Intro 0:04
What can you do with your love of science? We'll tell you?
Fatu Badiane Markey 0:31
Hello, everyone and welcome back to the show--We Love Science. My name is Fatu.
Shekerah Primus 0:36
And I'm Shekerah, and today we're learning a lot of cool physics.
Fatu Badiane Markey 0:41
Yes, we are! All of the really deep, intense topics in physics, theoretical, condensed matter, and statistical physics. So joining us today is Dr. Jishad Kumar, who was a researcher at Aalto University in Finland. He's passionate about exploring quantum phenomena and the implications that has for thermodynamics, transport, and biology. So Jishad, we are so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.
Jishad Kumar 1:07
Thank you. Thank you so much for this nice introduction. And it's a great pleasure to meet both of you. And I would love to talk about my experience and a bit of science with both of you, and thank
you so much.
Fatu Badiane Markey 1:19
Excellent. And we're also looking forward to hearing more about your work and your career journey. But before we jump in, we're going to do a little bit of a warm up by talking about one of our favorite topics, which is food, and
Jishad Kumar 1:36
That's probably true for all of us.
Fatu Badiane Markey 1:40
Agree, right agree. So today's food topic is maybe a little bit of a of a I guess a pessimistic way to look at food, but I think it still is an interesting way to look at it. So we're going to talk about our least favorite things to eat. So maybe what are some of the things that you avoid when it comes to food?
Jishad Kumar 2:01
Oh, well, I usually, I mean, I don't have a complaint with any other food. But if you asked me specifically, I would avoid those carbonated drinks, because I have had a lot of bad experience with the carbonated drinks. And during my graduate studies, I used to take a lot of this coke, Coca Cola, Pepsi, all those things and I had loads of stomach issues. I stopped it, completely stopped taking all of them. So I think, I think those are the first in my list. And the second is something with a lot of tomato sauce.
Fatu Badiane Markey 2:40
Yeah.
Jishad Kumar 2:43
Certain Chinese types of foods which contain these worms and all, which unfortunately I cannot tolerate.
Yeah. Apart from that, I'm like comfortable with any type of food, any smell, any taste, any type, but I love food, I love it.
Fatu Badiane Markey 3:06
So definitely sounds like you have a wide range of things that you love to eat, which is fantastic. And there's only a few things, here and there, that you'd like to avoid.
Jishad Kumar 3:15
I am from India, so it's like, like, like a big continent. I will say; we have almost close to 30 states, if not more. We have different types of food and different types of tastes. I, you know, somehow I got the opportunity to travel around the country and I could probably taste I mean at least 70% of the different tastes; so I, so in that way, I think I'm like, more experienced.
Fatu Badiane Markey 3:50
I like that and I would honestly say avoiding things like soda is probably healthier anyways. Right? So it's ok that's on your list of like, I do not like; it's not a problem. Yeah. What about you, Shekerah?
Shekerah Primus 4:06
Um, I'd say one thing I avoid is raw onions. I don't like raw onions, like when you make a sandwich and usually they put onions on it. I don't like it.
Jishad Kumar 4:19
That's because you cry when you cut the onions.
Shekerah Primus 4:22
No. I just don't like the taste I think.
Yeah, yeah, I will eat like candied onions. You know, when you really soften them up really nice and they get kind of that sweet stickiness. I love them that way.
But I don't eat them raw. I don't like the taste.
Fatu Badiane Markey 4:41
And I could see that. Alright, so for me, I me there are very few foods I think also that I am not a big fan of; one food that I really don't like that I feel like a lot of people do is cheesecake, which I have tried many times and I just cannot. Yeah, it's just it's not I think a food that I enjoy very much. So that is one that I actively avoid. And I don't think it's the taste because I will do like cheesecake flavored ice cream or you know, like other things that have that similar kind of taste. I think it's something with the, like the texture of the cheese cake itself because it's almost like it's not a pudding. It's not really a cake. It's like somewhere in the middle. And I think that just doesn't work with me. So I feel like that's one food that I would say unfortunately falls on my dislike list but again, it's one dessert I'm crossing off so maybe that's a little bit healthier. Out of all the sweets I like to have one that I avoid. So, yeah, thank you all for sharing some foods that we prefer to you know, just saying no, thank you too. But it sounds like you know, there are definitely many others that we all enjoy. So that I think is a great balance.
