Episode 09: Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo - Science's Humanist Entrepreneur
Andrés is a humanist, an entrepreneur, and a scientific pioneer. He has spent a career unlocking the secrets of the Sun, borrowing ideas from across fields and leaving an impact on everyone and every place he goes.
Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo is one of the most original thinkers in the field of space physics. Andrés has dedicated much of his life to unlocking the secrets of the Sun, and transforming those discoveries into profound knowledge about and predictions of solar activity. He began this trajectory in Bogota, Columbia, studying electrical engineering and physics.
His passions led him to Montana State University in 2004 where he embraced his love of space and the solar system. His passions manifested in novel discovery about the sun, which became a focus of his research. That work received wide recognition and acclaim, earning him a long list of accolades including a national award from the American Geophysical Union given to the best PhD dissertation in space physics research in 2011 during his graduate work at Montana State University.
Andrés’ trajectory beyond Montana has been decidedly diverse, leading him to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cal Berkeley and Stanford in California, back to the east coast to Georgia State University, and finally here to Colorado.
Everywhere Andrés goes he leaves behind a trail of lasting and fascinating new knowledge, but, and particularly close to my heart based on my own interactions with him, rich relationships and a contagious sense of selflessness.
Andrés continues his pioneering work in Boulder, Colorado at the SouthWest Research Institute, producing not only cutting-edge scientific research that weaves in innovation from the field of machine learning, but also new ways of communicating those findings with data visualization and outreach activities.
We all have much to learn from Andrés so it was my pleasure to have him on Origins.
Show Notes:
Andrés’ first website: “a small trip through Columbian music” (04:10)
Jesuit Ignatian spiritual retreats in reference to Ignatius Loyola (08:00 and 11:15)
How do you create space to listen to yourself? (13:30)
NASA Frontier Development Laboratory - FDL (15:51)
‘Deep Learning’ (17:00)
What makes a team fail? (18:00)
'Treat colleagues as customers’ (22:30)
‘Fixing problems with data’ - data wrangling (22:40)
Questions leaders of teams must ask (23:45)
The idea of taking something from another field to apply to your own (28:50)
Open source (29:15)
First images of the sun to maps that exist now (31:00)
‘Lika’ - Lika Guhathakurta (32:00)
’The great majority of amazing commercial products are new applications of existing technologies’ - power of knowledge transfer (34:40)
‘Being open by default’ (38:10)
Kepler mission (39:10)
TensorFlow Software (40:30)
Most cited model of the ’solar wind’ in the world: Wang-Sheeley-Arge ENLIL (41:50)
Experiencing and interacting with fear in our lives (43:30)
‘Being first is overrated’ (44:30)
Science as an extremely social endeavor (45:45)
’Science is not just something that you put in a paper' (47:00)
Must not only be good (that’s the easy part) but also a good person to those around you (51:30)
Lightning Round (52:50):
Momo by Michael Ende
‘When you obsess about time you never have enough'
Music is the passion that has guided him (54:00)
‘Communication at any level is a performing art'
'Five-Cut Fridays’ series
Andrés’ playlist ('I have been listening a lot of videogame music and I chose a set of my favorite that also works well together. I assembled them so that listening them in order will enhance their flavor.’)
'If you have help you can recover from almost anything’ (58:30)
‘Gives you control of your own narrative' (58:50)
Find Andrés online: http://www.solardynamo.org/
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