University California Irvine 2023 Top Globally In Solutions That Scale

University of California Irvine (UCI) is leading globally in 2023 with their campus-wide solutions-that-scale initiative, which I refer to as STS.

STS is developing and cultivating transdisciplinary energy and environmental solutions that scale globally in response to climate change. STS interweaves the entire campus ecosystem: research and education from each academic unit of 14 UCI schools, personal engagement from the student body, and a living-lab exploration of energy and food initiatives within the city-sized community. This globally unique and transformative model is detailed in my far-ranging “unscripted” chat, shared below, with James Bullock who co-founded STS. James is Dean of Physical Sciences and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCI. In the article, I quote extensively and summarize from my engagements with James on this topic and materials and websites supplied.

UCI Entire Community Engaged

The UCI is catalyzing the full academic, educational, and institutional expertise of the UC campus for an inclusive response to the climate crisis, one that engages all levels of society to national governments. The campus being a demonstration site for strategies of action, policy, and transformation that can be enacted broadly in the world.

Engagement includes faculty research in all disciplines, hosting visiting scholars, local community in a living laboratory to explore new ideas around clean energy, food procurement, and individual action.

STS will support translational research: policy briefs, popular articles, public gatherings, educational opportunities for leaders/teachers/citizens. Best-practices at scale, can be passed on as city-scale manuals towards climate regeneration.

The STS education model provides a) building campus-wide curricula for undergraduate students, b) developing undergraduate major offerings in climate and regeneration, c) creating a campus-wide interdisciplinary PhD programs in climate solutions that scale, and d) providing targeted short courses to corporate and policy leaders.

UCI Transdisciplinary Leadership

UCI Solutions that Scale unites every academic unit on campus (all 14 schools).

UCI builds on their leadership in climate science with the first Nobel Prize in climate-related science for Professor Sherry Rowland (founding Chair of UCI Chemistry) and his then postdoc Mario Molina.

UCI is home to USA’s first Earth System Science (ESS) Department, dedicated to the study of humanity’s impact on global climate.

UCI is a city-sized community in Southern California, operating its own power grid to serving as a demonstration site for true-zero energy solutions.

UCI oversees and advances stewardship of four protected natural areas in their region, including environments that span desert, wetlands, and ocean coast. Air quality, fires, floods, and sea level rise are tangible issues affecting surrounding communities, which include underserved populations.

UCI has 21 LEED Platinum buildings, more than any university in the world. UCI is one of only nine campuses in the United States with a Platinum rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, which rates campuses on a combination of Academics, Engagement, Operations, and Planning. UCI has been ranked in the top ten of the Sierra Club’s data-driven “Cool Schools” metric for the last 13 years, and has been ranked #1 five of the last seven years. Home to the nation’s first zero-carbon bus fleet, UCI also leads the nation in the most efficient, data-driven “Smart Labs” energy program in the U.S., an effort that has been the model for 7 national labs. UCI is the first to inject green hydrogen into their campus-wide power supply, becoming the first power-to-gas hydrogen injection project in the United States.

In August 2022, the Department of Energy announced that the UCI Department of Chemistry will lead three new DOE research centers (for a total of $25M) to transform clean energy production and cut emission. The first center, led by Prof. Shane Ardo, uses nano-reactors to lower the cost of green hydrogen energy storage. The second center, led by Prof. Jenny Yang, focuses on converting air-captured CO2 to new fuels and materials. Finally, Prof. Sarah Fenkeldei is leading an effort to improve understanding of nuclear energy materials for safe, next-generation power plants.

The UCI Clean Energy Institute (CENI) unites the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the School of Physical Sciences to advance scalable clean energy technologies. Led by engineering Professor Jack Brouwer, CENI coordinates a number initiatives, including the National Fuel Cell Research Center, which accelerates fuel-cell technology and promotes strategic alliances to address market challenges associated with hydrogen energy deployment.

UCI Earth System Science continues to lead the world in understanding the planet’s climate and to lessen forecast uncertainties as climate change accelerates in the 21st century. Examples include Prof. Eric Rignot, who discovered that deep, warm ocean water is responsible for Greenland’s accelerating melting rates, and is leading one of the most impactful polar ice research efforts on the planet. Prof. James Randerson is at the forefront of monitoring and predicting wildfire spread with remote sensing and AI, with research poised to save lives and focus resources in California and the world. Prof. Mike Pritchard is a global innovator in bringing machine learning approaches to physical climate models. NVIDIA, who is building the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer designed for climate science (Earth-2), has enlisted Prof. Pritchard to direct their climate change modeling effort.

The UCI Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing is at the forefront of forecasting and mitigating hydrologic disasters worldwide and provides freely-available, real-time, global rainfall data to the world.

The Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources; Prof. Alejandro Camacho in the School of Law, brings together experts from academia, the public sector, and industry to advance policy for environmental protection.

The UCI Blum Center, directed by Prof. Richard Matthew in the School of Social Ecology, works to mitigate the effects of climate change on the most vulnerable populations globally by collaborating across disciplines and partnering with global institutions like the United Nations. One issue includes understanding impact and policy implications associated with the forecasted migration of 1.2 billion people on the planet that are vulnerable to being displaced by climate change in the next several decades

A sampling of UCI Centers to follow further include: AirUCI; Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation; Center for Environmental Biology; Center for Environmental Health Disparities Research; Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing; Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources; Clean Energy Institute; Environmental Humanities Research Center; UCI Nature; Newkirk Center for Science and Society; Ridge 2 Reef; Solutions that Scale; Water UCI; World Institute for Sustainable Development of Materials.