So let's jump right in. So Jishad you completed a PhD in theoretical statistical physics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata, India in 2012 very impressive; and then after your PhD, you are at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics also in Kolkata, India as a postdoc fellow--that sounds so cool. And then you move to Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic to continue your postdoctoral studies. And you also spent a little bit of time at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. And now, I guess you are a postdoctoral researcher at the Aalto University in Finland. That's a pretty impressive journey. And I think we're really excited to hear you know, what you've learned along the way, and how all that has kind of developed, I guess how you have grown in your career path and also in your science and research journey. So Jishad, we're going to start the work segment of our conversation. And this is where we talk about what you're currently doing, what you love about it, maybe what frustrates you, and you know, any other tips that you would give to those who are interested in following a similar career path? So let's start from the very beginning, from the basics. What does a theorist do and what does your research focus on?
Okay, so it's a nice question--what does a theorist do. I think the most fundamental or basic definition would be a theorist is a person who takes the, or he assumes certain models, or he creates a model with certain facts or assumptions, which is around. I mean, it's not just assumptions it's like, I would say it's like, concrete assumptions about certain things. You can, you come up with some working ideas to solve something or to show something which again, will put it forward for the experimenters to prove, or to realize it. So I think that's what theorists do, like his basic, his basic duty is to show the people or to provide something for the next steps.
I like that, I think that's a really nice like concrete summary. How does your or how did maybe your initial training in physics, sort of help with your current research and what you're doing now? So kind of how does everything from what you learned in the past? Yeah, and in the beginning, really translate into what you're doing now in the present?
Jishad Kumar 9:02
I think I started off my independent learning I would say, independent learning with Brownian motion, a topic which is slightly away from, from my undergraduate, graduate, or maybe during the initial, initial stages of my Masters; I don't think I mean, maybe, maybe, I don't know maybe, in my case, we never had a course on fluctuations or Brownian motion, something like that in the Masters. So that was an additional part like you say, take a specialization. So that was a part of the specialization. In fact, I would say now, fortunately, but at that age, I said to my friends that unfortunately, I got this topic as a seminar topic to me. Because I know what is brown and brown-yellow for me brown was like, a color among other colors. I was like, What's Brownian motion? I'm not interested. That's what the way I was thinking. But when I got, this as my seminar topic. I started reading this and that time, there was no Wikipedia and there was no other avenues to you know, to get a short description of the system. Someone asked what is the Brownian motion? So now we have a Wikimedia, so you can look it up and say; back then you need to rely just on books or something and none of my professors were not so good at this step quantum statistical physics. So I started reading really good books. I remember like, in the later part of my life, I bought all these books and they're all with me now. Because it's like a it's like a memorandum or maybe I would say it's, it's a memory. I started reading good books. And I remember I had a lot of understanding issues because one, on one hand, the language the way, those books were written by really good scientists, so the language or the expression was a little difficult for me. And the second is the equations. Of course, these equations were not so easy to follow up at the beginning. I think because of my mathematical ability, or maybe because of luck, or whatever. I think I could sort of understand these things from the scratch. And I could present it in front of people that this is what it is. So I think this subject somehow was there in my mind, but when I went to PhD, I never know I never knew also that I'm going to do something on this, related to what Brownian motion says. The moment when I officially started PhD, the, my professor gave me two, I think, one paper and one textbook. To just read and work it out. And my supervisor went to a conference in Germany. So I remember like he wrote me an email in two weeks and asking, what's the status and I was really afraid of writing him back. Yeah, I don't even I don't even know what status is because I wasn't even doing anything. To start just, start doing something you need to understand something from the paper, which I did not. I was just walking around with this paper and book for three weeks of time, I think. He returned back and he called me to his office and asked, So how do you, were you able to derive or to cover up some of these things in the paper. I was trapped. I have to I have to say the right answer. I cannot lie because I said on his face immediately. No, sir. I, I'm worried about this. I'm unable to do anything. I can't understand all the things, and he shouted at me.
