Economic Vitality Unplugged

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[Keith] Welcome to Economic Vitality Unplugged where

we explore the people, ideas, and innovations driving regional prosperity and shaping the future

of our community. I'm your host Keith Bowers and today we're diving deep into the intersection of science,

leadership, and economic development. Our guest today is someone who truly embodies

all three. Kathleen Amm is the Director of the National High Magnetic Laboratory, better known

as the Maglab, right here in Tallahassee. It's a one of a kind facility. The world's largest and

most powerful magnet lab attracting scientists from around the globe and driving innovation

right here in our region. Kathleen, welcome to the podcast. We're so glad to have you. [Kathleen] Thank

you, Keith. I'm really happy to be here today, and I really appreciate the invitation to join the podcast today.

Yeah, we love having you on the show. Ever since you've arrived here in our community, it's been just a lot of buzz

about your leadership and your past experience. So, if you don't mind, we're just gonna spend some time having a conversation

about that and feel free to talk about any other things that you feel that may be interesting to our community.

So, let's start at the beginning. You've had an incredible career in physics

and engineering. What first sparked your interest in science and how did that path lead you to the

Mag Lab? I was inspired to go into science and engineering at a very

early age. I had the privilege of having a father, who got his Ph.D. in geophysics at

MIT, and he studied the moon rocks. So he got to go to NASA while he was doing this. So when I was a child,

I had all these wonderful pictures of the Soyuz and the Space Station coming together and men walking on the moon and that

kind of thing. So, between my father being a scientist who, y'know, earned a very good living working in the oil industry in

geophysics, and those wonderful moon pictures I did, and I was good at math. So I always thought it'd be good

to go into a career in science, to be able to have a great life and learn about the universe and all

the wonders and it's a part of my family. So that's sort of when it started and continued in high school

taking science classes and then went into mathematics and physics as an undergraduate and went to the University of Illinois

where I met a professor Professor Justin Schwartz, who was young professor at the time, who got recruited to come down here

to Tallahassee went the magnet lab was founded. I actually worked at the magnet lab as a graduate student working

on high temperature superconductors. It was really exciting to be able to be here at the founding of the lab and get to work

on the magnets in the early days and do my experiments and set up brand new labs. So that was a great

foundation that I got here at FSU at the MagLab and got my PhD here in condensed matter physics.

And from here, I went up to Upstate New York, and then I worked at G. Global Research in the group that worked

on developing MRI magnets and I became a project leader. And then eventually I was running

the magnet group there after a period of time and it was really exciting to be able to work on developing magnets for

MRI systems that really could help save lives. Discovering cancer in people or working

on solving the mysteries of the brain and helping people get healthy. So that was very exciting. And after

being there for almost 20 years, I ended up going to Brookhaven National Labs to run the magnet group. And there I

got to learn about the accelerator world in building very large projects. These are like billion dollar projects that need

magnets be built for. So I got to work on the electron ion collider there with my team and also an accelerator upgrade project

that was developing magnets for CERN, which was very exciting over in Switzerland at the Large Hadron Collider. And then

this job opportunity came along, to be the Director of the Maglab, and I thought, "What an amazing, amazing opportunity!"

You know, to get to span the whole world of magnets, which really we do here at the Magnet Lab. Not just MRI, not just

accelerator magnets, but everything. So I applied for the job, and I was blessed, and given the opportunity

to take on this wonderful assignment and lead just a brilliant group of scientists, engineers, technicians,

incredible administrative support staff. It's a great place to be. [Keith] That's awesome. That is

very, very impressive. Your career trajectory, just that path is amazing.

And the thing about it is, it's so nuanced. I mean, just out of curiosity, how many people on the planet

know as much about magnetics and physics as you do? I would think that that would be a small number. [Kathleen] This

is a very good question. I'm sure there are people that know a lot more about it than I do. This is to be very, very

honest. My specialized area of superconducting magnet development. I do know enough to be dangerous,

I would say. You know, I just was doing a review today with the Fermilab folk and helping them out with one of their projects.

