Dear Readers,

Very sorry for such a long absence from this blog! I recently came back from an ACS (American Chemical Society) speaking tour, which was a very interesting and enriching experience for me. Currently, I am working on a couple of potential book proposals as well. There might be an upcoming opportunity for you to contribute to a book on a subject related to chemical kinetics and computer modeling. So stay tuned!

This was the first time I have gone on an ACS speaking tour and it was a very interesting experience. I would recommend it to anyone looking to grow as a professional in a technical field.

This is how the volunteer speaker service works: ACS puts together a list of experts in various chemical fields who would like to volunteer to be traveling speakers. Various ACS local sections then go through the list and choose which speakers they would like to invite to a specific local meeting.

If you are one of the speakers who has selected by a particular group of local sections (a circuit), you get to travel around that area for a week and present a new talk each day in a new location. I did not realize that the more options for talk topics you provide, the more likely are the chances of various locations picking different topics . So I ended up giving 6 talks in 5 days on 4 different topics. My circuit covered a good portion of Wisconsin, which turns out to be a relatively large state, so I had 3- 5 hours of driving in between different locations.

In case you’re interested, here is what my schedule looked like:

Monday, April 19, 2010

Location: La Crosse, WI

Venue: University of Wisconsin - La Crosse

Topic: Economic Crisis and the Need for Computer Modeling

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Location: Milwaukee, WI

Venue: ACS Annual meeting

Topic: 10 Ways to Increase Your Value

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Location: Appleton, WI

Venue: Lawrence University

Topic: A Wife, a Mother, and a PHD

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Location: Stevens Point, WI

Venue: ACS meeting + university campus talk

Topic : A Wife, a Mother, and a PHD and Economic Crisis and the Need for Computer Modeling

Friday, April 23, 2010

Location: Houghton, MI

Topic: Importance of Perception - Why You Should Care About What Others Think

During each presentation I had a completely different audience. One day it was a large group of students. Another day it was a small mix of professors and graduate researchers. Yet another day I presented to a mixture of chemists from industry and academia.

One of my favorite audiences was in Eau Clair, where I presented the “Computer Modeling” talk to a group of retired industry chemists. Considering that half of my audience has never used a computer for so much as e-mail, it was an interesting presentation. But I have to say the retired chemists were one of the most inquisitive and interested audiences I had on this trip!

Going into the talk I had a bit of a panicky moment. Some of these people have been doing experiments in the lab for longer than two of my lifetimes. How in the world was I going to explain to them that we are on the path of moving more and more of these experiments into this teeny box called a “computer”?!

Amazingly, my audience stayed curious and interested through the whole talk. Afterwards, some of the listeners shared a few stories about how back in the day, you had to use stacks of punch cards to program just a few lines of code. Maybe because the have seen such evolution of science and technology over their lifetimes, the idea of more and more experiments being done virtually, inside of a computer did not seem surprising to them.

Now if only I can have such an open-minded audience at TurboExpo next month!

I am thoroughly disturbed. I just finished browsing through the technology magazine section of my local Barnes & Noble. A common theme ran through most of the magazine articles that I found rather unnerving.

“Can we trust robots? New models that will talk, act and look like humans…why experts are worried.” in Popular Mechanics.

“The mind readers – Scientists who can pluck images from your head” and “Cyborg Spy-Bugs! Terrifying Science or Innocent research?” in Popular Science.

“Robots – real-life androids that fight wars and save lives” in How it Works.

I realize that these are not peer-reviewed scientific publications, but the information in these magazines does reflect the state of current technology research. This, to me, makes reading about computers that can hack into our minds, remote control robots the size of an ant, and artificial intelligence that can mimic human thought, rather creepy. Read more »

Last week I had a typical conversation with a potential client. After the engineer described a problem his company was having, the conversation went something like this:

Potential client (PC): “Great! You do have an impressive background and you’re right – we have a lot of gaps that you can help us fill.”

Me: “It helps to have a pair of expert eyes look over your R&D processes.”

PC: “That makes sense. We worked with consultants before and were amazed how much time they saved us! How much would your services cost?”

Me: Describe various services. Give a range of very reasonable prices.

PC: “Oh…well the budgets are tight, the economy is bad…no one has money…I think we will try to do this in-house…”

Me: “Haven’t you been trying to do this in-house for a while now?”

PC: “Well yeah, but the budgets are really tight…so we’ll try to do it ourselves… We’ll call some vendors, read some technical papers…”

Me: “How long do you think that process will take you?”

PC: “Well, probably much longer than if you were working with us…”

Me: “And how much do you estimate that time would cost?”

PC: “Well, since we’ll just be using in-house engineering time, it would not cost us anything.”

Me: “????!!”

Read more »

Just a side note: we have been getting some wonderfull comments from all of you on current AND older posts. I try to respond to all, or at least most, of your comments. If you posted comments here previously, I highly encourage you to check back on those posts to see what responses you recieved.

Get latest updates from Twitter: Twitter.com/MVPetrova

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“I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!–Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.

…I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

Read more »

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(Special Video post!) This week’s post is about using GTD techniques in engineering research. The more I learned about GTD, the more amazed I became with how much sense it made. A the same time I was very surprised that while if you ask any manager, marketing or sales person in corporate America, if they have heard of GTD, the answer would most likely be “yes”. However, I am yet to meet an engineer or scientist using the GTD method to organize his or her research. That’s the focus of todays discussion.