You've done at masters project with me. And you know, this is something related to that, of course. It was related, but the thing is, two different representations. I was doing a master's thesis with the same person, but that paper was something somewhat related to this, but it was a different representation. It used it in mathematics actually. So I was unable to you know, differentiate these two and do anything. Then I had another supervisor, like two supervisors during the PhD, so the secondary the human guy. So I got a real shout from my first supervisor, so I went to the second person. I told him, Professor, I'm a bit worried, I'm disappointed; because I'm very emotional. Definitely. I can't even say that he shouted at me and I can't do anything my productivity level has gone very low. So then the second person second professor actually, you know, said, Look, this is the way it is because the your professor is actually very experienced. He has over 40 years of research and teaching experience. He has been teaching and doing research across the globe. He was he was in Brookhaven National Laboratory for his PhD; he did his postdoc from Canada, Germany, America and also so but he was he is a really super experienced. So yes, like more than 250 publications or so and five books that such an extreme person? Yeah, um, so he would be expecting a bit of that from me. I mean, I don't know. So this second professor said, No, don't worry about that. So this tell him that you want to take, you want to, you want to think about this problem more. You want to understand this things first from the scratch and then only you can do something. I was really afraid to go in front of him and say the same so I took the second professor also along with me with this to help. Said I want some more time because I think I can do something on this. But I need to understand this without understanding is because the senior professors are like they're always on the doing level, not on training level. So when you say something that you start doing and you learn from doing it, this is the way they speak. But a young graduate would never think like that. You always think that let me learn this stuff and then do it. So vice versa.
Fatu Badiane Markey 15:30
I think that's a good lesson to take away from all of this. It kind of shows how you know like when you're learning the foundations, and kind of like you know, the basics of understanding you can't always jump right away right into the higher level stuff like there's progression that has to take place. Yeah, so really, really great way to kind of get into that great.
Jishad Kumar 15:52
I think, I didn't take much time since I was given given that freedom of thinking and learning at the beginning. So I was really happy. I think happily done, whatever he wanted me to do. And then we had a successful meeting a couple of successful meetings when we; then we had a concrete idea of about, what extended, what would be your first research problem.
Fatu Badiane Markey 16:17
Right.
Jishad Kumar 16:17
It was also like really there's a funny story in that as well. He wanted me to find out a problem for myself, a research problem, basically project, and he told me that okay, you search around now, you know, what are we going to do at least a broad area of research, you know, now you just look around for the recent publications in the literature, and also some, read some reviews, some books and see what you can, what you can suggest or what problem you can suggest. This is what he said; I was really scared. Come on. I mean, I the first task itself was huge that I have done with some excuses. Now you're asking me to find out a problem. And again, I'm in trouble. But I went back then I was like, randomly looking at some papers, scribbling some notes, etc, etc. But nothing was coming to my mind as a concrete idea that okay, this probably could be a problem. And the big problem from the beginning. One night, I, back in India I was hospitalized. I got some viral infection. I had a typhoid. Yes. Yeah. So after releasing from the hospital, I think at my hostel, I was just taking a rest and reading some papers randomly. So I was just reading a paper on some superconductivity or something. I think I added what I remember. And then I saw one specific equation, which I found maybe this could be something which I can tell my professor, though I was not sure about this is probably going to be one key idea. Absolutely blind. And I told him sir, I think we can use this thing, right. So he was like, so super excited and happy saying that, wow. It's good that you know, you came up with a problem, which I didn't expect, etcetera, etcetera, he said, Then I was really happy. But the problem is the real problem started from there. Because I suggested the problems and he wanted me to model it again. You look at it as an answer to your question or your previous question. Yeah, looking back. Now I feel that it actually helped me to you want to learn so many things that you know, you start, I have published my own papers after my PhD. So as a single author, in different journals, so this experience I mean, coming up with the problem, and trying to find what are the ways to solve what what are the ways to approach a problem, how to solve it, how to, you know, implement it, or explain it to an audience, and you know, how to get it published. So I have learned this only because of this initial training from my PhD advisor. I mean, I don't know whether he, he purposefully did that, or it just happened and whichever way I created this is really good.