But I just love it and we're a very small, tight-knit community, the magnet community. We get to see each other all the time. We

talk about that a lot and building big magnets is really, really challenging because you have all of these really big

challenges. Like these things get really, really cold, like as cold as outer space. With enormous forces on them that

are cycling while you're ramping the magnet up to its field and down. And it's just like the combination

is really tough. And if something is wrong inside of it, you have to warm the thing back up to a room temperature and

take it apart and figure it out. So I'll see in my career and working on magnets, I've learned a lot about all

the things that can and will go wrong. And what I've learned is that the whole community does that. And these are really

challenging beasts, these magnets. So we always heard, y'know, figuring out how to do them better. And it's amazing

to me, you know, to think about the tens of thousands of MRI magnets that are sitting in hospitals around the world operating seamlessly.

You know, I mean that that really is a really incredible! Just to see how a very complex technology like that. Something

as cold as outer space with all these forces on it, you know, has eliminated exploratory surgery

in the world so that people can just get an image of these things and then treat it. That is such an incredible accomplishment that's

been made in the medical space. [Keith] Yeah, and again, that is just mind-blowing. And kind of talking

about some of your experiences in the past with Brooke Haven National Laboratory and your research

at GE Global Research. What have been some of the biggest lessons, or surprises, for you as a

leader in such a technical, high-stakes environment? [Kathleen] Well, when I was talking

about these things that are as cold as outer space and have huge forces on them—like many elephants. As we talk about

a lot of stress on these things that are huge forces on it when they're when they're working. So you have to really plan

and organize things very well and be ready for the unexpected. Because, it's amazing to me when we're

starting a project on a magnet, you know, we'll do an exercise to think about all the things that can and will go wrong. And then what are you

going to do to keep that from going wrong? And so, you spend a lot of time thinking about that up front and

then putting that into your plan and trying to fit that in a tight-time schedule. Because, y'know you're trying to deliver a

product, and when you're in a company especially. But even in DOE projects, you have a window that you're trying to fit this

thing in, to get the science going and and same here at the Magnet Lab. So planning is really, really important but you've also

got to be really nimble in your plan because when something does go wrong, which it will, you need to be ready to respond.

And one of the things that I found very interesting, and I think this is a really good practice, at GE when we were building a new magnet.

We would do two prototypes, and we'd sort of space them about four months apart, so that you'd be doing the first one and something

might go wrong that you learned since the first time you're doing it. And then you'd have the second one that you could fix it in, because it's like four

months behind. So you go, "Aha, this is a problem." Well, now you can go fix the second one. And that would help mitigate risk.

But it's really hard when you're only building one. You have to deal with it. That's why you have to think about all

the things that could go wrong up front and try to address it before it becomes a big problem. [Keith] I see. [Kathleen] So planning, I've learned to be

a really good planner, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray and that does happen in high

risk, high reward projects for sure. [Keith] Wow, that is amazing. Well, the MagLab

is a true gem, not just for Tallahassee, but the entire country and the world, as a matter of fact.

Can you help our listeners understand what makes this place so special? [Kathleen] We have such a large

number of magnets that are available at the world's highest fields. So, we have a magnet here

that can go up to 45 Tesla, which is like 45 times stronger than a junkyard magnet.

So this is like a really, really big magnet. And what we can do is we can measure all kinds of amazing

materials in these types of magnets. And we have other ones that go up to fields in between and we use them all the time.

By measuring those materials, we can discover all kinds of things about electronic components. If you think about

raising the temperature on ice, right? You have ice that can then change to water that then changes to steam when you boil it. Well,

when you put things in a magnetic field, it can actually change the properties of the matter that you're measuring. So you can understand

like something might be a semi-conductor and then it changes to an insulator. Or it's a superconductor, which is a material that

has zero resistance. And then it turns into a very highly resistant material. And all kinds of

wacky and wild things can happen in these magnetic fields. And when we study the properties of these different electric

materials and magnetic materials, like things in your magnetic memories that you have in your computer for example.