[This article is based upon insights from my daily pro bono work, across more than 100 global projects and communities, with more than 1 million CEOs, investors, scientists, and notable experts.]

James Bullock Brief Profile

Professor Bullock’s profile is so extensive that a summary is provided with the non-profit IEEE TEMS (see interview series - Stephen Ibaraki - “Transformational Leadership and Innovation...”). This direct link contains the profile and video interview.

James Bullock is Dean of Physical Sciences and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. As dean, he has helped to launch the UCI Eddleman Quantum Institute, dedicated to the discovery of new quantum science phenomena, enabling the next technological revolution, and educating a diverse quantum workforce for the 21st century.

Outside of his work as an academic leader, Bullock leads a research group in cosmology and galaxy formation to understand how galaxies and dark matter have evolved over billions of years of cosmic time.

Bullock is a member and former chair of the James Webb Space Telescope User committee and currently serves on the Space Telescope Institute Council, which provides oversight to the operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope.

Interview with James Bullock

AI is employed to generate the transcripts. Due to length, technical complexity, the interview is presented as excerpts, edited extensively for clarity, and in summarized form with a focus on key themes. The cadence of the chat is kept and James’ personal voice often maintained.

In addition, AI has an approximate 80% accuracy so going to the full engaging video interview is recommended for full precision. Time stamps are provided with the caveat that they are approximate.

The interview is recommended for all audiences from students to global leaders in government, industry, investments, NGOs, United Nations, scientific and technical organizations, academia, education, media, translational research and development, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work and much more.

Interview Outline

James’s background is incredible. 0:00

What were the inflection points in your life that inspired you to become a scientist? 1:07

What is the mission of the Physical Sciences at UCI? 5:39

What are we doing in a world that has accelerating climate change? 10:23

It’s not a world where you’re going to have engineers who fix this problem. 15:42

What are the big questions that he wants to answer in quantum science? 21:33

The timing of quantum computing is excellent. 27:28

What are people saying in the space of quantum computing? 31:06

What about Roger’s ideas in the space of cosmology today? 35:48

Can we ever understand the universe beyond what we know? 41.39

Interview Excerpts and Summary

Stephen Ibaraki 00:00

(I discuss James’ background in my introduction and thank him for coming in today.)

James Bullock 01:07

Oh, absolutely. It's wonderful to get a chance to talk with you today, really excited.

Stephen Ibaraki 01:13

My audience is quite mixed. I have scientists in the audience, notable experts and practitioners, CEOs and investors. In fact, interestingly enough, when I do posts on LinkedIn, usually the number one, because I track the metrics, are CEOs or founders.

My audience in general, will be inspired by your background, your career, because you've done so much.

What were the inflection points in your life?

James Bullock 02:10

For sure. I'm happy to take a stab at that.

I think it's useful to start as a kid, when I was younger. I've always been interested in science and math. I was a really big fan of Carl Sagan and his being on PBS.

I found really compelling Cosmos (13-part TV series written by Carl Sagan and others with Sagan presenting). Just his viewpoint, was very global, but also cosmic perspective. Really getting out from our own heads. How do we fit into the universe? These really big questions about why we exist, why we're here? There's something very compelling about, if we think of the Earth, our planet, as a small, pale blue dot. As Carl Sagan said, in this vast universe. I think it brings us closer to each other as humans.

We are this species that's done this remarkable thing. We're only 100,000 to 200,000 years old, right? And we live in a universe that's 13.7 billion years old. That's much, much larger than anything we could experience day to day, and yet, we've figured out so much. Here we are together on this little speck of dust in the solar system. We're hanging together and trying to appreciate this wonderful globe that we're on. So I think, even as a child, that perspective, has always stuck with me.

I think it has motivated me to think about what are the biggest, most interesting questions that we can tackle, and what do we need to be doing to bring each other together and work together towards even being more thriving in the future? So that's definitely a part of it.

I think that got me on the track of studying physics, and, eventually astrophysics. I'm a cosmologist. That's why I was interested in things like the origin of the universe and how we got here.

I think coming to UCI was pretty transformative for me, because it gave me the chance to not only interact with an incredible group of astronomers and particle physicists here on this campus, but as being part of the University of California system, I got an amazing opportunity to interact with colleagues on all the other campuses in astrophysics, cosmology, and physics. It really opened my eyes to a breadth of approach that we can do things together and build systems of scientists to work towards large and big problems.

It got me interested in academic leadership roles where you can try to play a role in facilitating things that maybe otherwise wouldn't happen. You can get large teams of people together to do major initiatives and astronomy, or to do things with internationally preeminent telescopes that otherwise couldn't be done and cannot be done by a single person, but just require large teams of people all pushing in the same direction to discover things that can't otherwise be discovered.

I think that's influenced me, and why I've worked with the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble's telescope. (Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution, a multi-campus research program funded by the University of California Office of Research. The Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution brings together the five southern University of California campuses - Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Barbara - to create the largest institute of its kind in the world.) So I think that's another sort of phase change.

But, when I became Dean of the School Physical Sciences, here at UCI, it was really my job to think about, what are we doing here in physical sciences more broadly, and what's our mission?

