensive to scale as well.
3D Endoscopes Are an Exciting New Venture in MedTech
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:19:14] Could you tell us a little bit about your work within health, for example, your current work through the Beckman Institute, I believe is in the area of 3D endoscopes.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:19:27] Could you talk about that?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:19:29] Absolutely. I came from Belfast directly to California and I was very fortunate soon after I arrived in California to come associated with the Beckman Laser Institute And Medical Clinic at the University of California in Irvine, which was very close to my home there. I met with Bruce Tromberg, who’s an outstanding director of that institute and has really been the inspiration for that institute for decades now.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:19:57] His research and indeed the team’s research is very much focused on the use of laser techniques, light scattering techniques, diffuse optical spectroscopic techniques to look inside breast material and perhaps one day in the future even brain material, to detect tumours, cancerous tumours and to try and identify them very early on and to be able to localise exactly where they are. For example, inside a breast, so that one can develop strategies for dealing with them and catching them much earlier.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:20:32] We catch them with mammography, yet to be fully proven but nevertheless, the aim there is to try and create much more competent diagnostic techniques than we have at the present time to find these cancers. I’m going to speculate now, why not use three-dimensional imaging inside a breast to drive a 3D robotic surgical tool which might be able to do lumpectomy rather than complete mastectomy at a very early stage of the cancer development or some other process or procedure? I’m not going to speculate wildly because it always raises a lot of over expectation in people and I don’t want to disappoint people.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:21:10] This is ongoing research. It’s in the clinical trials phase at the present time. I think there’s plenty of data being acquired and it will be fascinating, frankly fascinating to see where optics and photonics can lead us in terms of medical clinical detections.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:21:25] Now let’s turn to the 3D endoscope. There are already in the marketplace some 3D endoscopes based on fibre optics and suchlike, but they’re at a very limited capability. What we would like to do is extend both the 3D endoscopic process itself so that as we push an endoscope through your GI tract or somewhere else in your body, we see not only just a forward look, but maybe the sideways look and the backwards look and we can build a complete surround 3D image of what’s going on inside you through an endoscopic probe.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:21:58] That’s the kind of thing we can’t do at the present time, but is a lovely potential combination of photonics and imaging technologies and then very big data processing to be able create surround 3D imaging so maybe a surgeon can get inside and be able to see what is going on and feel what it’s like to be inside you looking at maybe a polyp in your intestine or some other problem with another organ like a kidney or a liver or maybe prostate or whatever.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:22:27] This is extremely early days and that’s highly speculative. All we really want to do and all we’ve really achieved so far is to work out techniques by which we can put some of these optics deep inside you through endoscopic probes and combine that with 3D imaging information, so that we make it much easier for the surgeon to be able to work in 3D instead of 2D on a flat screen. Also, to be able to transmit diagnostic information back to whoever is looking deep inside you.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:23:01] We’ve got a long way to go yet. I think our major contribution now has been to be able to quantify very precisely what is going on in the three-dimensional space inside you that we’re looking at. So, we can measure the shape of polyp, perhaps. We can possibly diagnose whether it’s malignant or benign or just assist. Also, we can go in at a later time, maybe in a week’s time or a month’s time and measure it again and see whether it’s grown or see whether it’s shrunk. We have the possibility of doing in situ surgery much more precisely. So, we kind of open up possibilities by quantifying three-dimensional space and then bringing other techniques in, such as diagnostic techniques or perhaps eradication techniques or whatever.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:23:48] It’s an ongoing program very much in its early stages, but really pointing to novel uses of photonics for the benefit of people and the benefit of anybody anywhere on this planet, maybe one day.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:23:58] I have a final question from Gitte Pedersen, who is the founder of Genomic Expression and to a very large degree, you have answered this question already. Just in case you have anything further to add, I will read out her question. “My question to Dr. Brown is more on his vision for future applications of laser light technology in health and more specifically, in genetics.” Maybe we haven’t answered the genetic side of the question.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:24:30] I’m not going to even pretend that I’m an expert in genetics but there is some distinct opportunity, it would seem, from these early days of research and experimentation in optogenetics, where there’s chemical modification and sensitisation of, for example, neurons to laser light, maybe we can control the flow of information or maybe we can use this for diagnostic tools. Maybe we could even use it as some sort of cure.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:24:56] I know that there’s a large body of people out there doing research in this area. Frankly, I’m not the right person to ask about this, but I’m acutely aware that there is real potential, real promise and it’s in the area where there’s a lot of new investment going. I would say watch this space. I think it’s extremely early days. It would be wrong to speculate, overly speculate about where it might get to.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:25:16] This idea of marrying laser lights to human flesh, skin and bone, is what we’re doing in Irvine and many other research centres around the world. This is yet another wonderful development which does seem to have a great deal of promise that people are getting excited about the early results. So, I would say watch this space and listen to the other experts perhaps tell you about the real opportunities. It’s certainly something we should be getting excited about, and I’m clear in my own mind that it’s an area we should be investing a lot of attention and probably quite a lot of research dollars in at this time.