We learn all kinds of things about them so then we can use them in electronic devices. And so many of the

things that you have in your cell phone today were probably studied at the Maglab over the past 30 years at some point.

There's this amazing material called graphene that is starting to be used in electronics today that had huge amounts of studying research

going on at the Maglab in the early 2000s. We also do study chemistry and chemical molecules

to understand how batteries work and improve battery performance. We have partnerships with companies like Samsung to do

that and that is also very important to work with industry to help them develop materials.

We also are working with a number of these amazing compact fusion companies that are trying to deliver endless energy

to the world and we're helping them to understand how the superconductors behave and how the cables behave that go into the

big magnets. They're using our expertise to move their technology forward rapidly. So there's a lot of really interesting

things going on here that ran the gamut from the MRI imaging at the highest fields in the world of

different types of disease states in mice and rats all the way to developing the quantum

computers of the future with the quantum materials that we're studying in our 45 Tesla magnet, for example. And working

with fusion companies to make magnets. So it's a pretty exciting place. [Keith] Yeah, it is, like I said, it's a special

place. And I learn something new every time I do a tour or talk to people that are associated

with the MagLab and it's just phenomenal. And it's amazing that this is taking place right here in our community.

[Kathleen] Absolutely. [Keith] You mentioned Samsung and that's just one example of a partnership where the research

is led to commercialization and I assume job creation. Any other partnerships

that you're at liberty to talk about that have led to some significant breakthroughs and economic impact?

[Kathleen] We have had a longstanding, I would say, relationship both as a y'know supplier to us as well as

a co-developer with Oxford Instruments. Because, Oxford Instruments develops some of the most complex superconducting

magnets and also instrumentation for superconducting magnets in the world. As they've been developing technologies,

we've co-developed them together. We've also just purchased things from them that then went into one of our big superconducting

magnets as part of it, or a part of a combination resistive superconducting magnet. And we have

a very strong partnership with them right now on a high temperature superconducting material that we're looking to see

how we can potentially get higher field magnets over 20 Tesla into laboratories around the world. So we're

working on that together. And as I was saying, you know, we're also working with many different fusion companies as well

to help them on developing their things. And we're also looking at new opportunities that are out there to say, yeah, well,

with other example, I should say, is in our mass spectrometry ICR group. They do a huge amount of collaboration

with Bruker in developing advanced instrumentation, and the partnership with Bruker, that then goes into mass

spectrometers around the world. They also do a large amount of research for oil companies who are looking at

the chemical composition of their products and how do they make them better and understand what the chemical

composition is in their materials, and that's been a long-standing partnership with industry through our future fuels institute,

and they play a key partnership with oil companies around the world in that space. So these are great things that are going on now,

but we're really looking towards the future and more business partnerships. We want to attract companies to the city of Tallahassee.

We also want to help companies that are here in the city of Tallahassee as well, [to] develop themselves and start up new

companies with ideas that people may have in the community or at the university. With professors

and researchers thinking up ideas to start their own companies here as well, their start-ups. [Keith] Yeah, I

mean, this is a perfect place for the proximity for the MagLab, the access to the universities

here—FSU, FAMU, the College of Engineering. I mean, we just have so many resources

and assets that it is just brimming with opportunity here, which leads to, you know, like

you stated, commercialization of these ideas that have long-lasting global implications. So this is

cutting-edge technology. [Kathleen] Absolutely. And I just want to say that we have one of the best leaders in technology

transfer leading our technology transfer group here—Valerie McDevitt, who's just a phenomenal leader. And her

team is just doing an outstanding job in developing partnerships. So, if you're interested in the Maglab, you can

reach out to her, reach out to me, or Mike Campbell, who's a phenomenal leader on her team. We love to work with companies and

help you find solutions to your problems. [Keith] Well, behind every lab coat is a career journey.