Perhaps the most compelling story I can tell about this role is that the founders of the school, including Fred Reines, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering neutrinos, but also Sherry Rowland, who was the first scientist to lead efforts that won a Nobel Prize in climate related science, for his discovery that CFCs deplete ozone.

Sitting in this school and thinking about what the mission of this school is. There's a big chunk of it is to do fundamental research that tangibly improves the world, improves the lives of people, and to use a scientific understanding to drive regenerative activities more broadly.

I think that has really lit a fire under me. That sort of legacy of excellence here. Thinking big, thinking globally. To try to see what can we do as a globally preeminent institution. A large and thriving state (California) to do what we can to tangibly move the needle on this crucial problem of climate change. And so I'm focusing a lot of energy on that right now.

Stephen Ibaraki 07:13

That's really fascinating from Carl Sagan, to UCI. You joined UCI in 2004. You became the Dean in July of 2019. So that's kind of a journey.

You mentioned this interest in science and the confluence of all these different areas.

You mentioned your school has these Nobel Prize winners—three Nobel Prizes.

In physics for discovery of neutrinos (Frederick Reines).

Two in chemistry — for the discovery of the role of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) play in the depletion of the ozone layer (F. Sherwood Rowland) and (Irwin Allan Rose for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.)

It's just really interesting.

Can you can you talk about this idea of bringing together all these different schools within UCI and your vision for that?

James Bullock 08:30

I can definitely tell you about the vision.

It's a vision that I think a lot of people on campus share. The details aren't worked out yet. But I think this vision is something I can talk about.

It's basically this. We're facing this global issue associated with climate change and environmental sustainability. I don't really like to use the word crisis. But it's certainly a situation that we need to pay laser focus to, right? In this problem, because it's global in nature, and it affects every aspect of how the world works. The human experience is no longer the domain of physical climate scientists alone. I think the heart and soul of it is physical climate science.

That starts in our school. We have the first Earth System Science department in the country founded by Ralph Cicerone (Wikipedia: 1998-2005, chancellor of the University of California, Irvine; 2005-2016, president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS); "renowned authority" on climate change and atmospheric chemistry, issued an early warning about the grave potential risks of climate change), who is a friend of Sherry Rowland. (Cicerone), an atmospheric chemist who had this vision that in order to really understand what the climate is doing on Earth, you have to think of the Earth as a system. There are people; there's water; there are oceans; there's the atmosphere; there are animals; — this is a system. It's very complex; that is interacting to understand what's happening in the globe. You really need to think about it in a very interdisciplinary way.

But even more so today. Today, every single school on this campus, from the law school, to the business school, to people doing policy, to doing biology, and certainly engineering, information computer science, and physical sciences—so this includes chemistry and physics and earth science and mathematics. Everyone is thinking about how climate change is affecting the world and what we need to do about it?

There's not any really forward thinking business community that I'm aware of that's not thinking about, what are we doing in a world that has accelerating climate change, right? What are we thinking about in terms of policy implications for understanding how do we navigate the future? And in a world where things are changing, where the risk of fires is higher, or air quality, etc.

So in recognition of this, we're trying to come together as a campus. To have an all in response to think about how we can work together to tangibly move the needle on climate change in a way that really scales globally? In order to do that, I think there's a recognition that we can't be an ivory tower. That's just pontificating to the world, the way things should be done. But it's really more of a porous nexus, where we can try to be a neutral convener, for people coming in from the private sector, from NGOs, to government agencies, to policymakers, to thinkers, futurists, everyone to begin to think about what can we be doing in this area. That really tangibly moves the needle in this space. And I should say, education is also key to this. So as an educational institution, we want to play a role in educating the next generation of leaders in this space, whether they end up on, doing business or engineering or whatever. They have some deep understanding of what's happening in a world with this accelerating climate and they can adjust and lead through that change.

Stephen Ibaraki 12:07

That's fascinating. You alluded to this earlier. I mean, the law school, ... different other schools that are part of this, together with the traditional academic departments of chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth sciences, mathematics ... but you've got something like 14 schools, are they all engaged in this idea that you've got to do this interdisciplinary, sometimes they call it transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, coming together to address this issue? I think you again, alluded to that. You don't think there's anybody else doing this right now, right?

James Bullock 12:42

I'm not aware of this kind of all in approach. It really is framing things this way. I mean, I'm sure other people are thinking about it, because it's natural to try to figure out how to bring people together. But yes, that's right. Every school is involved, leadership of every school is supportive.

The other aspect of this that I think is quite unique is it's not actually just every academic unit, it's not just the sort of educational enterprise, but it's also from the facilities side. The side of campus where, if you think about it, we're basically a city. We have some 30,000 people inhabit this campus. So it's like a small city. We have our own power grid, which is interesting about this campus. We have; sit on our own power grid; we order lots of food; we have transportation issues; we heat and cool our labs in our buildings. So thinking about the campus itself as a laboratory for climate solutions that scale at the size of a city. That's also interacting with the power grid from the outside; with our internal power grid; with our own solar panels; with distant solar panels; with how we're going to store energy from day to night. Those are the kinds of activities that we think can be unique. Because we can treat ourselves as a laboratory for exploring solutions that may work or may not work, and begin to figure out how to then scale that up to other city sized entities around the country; around the world.