Teaching By Example
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:25:53] You’ve been a professor, as we said earlier, for over 20 years. What type of teacher are you?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:26:00] Goodness. I know that my ratings are OK. In other words, the student feedback has generally been positive.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:26:11] I am trying to be a leader and a teacher in a very hands on way. I really like to sit down one on one with students and colleagues. I like to lecture in a very informal way. I like to lecture almost as a conversation rather than as a formal lecture. I like to talk about experiments that we’ve done and why we went about them and how we went about them and what the challenges and the problems were and how we set about overcoming some of those to get the results that one day we got after a lot of hard work and many missteps. We’ve made lots and lots of mistakes. We don’t give up and we keep going and eventually finally get the results we deserve for our labors.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:26:54] So I try to teach by example. I try to teach in a friendly, conversational way. I do spend a lot of time planning and preparing the tools, as I think everybody does who takes their responsibilities seriously but I try to do it in an informal way and use the latest technologies, because that’s really what everyone’s trying to use at this point in time. I’m not sure if that answers your question?
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:27:20] Yes, it does. Thank you very much.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:27:22] You mentioned right at the beginning of this interview that there was an inspirational spark that happened when you were three years old, that started your journey into photonics, research and physics. I was wondering if you had a favourite teacher who encouraged that interest early on?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:27:46] I never really talked about it to anyone except, I think my wife. That is that at high school, I went to the Wakeman School in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and there was an inspirational physics teacher whose name was Beryl Lloyd and she was a very young and dynamic physics and chemistry teacher.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:28:05] How fascinating that it was a woman.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:28:08] Yes, absolutely. She was immensely helpful and supportive to me. I felt at times I was getting absolutely 100 percent one on one tuition from her, even though she had a huge class. She took her responsibilities very seriously. I think she was a model teacher, somebody who really persuaded me that physics was my future profession.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:28:32] Were you good at all subjects at school or did you have a particular interest in science and physics?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:28:39] I had a particular interest in science, physics and music. I played the flute at a very early age and I still play to this day and I had a wonderful time through my 20s, 30s and 40s, playing with many different orchestras and ensembles and in different parts of the world. I’m no longer performing professionally because frankly, my job these days is just too big to allow for the practice time to maintain the standards that you really want to maintain to be able to walk onto the stage and really give your best possible performances.
Falling Ill With Glandular Fever Was One of the Best Things to Ever Happen to Dr. Robert Brown
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:29:14] The route to physics was not simple. I was very poor at mathematics until I was about 14 or 15.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:29:21] My goodness, that’s hard to believe.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:29:25] Yes, I know. But this is how things changed!
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:29:27] I had the good fortune to get glandular fever. I was laid up in bed for some weeks, ill. I couldn’t go to school. My math’s master lived across the road from me and he came over and he tutored me every night for the weeks that I spent in bed recovering from glandular fever and one on one tuition from a dedicated teacher of math’s took me from being frankly at the bottom of the class to getting that big aha moment.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:29:54] I finally understood what the heck all the symbology stuff was all about. I understood the concept and he drilled the concept into me over one or two months to the point where I never looked back. I’ve never had a problem dealing with the math’s. The math is so fundamental to everything we do in physics. If you can’t do the math’s, you’re going to struggle forever. Because I could do the math, the physics became so much easier. To this day, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Falling ill for a few weeks.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:30:24] Do you have siblings?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:30:25] I have a sister who has had a wonderful career through the Royal Air Force, and she now lives in Uxbridge with her husband who is also in the Royal Air Force. They have just returned from the United States. They’ve been at Oceania Air Force Base in Virginia Beach. I’ve been very lucky to have my sister quite close by for a while.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:30:46] Then I have two sons who are both scientists and engineers and three grandchildren. Who knows what they will turn out to be.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:30:53] What about your parents?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:30:55] My father was very interested in technology and particularly interested, again in optics. He was a photographer in his spare time. He did a lot of photography during the Second World War in some of the camps in Germany, for example, which I think was a grueling exercise for him. I saw a lot of his photographs; they were quite horrific. We often talked about photography and optics.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:31:22] My mother was a very loving and very caring person who we worked a lot with the Red Cross and with other agencies. Wherever she could work to help other people, she was always there. So, between them, I had a great deal of support. She was tremendously helpful. And my father really helped lead me forward into technology. I got a great deal of encouragement from him. He was very fond of cars and taking out the bits and mending them and putting them back together. So, these sort of technical and engineering type activities were always there and being done around the family.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:31:57] What about mentors? Have you ever been mentored?