How's the MagLab helping to cultivate the next generation of scientists and engineers and innovators?

[Kathleen] We have a wonderful student and post-doc population and one thing that we've just started up recently is, I'm

really excited about this. We've always had sort of a great student group and we have a wonderful student here, Dayna Richter,

who has been championing. How do we really get the students together to do activities that they want to learn together to develop

their careers to network more and all of that type of thing? And one thing that we're doing is we're actually helping them as

they're getting especially, you know, further on and they may be looking for a job, either, you know, in academia, or in

industry. They have very good connections, of course, to academia, being here at FSU at the MagLab,

because their professors have big academic networks. But in industry, we're bringing that here as well. And

one thing I'm really excited about is I have an old friend from GE, who's now a Chief Technology Officer at a magnet company. And he's

actually going to be our first guest speaker that comes out to the MagLab to talk to the students. He's hiring a bunch of people,

and we're going to get him and his recruiter out here in the fall. So we're really also trying to teach them about the jobs in industry and how to

get a job and how to write your resume and make it less scary for students and postdocs who are out there looking especially with the challenging

environment we're in right now for jobs. We want to make sure that they know and can go to a broad range of jobs, either in

academia or in industry. So we're really focusing very much on that as well and also on networking

and getting them to know each other better and every time we have a meeting of the students more and more students come to it so they're really excited about

this initiative. [Keith] That's great and that's interesting that you should say that because I think it's important for our listeners to

understand that there's a holistic approach that's being implemented at the MagLab that cultivates that

talent, prepares them for careers. And it's not just geared towards the scientists that come,

but you're building the pipeline and I think that's important. [Kathleen] Well our people are absolutely critical whether

they be our students our post-docs our researchers our partners. You know we are a very collaborative environment

and we want this to be the best place to work and just make it a really positive experience for everybody who's come into our building,

whether you're a user, or a student, or an employee here. So we're doing a lot for that and playing engagement and development so we're

we're really excited about that and we're also working on a whole new learning curriculum too for our employees so we'll be able to to make it

even a better environment and help them develop their careers here at the MagLab. [Keith] Yeah, again, that's just amazing.

So looking ahead, what's on the horizon for the MagLab? Are there any upcoming projects or priorities

that you're excited about? [Kathleen] Well, we have a lot of great opportunities right now. I think we're in a very very

unique point in time for the MagLab, for Tallahassee, for FSU. I think we're already at

the heart of the quantum revolution that's going on right now with the new Quantum Initiative that [FSU] President McCullough has kicked

off here at the university. The MagLab does a lot of experiments in this space and there's a lot of great talent

that FSU is hiring to research in this space and they'll be doing a lot of their experiments here at the MagLab. I think

also, like I talked about before, with what's happening with the development of commercializing fusion power and

making fusion power a reality. I can't talk too much about it because there are, you, know agreements we have with

companies, and confidentiality, and that kind of thing. But we're definitely very active in that space and we're talking

to those companies and figuring out "What is the future of fusion going to look like?" and "What is that going to look like for the state of Florida?"

Because I think Florida is poised to be a major player in the space with the MagLab being here, with the growing

population, the growing needs for power, all that type of thing. We're also between the quantum revolution,

the AI revolution, you know in needing cryogenicics and that sort of brings in the superconductivity to that can bring better

power efficiency and with fusion devices that need that. There's a lot of things that we can look at in this whole

low-resistance zero-resistance kind of regime and there may be you know data centers that use quantum devices

that are going to be cooled with cryogenics. And so we want to be playing a critical role in that

too and we have discussions going on with multiple players in this space as well. So there's a lot of very interesting

things that are happening. And, oh, I should also say too that FSU last year has received funding to establish

a hydrogen hub here at the College of Engineering. So we can look at things that are cooled with liquid hydrogen as well,

which is very exciting because that's a very useful temperature. Many of the fusion plants are going to operate at 20 Kelvin

with cooled helium gas in that case, but we could do experiments at 20 Kelvin very easily over there and that will also

be important for the emerging cryogen-cooled aviation stuff as well. That could be superconducting,

or could be dis-cooled systems but with fuel cells and very efficient aircraft. So there's a lot of really

interesting things going on here right now that I think that FSU, and the FSU-FAMU College

of Engineering, and the MagLab are going to be critical players, given our technology. [Keith] It's amazing.