Stephen Ibaraki 14:12

What fostered this idea? You've got to be all in and working together and so on? Is it because of all the data that you're seeing? Are there some trigger points for you or flags that were just too compelling that you said, you know what, we have to address this in some way?

James Bullock 14:35

Well, I think the thing that's pretty interesting, is we had a number of activities on campus where we were trying to bring together folks who care about these issues. This started with a group that we call “solutions that scale”. That started very organically with professors that just kind of ran into each other. At a coffee cart and said, we really need to do something big here. It started with a core group of people that are a little bit more on the STEM side of things. But as time went on, almost by a friends of friends kind of situation, a larger and larger group of dedicated faculty began to come together and say, this is what I'm turning my research towards to.

And there's this environmental justice angle that we need to think about, if we're going to restructure the electricity grid. And then the power grid and the energy grid of this country. We have to think about what that means for disadvantaged communities, and privilege, etc.

It just began to kind of become obvious that there were so many different pieces of the campus that had something interesting and important to contribute to this problem.

It's not a world where, it's just going to be engineers who fix this problem. Because if you're not consulting people who are really talking with folks out there in the community and the business community, etc, you're going to fail. You need to have this broader vision. A 30,000 foot view of the situation to really enact things in a way that's functional. I don't know if there was any specific tipping point. But, I think the realization was, if you had meetings around this topic, you had folks showing up with important things to say, from every corner of the campus, from the undergraduates to the professors and all the different schools.

Stephen Ibaraki 16:22

I work a lot with CEOs and investors, and with other groups where we monitor globally, what the situation is. We try to do good work for global impact and in a good way, right? I guess the model being for the benefit of Earth's ecosystems, and also for the benefit of humanity. Much broader than just people because everything is influenced by this.

Do you consider the earth ecosystem, almost like a living entity in some way? And in an abstract way? In that, that's where we have to come to the aid, of what the situation is. I mean, what's that meta view of the climate and where we are today?

James Bullock 17:09

Yes. I think that's a very useful way to think about it. I mean, the Earth is; humanity is certainly a major player. We are affecting the globe and the globe's climate in a way that I think, is kind of unprecedented for a species of our size. In the period of time we're doing it. It's not the first time in the history of the globe that this has happened, but we know it's happening. I think, is different about us as we recognize it's happening and then can do something about it. Right?

It's certainly true that every aspect of the Earth's system, the biology and all life, it plays an important role. Phyto plankton in the ocean are doing most of the heavy lifting and creating the oxygen that we breathe, for example, right? It's a complex system, we have to think about it that way. We can't think about it in isolation.

There's a view in which the earth; can we regenerate this globe, where all life on earth begins to thrive? Because it's not just human life. If other parts of the ecosystem begin to collapse, it's bad for everything. It's not just us. The 500,000 year timescale, the earth is going to be fine. Whether we're here or not, the Earth is going to be here, right?

We're much more concerned about the 100 year, the 1000 year timescale, we hope we're here. And we're thriving with the other species that we've evolved to live with.

Stephen Ibaraki 18:37

I'm going to be a little bit more fluid now reaching into your past and then integrating that with your current work and future work.

Just a reminder to the audience, these interviews are unscripted. So James is not prepared for this.

But, just looking at your background, you oversaw the recruitment of all of these new faculty members and the establishment of the UCI Center for 2D materials. Can you talk about that?

James Bullock 19:09

Sure. I am a firm believer that science and technology are a force for good in the world. And at least they can be utilized appropriately. It's not to say it's the only force for good in the world. But if we are to thrive, I think, as a species going forward. I think science and technology has a really fundamental role there.

And so the Center for 2D Materials is about thinking about really interesting quantum phenomena that can happen on the scale of one atom thick materials or two atom thick materials. What interesting properties can happen as you begin to understand the physics on that very sort of quantum scale. There's a belief, right? And I think a well founded belief that the next technological revolution that we will experience will be an understanding of the quantum world at that level.

You talk about designer materials. Can you design materials that are light? That can absorb energy and utilize them in some effective way? High temperature super conductivity, incredibly high memory storage devices that require very little energy and extremely small, etc, etc, right?

And so as we invest, and think about the next generation of what we're going to need to thrive as a civilization, in the next 100 years, it's that core fundamental research that we think will drive it. Much like, the early days of quantum mechanics. The early 1900s and early 20th century, eventually drove, transistors and the technological revolution. The huge boom that we saw with technology, and in the late 20th century and early 21st century. We anticipate those kind of fundamental advances will drive incredible technological advances, in the next 30 years or so.

Stephen Ibaraki 21:16

I mean, did you look at things like, I don't know how connected you are with the group now, but things like pristine graphene, or you know, these quasi particles like with Microsoft, and the work on topological materials and things like that, right? ... quantum effects. Do you have any views on things like that?

James Bullock 21:37

Oh, yes. So these 2D materials. I have a couple of our professors who work in there; were the original people who as postdocs were some of the people who led those foundational papers where you twisted graphene, and suddenly it was conductive. And then it's not. Those are the people who did the work. Now, standing up their own labs here at UCI.

We're very excited about where that might lead. Tunable things that you go from a conductor to an insulator, just with a twist.