A Lifelong Mentoring Relationship
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:32:01] Yes, and I still to this day have a mentor. I think it’s vitally important. As a young scientist I tried to meet the great and the good. I realised early on that if you want to be the best and I’ve always had that aspiration, try and be as good as possible and look absolutely at the frontiers, the next most impossible problem or the next thing that we don’t really understand. I’ve always wanted to work there.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:32:24] I was extremely fortunate very early in my career to go to the Radar Establishment in Malvern and meet Roy Pike, who is an Emeritus Professor at King’s College to this day. We’ve stayed in touch these last 40 years. I haven’t worked with him now for more than 20 years. We still routinely contact each other. I would say that his leadership, his guidance, his mentoring, particularly through my times in Malvern and then in Oxford Sharp labs and one or two other places. Him making available opportunities for me to go and try things and see other sides of science and technology and his mentorship was fundamental to everything I’ve done. I freely acknowledge that I could not have done a tiny fraction of what I’ve done today without Roy Pike’s incredible interest and backing and support and guidance and deep teaching over the years.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:33:22] How did that come about?
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:33:24] How did it come about that moment when he offered to be your mentor? Or maybe you dropped a few hints? How did it all come about?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:33:35] So while I was working at a company which is now called Malvern Instruments, and I was a young research development engineer, development physicist, I think I was called, which is a sort of a funny title. We were working on a contract for the Royal Radar Establishment next door, the government’s central electronics research facility next door. We were working on a contract to build a fast correlator to go and measure these statistical properties of photons that I talked about at the opening of the interview.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:34:02] Pike would come and visit us routinely to make sure that we were doing the right things and producing the results that he and his research team over the other side of the wire and the government research centre wanted to be able to use. I had the great pleasure of just meeting him and talking to him informally, and I’m sure I think I dropped a hint, but I wasn’t particularly happy doing what I was doing. I loved the work I was doing, but I wasn’t particularly happy in the organisation that I was in for all sorts of reasons. He invited me to interview. He said, would you like to join the team? I was 21, 22, 23, something like that. Very green and certainly lacking in confidence in those days. I’ve grown a little confidence since then.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:34:51] Pike brought me into the Radar Establishment. I was interviewed by many of his team and I was singularly fortunate. I think it was probably the best piece of fortune, apart from my physics teacher in my teens, that I’ve had in my career, to be given this incredible privilege, the incredible opportunity to go and work with the finest in Britain in quantum optics and photonics and lasers at that time in the early to mid 1970s. That set me up for a lifetime. So, yes, it came about sort of by accident, but slightly engineered.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:35:25] Do you have a mentee?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:35:28] I have one or two students. I’ve had one in particular at University of California at Irvine who’s just graduated with his master’s degree. I’m absolutely thrilled for him. We’ve had an awful lot of fun developing some of the 3D endoscopic technology I was just talking about. In my current employment as chief executive of the American Institute of Physics, I think my colleagues wouldn’t mind me saying that I do from time to time a little bit of mentoring and working things out one on one with them. I wouldn’t call it mentoring, but I think it’s a bleak mentoring.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:36:06] You mentioned earlier that you are endlessly curious.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:36:12] Is there a big idea that you would jump at the opportunity of working on if somebody gave you the opportunity?