So we're going to wrap up with a lightning round. Just a few fun and fast questions, if you don't mind. [Kathleen] Um-hum.

[Keith] So what's one discovery of the MagLab that blew your mind? [Kathleen] One that blew

my mind. Oh that's a good question. I think, for me, well this is kind of a funny one actually, I guess

I should say. We have this wonderful thing that my Communications Director put together called Magnets Matter, and one thing

that really blew my mind is that we actually studied these worms that make super glue. I never realized

there were worms that made super glue. And it actually like spits a super glue out to go glue its prey and eat its, you know,

so it can go get it. And apparently we studied that in our NMR System here at the Maglab. So that kind of blew my mind that like, first-of-all,

there's a worm that you know squirts super glue and then now we understand the chemical composition of that and may be able

to like harvest that for advanced systems and things. So, [Keith] Wow. [Kathleen] it's kind of a wacky weird one, but that's what

popped in mind first when you asked that question, but I'm pretty blown away by the fact that we can have these really high-field

magnets that stay together and work and we're able to measure things that it's safely. You know that that

I think is really impressive. [Kathleen laughs] [Keith] Super glue worm, that's a new one. [Both laugh]

[Keith] So next question, what's your favorite part of the day and why?

[Kathleen] I am a night-hawk, so I really like the evenings. I'm not a morning-person, definitely not the morning, but I love the evening and also

I love to connect with people and a lot of times in the evening you can do networking events and talk to people

and go our with friends. Last night I was out with two of my colleagues and we were talking about all kinds of things, it was

a lot of fun, especially safety and Disney World. So that was—that was really great. [Keith] Okay, and

finally, what advice would you give to a young student who's curious about science?

[Kathleen] Oh, I would say this sky's the limit, don't lose that curiosity, and there's lots of opportunities, you

know, at places like FSU and the Magnet Lab to come and learn. With all kinds of programs we have or to do internships

just take advantage of the things that are out there that you can go do, you know, if there's summer camps in science those

are always fun when you're when you're younger but don't get discouraged if there's a boring you know math or physics class.

Because that's not what science is about, science is about that curiosity like you said, like going and figuring out what's going

on out in the universe. It's about building things for the future, and taking things apart to figure out

how they work, or why it's broken, and fixing it. So, there's a lot of really interesting things you could do if I encourage

you to keep the curiosity, come and visit the MagLab, where you know we're open for tours on a regular basis out here and every

year we have an absolutely incredible Open House too, that we have like 10,000 people out here in the in February for.

So, I encourage you to come out to those events. For kids, we have Science Nights as well throughout the

year that are really fun, where you can do some fun hands-on activities to learn about magnets and science and

it's a great opportunity to get to meet some of the wonderful people that work at the Magnet Lab. So, I encourage you if you're

in the Tallahassee area to take advantage of those. Or, if you're traveling through just come and stop by like I said we we

do tours on a regular basis for people and we love to talk about it and show our amazing sciences happening here

at the lab. [Keith] Wow, that's great advice. So, in closing. Kathleen, it's been such a great conversation

with you. Thank you for sharing your time, your insights, and your passion for science and our community.

We're proud to have the MagLab right here in our region and even more proud to have your leadership at the helm.

And for our listeners, if you want to learn more about the MagLab check out their website is

National MagLab dot org, again National MagLab dot org.

And as always, thank you for tuning in to the Economic Vitality

Unplugged podcast where we explore the people powering the future.

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