So, yes, I'm very excited about those directions. I think always with fundamental science, you think this could really lead to something major. We're going to keep trying to figure it out. One in 10 times it does, or maybe one in 100 times it does, and when it does, it's incredible. And sometimes it's just gee whiz, that's really interesting physics, not sure what we're going to do with it. That's kind of where we are now. I think this is why I think government funding of fundamental research is so important, because sometimes you have to fund things. You strike out in terms of technology, nine out of 10 times, but when you get that Grand Slam, it means everything. That's the attitude that I have. I think it's, regardless of what happens technologically with a lot of these discoveries, we're learning a lot of really interesting physics, and they're very well may be some tangible payoffs that really transform the world, depending on what we forgot what to do.

Stephen Ibaraki 23:08

Now, this is related, because it's all about quantum science, right? Related to quantum science, or, quantum science and technology, ... You helped launch the UCI, Eddleman Quantum Institute (EQI). What are the things that you're looking at in that Institute? Not just today, but what do you see as the big questions that you want answered, and then do some crystal ball gazing, what questions will be answered? In two years, and then say by 2030?

James Bullock 23:50

Well, I would say that there are a number of steps here. When you talk about quantum science, you could be talking about different things. You could be talking about interesting materials. Quantum materials, quantum sensors, using qubits to measure things you otherwise couldn't measure. But you could also move towards quantum information, quantum computing and the ultimate goal of incredible computing.

There's another area in addition to the 2D materials space that we have great expertise in here. There are a couple of other areas where we are doing interesting stuff.

One is in an area called spintronics, which is, where you're thinking about using traditional electronics, it's the charge of the electron that is effectively doing things. But in spintronics, it's not the charge of the electron. It's the spin of the electron. It's the quantum spin. Each electron can either be an up or down state. In principle, you can store information with that spin. It requires a lot less energy to flip it than it does to sort of move an electron around and generates a lot less heat. There's a goal that maybe spintronics will be a very interesting way of thinking about doing computing and data storage, etc, in the future.

As we move towards quantum computing, for example. An area that we have a great expertise in is in computational efforts, classical computational efforts to understand materials. We have a deep expertise and how you simulate sort of conglomerations of atoms and what these materials are going to do when you put them together. One, well hopeful, obvious use case for a quantum computer when they are built is simulating materials. Simulating quantum systems with a quantum computer, in principle is what you want to be doing with a quantum computer. That's a really great use case.

Our role, we think, may be in actually not building the quantum computer, which a lot of companies and deep pockets are trying to do that with different technologies. But an interesting thing to think about is what are we going to do with the quantum computers? What are going to be the most interesting problems to try to tackle when we get there?

One thing you have to do is test the quantum computer, right? So if you're doing calculation with a quantum computer, how do you know if you got it right? So there's going to be obvious test cases that you need a classical computer to run the simulation, and then the quantum computer does the same simulation, and you want to make sure the quantum computing is actually getting the right answer before you then utilize it for a bunch of stuff, right? So if there's a role there, I think as we begin to sort of build out this structure. Those will be the first few things we're going to do.

The other thing we're trying to do with EQI, which I think is important, if you think about it. UCI is a really interesting campus. We're incredibly diverse. A majority of our students are the first in their families to go to college. And yet we're functioning at a really high level as a research institute. So it's this very interesting, mission driven aspect. What we feel as an important mission for the Eddleman Quantum Institute is to educate the next generation, the quantum workforce.

This country is going to need a bunch of really well educated people to step into these companies and begin to run these quantum computers or build these quantum materials to create this technology. So we are building programs in quantum science where you can come in as an undergraduate major, and be ready to step into those roles. And so that's an aspirational goal of ours that I think could really have the biggest payoff of all, because in terms of the number of students, we could be educating every year that then go off into the world and thrive and invent new things. I think that's going to be another role we can play in addition to the core research that's being done in the laboratories.

Stephen Ibaraki 27:27

Yes. If you look at the new Act, that was signed in August. The CHIPS (AND SCIENCE) ACT; there's funding for this education side or the building the skilled workforce, for quantum computing, quantum information science.

James Bullock 27:42

Yes, the timing is excellent. We sort of are reading the tea leaves and kind of thought that some of this stuff might be coming down. But the timing is excellent. Everything's well aligned. I mean, people, this is not a secret, right? People who are paying attention know that this is really the future. And so we're trying to prepare for that and make sure our students are prepared for it too.

Stephen Ibaraki 28:05

You know, it's interesting. In 2015, I was asked by a group of CEOs that represented almost 100 trillion in assets under management. Just 100 of them. The GDP of the world was about 60 trillion at the time. About 1.7 times the GDP of the world. And they said, Stephen, can you look 10 years into the future and tell us that things that we need to look at now? Because we don't want to get caught?

You know, like, when Apple entered the marketplace and mobile? No, they were not a mobile company! But, now they are one of the biggest mobile companies in the world.

One of the things I mentioned at the time was quantum computing. I said, you're going to have to seriously even look at it now. Because you get the lead on. And I remember at the time, people thought quantum computing wasn’t real. Because they thought that it was an outlier. And it's going to be 100 years, 2122 or something, before it became serious.

I will just mention. I just did a Forbes article and interviewed 11 people to get their predictions. And I don't think anybody said, it is not going to happen?

And it's not going to be 100 years from now. I think people are thinking that it's going to be in the near to medium term.

What are your views on that? Do you think it's like this pseudoscience, which people thought, a few years ago? Or do you think, this is a reality? We really do have to look at it?