Yeah, so let me jump in. A little bit more here too. So definitely, I think a lot of really positive things. You know, from where your work started to where it is now. In maybe like one or two sentences. Can you also describe what it is you really love about your research and what you love about being a theorist?
Sure, the best answer would be I like to play around with mathematics. So I think. This is something which I always loved. I mean, I'm not against doing experiments. I'm not doing things in computational science. Now, I'm not against anything, but it's just that I'm more more comfortable. And I have more love and care for my mathematics. So when I see a paper with follow up equations, I somehow feel like really happy. So my wife is a biologist. She has a PhD in cancer biology. So when I say say this to her, she said, Come on, what is the big deal is I mean, I don't understand anything. Why is this going to excite you? So used to get questions like that, but maybe some kind of interest towards mathematics is still in my brain. So which is like always making me more and more close to theoretical works.
Fatu Badiane Markey 20:42
And what about some challenges that you faced? I mean, definitely, I feel like your journey has been really long. But if you don't, if you could maybe summarize it into like, were there like, two or three specific things that you felt were really challenging for you as you were going
along your journey?
Jishad Kumar 21:00
Yeah, yeah. So the one one is actually from academics itself, that there were situations where I tried to collaborate with people. But then later on, even during my postdoc stints, like I tried to, I tried to collaborate with my postdoc mentors, somehow for some reason it did not work because the post, the mentors have a different strategy to do something. But my approach is entirely different. Because I remember one instance, one of the mentors were wanting to work on, was wanting to challenge his peers and his colleagues idea. He was blind to doing that, but it wasn't working. So at the end of the day, it was very bad for me because I didn't get a publication out of it. And I was the loser in that game. So no, such experiences are actually be there. And the other challenge with I would, I would probably say that in my life, I have a lot of life threatening issues. After my after my US stint, I mean, I have problems in fact, family issues and personal issues. It was really life threatening. I almost lost some of my years in academics and research. I had to kind of just stay back at home. Doing nothing for quite a long time. And not getting a job, no money and I had even like, you know, served in some shops. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough. For me in that instance, but now I'm back really re-started life.
Fatu Badiane Markey 22:37
Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, definitely I feel like difficulties especially when they're like so personal like that are can be so hard, right, on you. So I think it's really incredible that even after all of this, you're able to kind of just like, you know, bounce back right and just like have Yeah, I think that shows a lot to your character and you know, you're just resolved to really continue with what you're doing and continue with what you enjoy.
Jishad Kumar 23:05
I cannot get away from science.
Fatu Badiane Markey 23:10
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Jishad Kumar 23:12
This is probably, this is my first post podcast ever in my life. And I'm very happy and I'm very, very excited. And I'm pretty sure that you know, you both will definitely call me once again when I have some some very, very precious discovery in science later in my life.
Fatu Badiane Markey 23:38
We're waiting. We always like to kind of follow up on our guests that we've had and kind of like see where they're going, what they're doing. So we're just going to add you to the list, you know, and five years we'll call you back.
Jishad Kumar 23:51
I would definitely want to talk to you first before anybody else.
