Episode 11: Bill Diamond - The nexus of Silicon Valley and science

Bill is the CEO of the SETI Institute and has a trajectory and mindsets from across that trajectory that are as intriguing as his day job.

Bill Diamond’s day job is not that important nor exciting. No. All he does is lead, coordinate, and cultivate the institute of individuals whose job it is to explore, understand and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe and the evolution of intelligence. That would be the SETI institute where Bill has been the CEO and President since 2015.

If possible, Bill’s trajectory gets even MORE interesting as we look further back. He is a Silicon Valley veteran and a master of 'high tech.' Just before SETI, he served in various roles at OCLARO Incorporated, including leading the company’s efforts with optical networking and optics. He has held various CEO and president positions across Silicon Valley and across the world. Those include WaveSplitter, where he raised over $75M in capital investment, DenseLight Semiconductor in Singapore, and Xradia Incorporated in California. He has ranged across the fields of lasers, photonics, optical networking, x-ray technology and semiconductors.

Bill, fittingly, has diverse degrees - an MBA from Georgetown and a Bachelors in Physics from The College of the Holy Cross.

Bill has had a career that mocks categorization. He embodies such a unique set of experiences, mindsets, and lessons that it brings me intense joy and anticipation to have him on Origins.

Show Notes: 

• The SETI Institute (1:15 and 6:10)

• FDL program (NASA Frontier Development Lab) (4:30 and 36:00)

• Jesuit thinking (5:00)

• Brother Guy J. Consolmagno (6:20)

• Take advantage of the breadth of knowledge available to you and cut across the boundaries of knowledge (7:30)

• Early mentor, Ken Nill, and how he altered Bill’s trajectory (12:00)

• Value of having both technical and managerial skills (14:10)

• Create a ‘powerful combination of skills’ (14:20)

• First mentor: high school physics teacher (17:15)

• Signs to look for in mentor (17:40)

• Being curiosity-driven (19:15)

• LaserTron (22:20)

• Bell Labs (23:00)

• Have an understanding of all sides of the industry/business/problem (26:15)

• Skills from industry most valuable to science (36:30)

  • Organization of science

    • Six areas of research that define SETI’s direction (38:40)

    • SETI Science Council (39:00)

  • Evaluating the research and targeting future research (43:00)

• Drake equation (38:00)

• Antidisciplinary and Joi Ito (40:15)

• Science of Team Science (40:35)

• Moneyball approach to science (41:25)

• Bill’s practices (45:45)

  • Be open minded (48:40)

  • Do your homework to have meaningful conversations (49:10)

• Taiji and Daoist philosophy (47:30)

• Lightning Round (50:00)

  • Books

    • Childhood’s End

    • Three body problem

    • Snow Crash

    • Galileo’s Daughter

  • What is making your heart sign?

  • Carl Sagan’s ’star people'

    • SETI outreach

      • Workshop "Decoding alien intelligence” (58:00)

        • Jesuit casuistry

    • Biggest mistakes: what NOT to do, not following instincts, and letting problems go on longer than they should have (1:00:00)

• Find Bill online:

  • SETI

• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ series

  • Bill’s playlist