James Bullock 29:33

I guess my take on it is, I expect there to be some interesting use cases for it first. We're not going to quantum computers in our cell phones, or anything like that, right? I expect that there will be some interesting use cases for quantum computers in the not too distant future. That will be better than what you can do with a classical computer.

I don't know the answer; exactly what that's going to be, right? Is it going to be in drug design? I think that might be a little bit farther off. It's going to be in factoring; what is it? What are going to be those first few areas where it's really showing preeminence, compared to what you can do classically? And then where are we going to go from there?

I think broadly defined quantum design is what would be amazing. If you could, rather than having these really expensive experiments to try to find new materials that are superconducting, you can actually just simulate the system on a computer and be like, oh, yeah, this is how you do it. I think that would be a really interesting use case.

But, if I had to guess, maybe within 20 years, we're really going to have quantum computers doing things that classical computers can't do. And then once that happens, it might then be exponentially fast before we're just doing everything that way. I think we're all kind of guessing there. But we definitely want to make sure we're contributing as much as we can. So that very exciting, very exciting area.

Stephen Ibaraki 31:14

I did two recent interviews, one with Travis Humble who's the director of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It's related to Department of Energy.

And then Jack Dongarra, who won the ACM Turing Award for his work in supercomputing. (See Forbes interview with Jack).

They already have exascale (supercomputers), which is a billion billion calculations per second.

In our conversations we talk about zetascale. Is that going to be there? Which is a trillion billion.

There's this whole sort of tension that you can run these things in quantum inspired algorithms; new ones coming out. So every time somebody claims some test case, which is not practical, but just a test case, in quantum supremacy or quantum advantage, and then some research group says, Hey, we can run that on a classical computer.

James Bullock 32:04

(researchers saying) We can do that; yes; I can do that classically.

Yes. It's an interesting race. I mean, one question I have for you, and then I think about Moore's law. What we're doing with classical computers...the energy requirements as we keep scaling up are non trivial, right?

We're going back to the climate discussion. What are people saying in that space in terms of quantum computing? How are we going to continue to accelerate our ability to process data and do all the things we need to do in a data driven world? Without getting into trouble with the energy requirements for some of these things?

Stephen Ibaraki 32:42

That's a really good question.

I just did an interview with a government fund of Canada. They launched something called the Deep Tech Fund. (see Forbes article with a lead partner of the fund, Tom Park). They have invested in quantum, but they're also interested in photonics.

Photonics has a lot of promise, not just in quantum, but in classical computing, as well, where you can get a much better efficiency, maybe even get a reduction in energy.

Also, there's these new 3D stacking technologies using resistive RAM (RRAM), where you have a deep integration between the CPU and internal memory, in this new resistive RAM (RRAM) technology. (See Forbes article on Philip Wong’s work and requiring two interviews due to magnitude of his pioneering contributions in semiconductors). He's probably the world’s foremost expert today, on this next generation where you can get maybe a tenfold power decrease, and yet, it integrates with things like AI, embedded in the chip, and you get this really rapid radical performance increase. Because there's tight integration on the chip, almost like a system on a chip. You're getting scaling. This idea of nanometers, 17, then ten, seven and five, and then three, and now they're even smaller. I think the 3D idea is really interesting. I'm an investor. So we're looking at what are some of these plays that are occurring? I don't think Moore's law is going to be a problem, because there's so much work going in all these other novel areas that look really interesting and even novel materials that look really interesting.

James Bullock 34:36

That's fantastic. That's amazing. It makes sense. As soon as you say, 3D, it's like, Oh, okay. We have all your dimensions to play with.

Stephen Ibaraki 34:47

We live in interesting, exciting times. I want to mine some of the other work you're doing.

I had an interview with Roger Penrose. In fact, we had Roger for UN ITU AI for Good, and he was the opening keynote. At the time, Roger didn't know that he had a 20 minute time limit. So I met him in advance the day before. And I said, Roger, can you present what you're going to do in 20 minutes? We brainstormed what he was going to present (I was moderator). In fact, I read all the major bulk of his research on the plane, in advance of the meeting, and I thought that was really interesting. And then I had dinner with him at another conference. We were both keynotes. And he got a Nobel for his work.

You're in cosmology, and he's in cosmology.

What are your some of your ideas in that space? Where it's going? Roger has some really interesting ideas as well.

All right. Where we are today? Exascale supercomputing, deep learning and machine learning can have an impact on all of that and there's the James Webb Telescope. It is going to give much deeper insights than the Hubble of which you were a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.

You really understand the elements. You used to chair the committee that selects the projects are going to be run on the James Webb Space Telescope.

So a lot of ideas, combining that together, where are we? Where are we in cosmology? today? Where are we going? And what about some of Roger’s ideas? Or do you think that he's kind of in his own space?

James Bullock 36:48

Well, let me save the stuff that Roger is thinking about for a little later.

I mean, I'm going to talk a little bit about the kind of cosmology that I do, which is a little bit distinct from what the kinds of things that Roger does.

I really think of myself as a physical cosmologist.

I'm pretty close to the ground when it comes to trying to figure out what observations are telling us. This begins to inform our deeper ideas about what the universe is made of, and where it's going, and what the fundamental constituents are.