Entering the Brain Using Light Technology
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:36:20] Yes, I would. I would very much like to get into ways that we can use the laser technology that we’ve developed over these decades. Now we’ve had 30, 40 years of developing these single photon counting and single photon correlation techniques and we’re starting to apply them in biomedicine for breast cancer research and development, I would love to be able to have the money and the time and the team around me to be able to move those techniques and those technologies into even more remote areas and more accessible areas of the body.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:36:52] I would love to see all this work migrate to measurements inside the human brain. I would like to be able to measure brain function better. I would love to be able to use these techniques to identify brain cancers and other problems within the brain. But the problem, which stops this at the moment is the shell, the skull that we have, which doesn’t allow laser light to penetrate the brain unless it’s really quite a long wavelength. So, there are some real technical challenges and some supremely difficult medical challenges as well.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:37:22] I would like to go into the brain, but I would also like to develop some of these technologies for liver cancer and kidney cancer and pancreatic cancer. I think those are much easier problems to solve than the brain problem. The big idea would be taking these laser techniques and really get into how the brain is operating and where the problems are and identifying them and fixing them. That may take decades of work with serious investment. That’s a sort of big long-term dream.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:37:50] How would you attract investment into something like that? Would it be government investment, or would it be a combination of institutes, universities, governments all coming together?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:38:04] Yes, I’ve found through my entire career that showing a few early experimental results tends to bring on the funding very much more quickly than talking about it. So, I’d be looking for some seed money to try some very simple experiments using existing technologies on certain well identified problems. Maybe just simple detection of a cancer growing in the brain. Could we do it in an area where we can have more easy access? So, the skull is quite thin in some places, maybe we can do some research about the very thin areas to see if we can get some early data to give funders the confidence and encouragement.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:38:42] The Science Foundation, such as they are, find it quite difficult. They say that they fund a lot of interdisciplinary research internally. They find it quite difficult to fund interdisciplinary research because how do you judge the physics and how do you judge the engineering? How do you judge the medical side of things and the biological side of things? How do you put together the team that can make sense of all of this and decide whether the funding and the directions of research are appropriate? So, I would certainly go to the funding agencies. NSF would be a good place to start.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:39:13] I’d also go to the military because they’re very interested in brain function for soldiers. So, places like Darpa are very interested in the brain. In fact, they have a brain program here in the United States, which is really getting underway at this point in time. I would also go to foundations. One of the things I’ve learned in recent years is that there are many medical foundations and scientific foundations around the world which are very well funded. There’s plenty of money in foundations for absolute frontier stuff which is going to make a huge difference to people in the future. So, I would look for foundation support as well. I’m not going to speculate which foundations would want to support, but I think, if I start looking seriously, I’d probably find something quickly.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:40:01] As CEO of the American Institute of Physics and in your role as professor at California University, no doubt you meet large numbers of extremely interesting people. Is there somebody that you haven’t met to date that you would like to meet? It can be either within your field of research, your field of work, or within your field of interests, maybe music and if there is somebody, what would you like to ask them?
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:40:37] Yes, I do have people I would love to meet. In this position and in other positions I’ve been singularly privileged and very fortunate to meet a lot of Nobel Prize winners, because that’s the nature of this job. It’s not because I’m doing anything special. That is part of this job, you meet the great and the good from all over. I get invited to an awful lot of very high-profile events with big names. I have met pretty much everybody in the physics areas that I’m particularly interested in that I’ve always wanted to meet.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:41:13] So, I’m going to choose a musician because music is the other side of my life and we haven’t talked much about that. As somebody who’s excited me since the first time I heard her a few years ago live in concert, I think one of the greatest living pianists today is a Chinese lady by the name of Yuja Wang. I’m a huge fan of hers. I’ve been to many of her live concerts here in the United States. She is the most sassy, dynamic, bubbly, laughing pianist that I’ve ever seen. She dresses unbelievably. She really challenges her audience in terms of what you should wear at a concert recital, playing the piano or playing with an orchestra or whatever. She has this effervescence, this bubbly nature. Here she is, in her late twenties, early thirties, I’m not quite sure how old she is, but she’s achieved a level of technical and musical perfection, which I’ve only heard once or twice in the last 50 years or more. I think she could become one of the greatest living pianists ever, and she may already be there.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:42:18] I would love to meet her and talk about how and why she’s been in music and how she’s, at such a young age, managed to rise to such an incredible degree of musical perfection. Because my own interests and my own challenges in music have been quite tough. I want to know how she achieved it and what motivated and pushed her and what continues to motivate and push her. Concert pianists lead incredibly peripatetic lives. They’re ever living in planes and hotels and live, to some extent, quite a lonely existence. I’d like to know how she copes with all that and maintains her remarkable presence and positive spirit in nature.
Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme [00:43:02] Dr. Robert Brown, physicist, musician and CEO of the American Institute of Physics. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Robert Brown, CEO of the American Institute of Physics [00:43:13] It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you very much. It’s been a lot of fun.
This interview is in British English
Credits: Andrea Macdonald interview video, text, and audio
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