Read more »

I am not a big fan of movies, but last weekend, my three year old son forced me to watch “Flubber” with him, which is a 1997 family comedy about a kooky, but genius science professor (Robin Williams) who invents a new energetic material called “Flubber.” My son’s favorite scene was when the cute, giggly “flubber” creatures started dancing around to some catchy Latin tunes. My favorite scene was the absent-minded professor walking into an art class and carrying on a lecture, obviously meant for his physics class, un-phased neither by the confusion of the students nor by the presence of the two nude models in front of his desk.

This cute family flick got me thinking – does a scientific genius always require the absence of skills that human race has been evolving over thousands of years? Skills, like talking to other humans so that they understand us. Making other people feel comfortable around us, thus allowing us to build strong communities and survive as a species. Abilities, like reading facial expressions of our audience to make sure that we are not presenting a physics lecture to a room-full of art students, or simply not boring our audience to death. Read more »

I broke down and finally got a Twitter account (hence the cute little birdie icon at the bottom of the page).

If you would like to receive more frequent news and valuable information on engineering computer simulation, on increasing your value as a professional, as well as updates on up-coming courses, webinars, free newsletters and etc. - Follow me on Twitter!

I promise that I will not post junk, useless quotes, or inform you every time  I eat a sandwich. For me, Twitter is just another way of getting valuable information to the engineering community.

Happy twittering

 

A few months ago I posted a discussion thread to the Reactive Flows and Chemical Kinetics Group on Linkedin, a professional networking site.  The discussion was titled:  A controversial topic – modeling without experiments.

I asked group members if they thought that in the next 30 - 100 years engineers would be able to rely solely on computer modeling without conducting actual lab experiments to verify the computer results. I figured that by looking far enough in advance, several generations into the future, I would surely get some responses along the lines of:

“In about 50 years pretty much everything will be computerized. Computers will be built into our brains and cell phones will be implanted into our ears. If we are able to modify our bodies in such a way, something as comparatively simple as combustion inside of an engine or reaction on a surface of a silicon chip could surely be modeled entirely on a computer. It is only obvious that actual laboratory experiments will become obsolete.”

Boy, was I wrong.

First off all, thanks to all of you who responded to that discussion. It is always great to hear ideas and opinions from people all over the world. That being said, I found it interesting that the responses from the group members to that discussion post could not have been further from my thinking.

Here are some excerpts from the posts:

“Of course we will probably see some periods where [computer modeling] will suffice…but probably just for a while.”

“I do not think that in 100 years anyone will built…a plant without running the experiments first.”

The prevailing theme in the comments to this discussion post was that some laboratory work will always be required when designing engineering systems. Whether it is 30, 50 or even 100 years in the future.

These responses left me rather confused. We managed to figure out how to send humans to the moon in a span of about ten years. Yet, somehow, we will not be able to extract the laboratory from the experimental process when designing and building stuff a hundred years from now?

At the SAE World Congress last week, I attended an interesting panel discussion in the ATX Theater. The topic was:  What lies over the horizon – a forecast for the economic/policy climate. The panel was composed of diverse number of speakers. One of the panelists was Richard Goetz from Dykema, who spent 32 years working for Ford. I wondered what the speakers thought about the future of computer modeling in terms of the automotive industry. At the end of the discussion, I asked if the panelists foresaw any growth in computer modeling in the automotive Research in Development groups.

Richard’s response was, and I quote:

“There will be massively more computer modeling. That is the ONLY way that the industry can move forward.”

I try to stay in touch with as many software vendors as time allows. Sometimes that involves showing up at company events, taking training classes or just picking up the phone, calling a vendor up and asking them what’s new with their latest product.  A number of computer modeling development companies, including CD-Adapco and Maplesoft told me that they have seen a healthy growth in revenue this past year, which is obviously an inverse trend to the rest of our economy. Representatives from these companies told me that since everyone is trying to save money, computer simulations are replacing more and more of the costly laboratory experiments in the industry. And the software vendors are happily observing increase in their profits.

So if the experts in the field and the software vendors are predicting and seeing the rise of the computer use in research and development, why is there still such skepticism from actual engineers doing the R&D work?

Obviously there are a number of answers to that question. If you think that you might have an answer, please post your response in the comments section. We would love to hear it. Here are my two cents on why so many of us researchers are so reluctant to let go of the idea that one day, perhaps far in the future, a Bunsen burner and thermocouple might no longer be needed in order to design an new engine. 

Creating and running computer simulations of large realistic systems is not an easy task. I think that one of the main reasons why this is so, is not the limit in computational power. Nor is it the fact that engineering problems are complicated. Nor is it a problem of not knowing all the parameters, variables and assumptions.

I think that it is mainly because a standard and systematic procedure has not been established for taking a real engineering system and converting that system into a set of computer simulations. Sure, there are rule-of-thumb guidelines that various research communities have put together in order to get some meaningful results out of computer modeling. I would argue that it is simply not enough.

If you are conducting a lab experiment and drill a hole in a wrong place in your combustion cylinder – you’ll find out that you have a problem when you burn something inside that combustion chamber. Obviously this is a very simplified case, but with computer modeling there are just too many answers that make sense, even though they might be physically impossible. In a lab, physically impossible things simply do not occur.

So the next obvious questions becomes:

“What would this approach of converting an engineering system into a set of computer models,  look like?”

Well, I promise to address that point in the future posts. Meanwhile feel free to register for this blog and post your thoughts. I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading, 

Masha