So I think right now, in cosmology, we have a pretty good idea, at least descriptive idea of what the universe is. But what we've discovered is a little weird.

The universe, as we understand it now, has a total mass energy density, that is dominated by something that we call dark energy. And the other sliver is dark matter. And that's different.

And then there's a tiny little bit; about 1/6 of the mass energy density of the universe is basically everything in the periodic table. Everything we've been talking about today.

So the rest of the universe is made up of this stuff, which is actually distinct, and at some level, kind of not particularly well understood physics.

What this is telling us is that the universe is richer and deeper, and, governed by, things and forces and particles, that are very, very different than what we can easily interact with as humans.

One thing is, you hear this initially. Sometimes the immediate reaction is; that sounds crazy. How is that possibly true? That there's all this mess out there that's different than anything we can detect.

What's to say that this species of ours, us; we should have evolved to detect everything in the universe. We detect the things we need to detect. We can detect visible light with our eyes, because our sun shines visible light. We can't detect infrared light with our eyes. It took us a long time to figure out there is even infrared light. Now we have to build big telescopes to study the infrared and build cameras to look at things in the infrared, right?

There's all kinds of things out there, including photons of weird wavelengths that we can't easily interact with. There's neutrinos that are out there that we can't easily interact with, but that we've discovered. What cosmology is telling us is that the universe itself, the construct of the universe, is much stranger than the stuff we've been involved in, or we've evolved to interact with.

Now, the deep questions today are, what the heck is this dark matter? The thing that I'm trying to figure out, what is this dark matter stuff? And what's up with this dark energy? There are two different things.

The dark energy is what's driving the universe, not just to expand, but to accelerate in its expansion. The dark matter is the stuff that remarkably, is dominating the clustering gravity of the universe, and without it, we don't think any galaxies or planets or us would exist.

We have a lot of evidence that it's there, but we don't know exactly what it is. Now we have a standard kind of understanding, a basic model that does really well, that lays out the percentages and the characteristics of the dark matter, dark energy that I described to you.

What's interesting with Webb right now is there's some initial observations that happened right when the telescope turned on. That were very surprising and difficult to interpret in the context of this picture of cosmology that I just laid out to you.

The very first time that telescope turned on, we saw some stuff we didn't understand, right? And it's oftentimes it's like this, right?

When you look somewhere you never looked before, oftentimes, you discover something you weren't expecting. And so it could be that as we continue to study the universe with Hubble. I mean, started with Webb, and measure how fast it's expanding and begin to look at the very earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. It will tell us that, okay, something very different must be going on with what how dark matter is clustering in the early universe, or how dark energy is making the universe expand, right now.

So the things that I'm trying to work on are close to that. It's looking, like in a very kind of empiricist way, our models say this should happen. We observe this other thing to happen. What does that mean, in terms of our understanding of how the universe works? And let's build off of that, very observationally driven stuff in the context of, we think general relativity is correct right now, but maybe it's not. We'll see if those observations are going to tell us it's broken. We think we understand the laws of particle physics, the way particles should interact, but maybe that's going to break at some point. It's trying to utilize these kind of cosmological observations to inform our understanding of this universe that we cannot see. Most of it, we cannot see directly. We have to study it indirectly with these telescopes and colliders and things.

Stephen Ibaraki 41:39

We'll explore just a tiny little thought experiment. Imagine a parrot sitting on a fence. That parrot is not contemplating quantum gravity collapse and quantum mechanics and cosmology, and dark matter and so on. And that's because of constraints, or what I believe are the constraints within that parrot, right? Or corvids, which are quite advanced. Type of birds that are out there that can problem solve.

But then I think of humans. We have 85 billion neurons. We have 125 trillion synapses. And if you include this idea of microtubules, maybe we have octillion, kind of computational capability, but that there's a finite limit. And then you introduce this idea that world is viewed via a lens (see Peter Fenwick, neuropsychiatrist). We are only a filter. We only can conceive of what you experience through the filters.

So maybe in a cosmology sense we are that parrot that sits on the fence. It then requires some kind of computational understanding where we are at just level one, and you need level 100 to be able to understand? Do you ever think of that?

We just don't have the mental capacity? Let's we use some kind of language or large machine learning model that's in the trillions, hundreds of trillions, and then it can identify patterns that we just can't even conceive of?

James Bullock 43:19

Yes. That's certainly possible.

I think there's an Einstein quote that is, something to the effect that the most; the hardest thing to understand about the universe is that it's understandable, right?

I mean, I got it wrong, but it's something like that, right?

It's what I was alluding to before. We're this species that evolved on this planet. Over the last couple 100,000 years, and somehow, we're equipped to ask these questions, but at least come up with some answers to where we are in the universe and begin to construct models that explain what we see.

I think the scientific process so far is we really have constructed these models, leveraging mathematics, which is an amazing tool that was either discovered or invented, depending on what you think about it. And these days I think you're exactly right. That we are leveraging what we can do with really sophisticated computation, that artificial intelligence, these sorts of algorithms that are somehow able to learn, and maybe we'll learn even faster in the future.

We leverage all the tools we can to develop these models. They're like the shadows on the wall of the cave. We've imagined to create these models that predict what the shadows look like, on the wall of the cave. But whether we're actually seeing the reality is a deeper, really interesting philosophical question.