Fatu Badiane Markey 24:01
Awesome. So my last question that I have for this segment, I think ties into more of like, what is the goal of your research that you're doing now? You know, I think answering the question of like, what do you hope to discover is kind of hard, you know, right, and what do you hope to accomplish long term, but maybe, even if it isn't directly for your research, maybe what even do you hope for where your career is going? Or for what impact you want to have on the field?
Jishad Kumar 24:30
Well, I
think the research problems or research project which I'm right now, working on are more on an applicative level. So I think you've heard of this technology terms like, conduct thermodynamics, it's like, you know, you test you. Merely the simplest way to say quantum heat engine, it's same only, quantum refrigerators, so many exotic names out there. So, my research are more in now, these days are more into applicative levels and I would be expecting, expecting, some kind of physical realizations of the theoretical works, which I do, and which I did in the past, and, and some technological or industrial applications. So I'm quite fortunate that I am at Aalto University and the kind of support and the kind of environment where I received from here is amazing. And I'm pretty happy about all the things and I'm sure in five years down the line, I will be certainly be known and not as one of the one of the best up and coming, you can say the researcher in the field where I work. So I think yeah, and long term, I would definitely want to establish my own research group with some PhD students and postdocs. Yeah, it's a long way to go. I think. I mean, it's basically it's kind of a second phase of my academic life after this. So I, I just need to put a lot of effort and you need, to I need to go on strike more, work more hard, work more, and get back into shape. So maybe in couple of years, I would probably, you know, again, be back three or four times as I was. This is what my current planning is and yeah, excellent. And also to get their teaching position. I love teaching also.
Fatu Badiane Markey 26:34
Yeah, I feel like I mean, we can feel that even just in the conversation you love to like, explain and show how things are connected and show the details. Right. And I think all of that is definitely the you know, like the hallmark of some of the best professors and teachers that we have had, you know, even just our career and research journeys again. Yeah, thank you so much for talking with us today. It was really a pleasure hearing about your work.
Jishad Kumar 26:59
Thank you.
Fatu Badiane Markey 27:01
And if people are interested in maybe reaching you because they also you know, have an interest in in mathematics, or even theoretical physics, what is the best way for them to reach out to you and to learn a little bit more about, you know, what does it mean to kind of do research in, in theoretical physics.
Jishad Kumar 27:20
The first segues, I would say in that way in that direction is that don't jump into theoretical physics, just to show some people that I'm doing theory. So if you really if you really love doing theoretical physics, then only you jump into it; very frankly I'm seeing I've seen people who are talking that we are great theorists, but they don't actually understand the exact theory behind certain phenomena. I don't want my younger colleagues to be like that. And so you should have that spark in your mind that you want to do theory you want to do mathematics, and you want to think about extension of this concrete ideas you have developed to a possible experimental realization or, you know, that if you have that, kind of that, kind of an attitude, then yeah, I would, I would certainly suggest them to go and to reach out me, you know, I'm open. Anybody can talk to me on LinkedIn, and there's an email which is given at LinkedIn, or I can send my phone number also, if somebody wants; I'm open to like discussions, collaborations, chats. I can give whatever ideas I have, I can give advice. Advice is something which is free of course. I'm ready to do that.
Fatu Badiane Markey 28:41
Alright, so we'll make sure to include your LinkedIn contact in our show notes so that will be yeah, definitely the easiest way for individuals to reach out to you. Shekerah do you have any
additional questions?
Shekerah Primus 28:55
No, thank you so much Jishad, I learned a lot.
Jishad Kumar 28:59
Thank you.
Outtro 29:00
Okay, so we'd like to say thank you to our listeners for supporting the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe, like, and share. To learn more about our guests journey. Be sure to listen to the next journey episode. And you can reach out to us by email, at love science podcast@gmail.com. Please send any questions or comments about the show, or suggestions for guests that you'd like to hear. You love to hear from you. Until next time,
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