A question becomes, what can we ever do? Can we ever, only ever ... just constructing a model that does better and better at explaining what we see without getting to fundamental truth, whatever that means, or is fundamental truth. The only way we can even define fundamental truth is that through models that we can predict what's going to happen, and then we see it happen. And that's as good as we can do in a very kind of utilitarian sense.

I think that's a really deep question. I think if we do see advances in artificial intelligence, that transcend what we're doing now. Way beyond pattern recognition and speed of calculation, that can truly learn in ways that are useful. You could see it.

One question that I, that you might ask is, what does it mean for us to understand something? If I have a code that I can run that predicts what's going to happen? Does that mean I understand it? Do I understand it in a way that I find fulfilling? Or do I need to understand it in some kind of human way, that allows me to gain deep intuition for it? And then I kind of understand it deeply in my heart and then can apply it right? I mean, that's kind of a philosophical question. But I think as we move towards a world where we're really reliant on the machinery and the simulations to predict things, then the question of what it is, what is the role of the scientist and the human in that? What are we learning from that if we; if all we really have is a black box computer program that tells us what's going to happen? What are we doing? So for me, I think about that a lot; like when I run a simulation, and what in the end of the day, and a galaxy is there that looks about like a real galaxy? Does that mean, I understand how that galaxy formed? Well, my computer seems to understand it, but do I understand it? And then what can I do? How can I learn from that? Right? So I think this is something that I think about a lot.

Stephen Ibaraki 46:44

Yes. We're in the perfect time for all of this and the realization of all of this.

The final question: What are your recommendations to the audience?

James Bullock 47:07

I'll go back to what I started with before.

I do believe that a really deep understanding of the core Science of Things is going to be important for the world moving forward. Beyond a descriptive sense. Really at both qualitative and quantitative understanding of why we think things are happening.

If you're worried about climate change; I'll be honest with you that the science of climate change is not that complicated. You know, a lot of people say, Well, I'm not a climate scientist, I don't know what's going on. There's some basics to what happens with greenhouse gases, that an intelligent person can sit down and think about for a little while, and begin to understand what the repercussions are. Doesn't mean you understand everything.

But I guess a recommendation of mine is to dig in a little bit to the details beyond the surface level of what's happening. To think about the core science that might be driving things that are important in our lives.

Because I think, not only that's where understanding comes, that's where nuance lives. But that's also where maybe the breakthroughs are going to live. And of course, you always have to work out the complex realities beyond the basic science behind things.

But my deep recommendation is to center yourself on the deeper understanding of the core phenomena, rather than trying to start at the surface. If you're at the surface of something that's interesting, try to burrow down occasionally to figure out what's really happening at the bottom.

Stephen Ibaraki 48:52

And then I'll conclude just with some additional data about you, James.

You're a Chancellor’s Fellow. You received two UCI Celebration of Teaching Awards. You're a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and dot, dot, dot.

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(Selected Honors and Awards: Highly Cited Researcher, Web of Science (2019, 2020); UCI Celebration of Teaching Award: Dean’s Honoree for Teaching Excellence (2017); Chancellor’s Fellow, UC Irvine (2012-2015); Visiting Miller Professorship, UC Berkeley (2012); UC Irvine Celebration of Teaching Award (2011); Celebration of Teaching Award for Technology Innovation, UC Irvine (2011); McMaster Cosmology Colloquium Prize, University of Toledo (2011); Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education Award in Physical Sciences (2011); Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected 2008); NASA Hubble Fellowship (2002); Alpheus Smith Prize, The Ohio State University Physics Department (1994); Phi Beta Kappa (1993).

Selected Professional Activities: Former Chair and now member, James Webb Space Telescope User’s Committee, (Chair from 2017); Chair, CalTeach Executive Committee, 2019-; Vice-chair, Cal-Bridge CSU Bridge Program Strategic Planning Group, 2019-; Member, Visiting Committee, The Ohio State University Astronomy Department, 2020; Member, Visiting Committee, Department of Theoretical Physics, Tata IFR, Mumbai, India, 2018; Chair, UC Keck Observatory Time Allocation Committee, 2015-2017; Member, Visiting Committee, University of Arizona Astronomy Department, 2016; Member, University of California Observatories Board, 2012-2015; Chair, Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields Initiative, 2012; Member, University of California Astronomy Task Force, 2011; Chair, UNC Physics & Astronomy Department Visiting Committee, 2011; Chair, Hubble Fellows Selection Committee, 2009; Co-chair, Milky Way Science Working Group for LSST (2008-2010); Member, Hubble Fellows Selection Committee, 2008.

Current Positions: Dean, School of Physical Sciences, University of California, Irvine 2019 - present; Professor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine 2010 - present.

Past Appointments: Chair, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine 2017 - 2019; Director, Center for Cosmology, University of California, Irvine 2005 - 2017; Director, Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution 2010 - 2015; Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine 2008 - 2010; Assistant Professor, Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Irvine 2004 - 2008; Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Observatory (Host: Lars Hernquist) 2002 - 2004; Postdoctoral Fellow, Ohio State Astronomy & Physics (Mentor: David Weinberg) 1999 - 2002.)

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You've done so much. I recommend the audience follow your work and UCI and the awesome stuff that's happening there.

James Bullock 49:18

Well, thanks so much. You know, this has been a wonderful conversation, and I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been fun. Can we do it again sometime?

Stephen Ibaraki 49:25

Okay, take care. Thanks.