The Materials Universe Podcast – Season 2 Episode 2 – Intersecting Science, Art, and the World

Bailey Tibbett: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Materials Universe podcast, where we will explore the materials world and how it shapes our lives. My name is Bailey Tibbett, and I will be your host this season. Please join me as I interview researchers from the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials at the University of Texas at Austin.

Audrey Colgrave: Hello, everyone. My name is Audrey, and I’m a producer over here at the Materials Universe.

Bailey Tibbett: Hello, everyone. My name is Bailey Tibbett. Today, I have with me a very special guest, Dr. Brian Korgel. He was the former director for educational outreach and diversity for our MRSEC Center and is currently the director of the Texas Energy Institute.

Please welcome him.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Great. Yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks for the invitation. Come talk to

Bailey Tibbett: y’all. Yeah, we would love to hear from our professors and of course, anyone who’s contributing to kind of disseminating MRSEC’s research out into the world. So. Could you give us an overview of your research? Like, what do [00:01:00] you exactly study?

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah. Well, so my group does nanomaterials chemistry. I’m a chemical engineer by training. So I did my undergrad and my PhD in chemical engineering at UCLA, and then did a postdoc in chemistry at university college, Dublin in Ireland for about a year and a half, and then came to UT. My career journey has never something I like predicted over a course of time.

So I’ve always liked science. I didn’t go into. undergrad thinking, Oh, I’m going to be a professor. Cause I honestly didn’t know what professors. Did my impression was that professors, most of them would just spend their life trying to figure something out and then never figure it out. And I was like, that is sounds terrible.

Bailey Tibbett: It’s

Dr. Brian Korgel: like, you know, the few people who figure it out, they get a Nobel prize, but you know, most of the professors are just never, never get there. It turns out that is not what a professor does. Professor’s life is like, we’re, we’re always trying to figure things [00:02:00] out. And we always have lots of little discoveries and it’s exciting.

I got really interested in research during my grad school. I TA’d a class or two, discovered I kind of liked teaching and then decided to become a professor at that point. So I sort of figured out my values. So my research area is really nanomaterials chemistry. We make colloidal quantum dots. So the topic for the Nobel prize in chemistry for last year.

That’s my, my research area.

Bailey Tibbett: That’s so cool. Could you explain briefly what a colloidal quantum dot is? I know all of those words individually, but maybe put together not as well.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah. So we make tiny. crystals of silicon that can be as small as two nanometers in diameter, which has maybe 200 atoms in it.

And so when you’re at that size, you induce different properties. So different optical properties, electronic properties for the material. So and In the [00:03:00] case of silicon, silicon is really great for transistors, solar cells, but one thing it’s not good at is emitting light, for example, so you don’t have like lasers or light emitting diodes that use silicon, but if you make a quantum dot of silicon, you change some of the photophysics and the rules and silicon can become a pretty bright light emitter.

So that’s kind of one interesting aspect of quantum dots and what they are. And the colloidal part, that is, a colloid is a dist dispersion of some solid material in a liquid, like a dispersion of solid particles in the gas phase would be called an aerosol. Dispersion of particles in a liquid is called a colloid or colloidal solution.

So we use these synthetic approaches to make quantum dots where you throw reactants into a solvent and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, high temperature with, with molecules that sort of control the crystallization processes. And you end up with these quantum dots floating [00:04:00] around in solution.

So that’s, uh, colloidal quantum dots.

Audrey Colgrave: A colloid is a mixture made up of two substances, with one being microscopic insoluble particles that are dispersed in the second substance, usually a liquid. For example, blood is a colloid. It is made up of blood platelets, the particles, and plasma, the liquid. When we use colloidal to describe quantum dots, we are referencing tiny semiconductor crystals, or the quantum dots, That are either dispersed in a liquid or prepared in a way that makes them easier to disperse in a liquid.

Bailey Tibbett: So I know you touched on it a little briefly, but I think in our previous podcast, we were talking to Dr. Elaine Lee. We were talking a little bit about quantum superlattices and talking about kind of silicon’s use in electronics as a whole and as a very useful material. But you did mention like it’s one fatal flaw, it sounds like, of its low photo optic properties.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Well, low light emission. Silicon also is a weak light absorber, so it has what’s called [00:05:00] an indirect band gap.

Audrey Colgrave: Band gap, in this context, is used when thinking about energy at the atomic level. Electrons, the tiny particles that make up the outer layer of atoms, move around quite a bit. This movement of electrons is what creates electricity.

The band gap is used to refer to the minimum amount of energy it takes to move an electron within an atom from the valence band, the highest layer of the electron cloud, to the conduction band, where electrons can move freely and create an electric current. Materials that have a smaller or even overlapping band gap will conduct electricity better.

Like metals, for example.

Dr. Brian Korgel: So you have a band gap makes a semiconductor. Semiconductors have band gaps in their energy or potential. electronic structure. And so silicon is an indirect bandgap semiconductor, which makes it a really weak light absorber, relatively weak, and also poor light emitter. Um, so when you make a solar cell out of silicon, you actually have to use fairly [00:06:00] thick layers of silicon to make the solar cell absorb all of the light.

So there’s a whole class of solar cells called thin film solar cells or thin film photovoltaics and a lot of people ask me, why are they called thin film? Well, it’s in comparison to silicon. So because the, like cadmium telluride is a common material for a solar cell and that has a direct band gap and is a much stronger.

Light absorber. So you need a very much thinner layer of cadmium telluride versus silicon, for example. So that’s why silicon is a poor light light emitter. I don’t know if I’d say it’s a fatal flaw, but it just means that you can’t use Silicon, we call it bulk silicon for, for certain applications, but there are optoelectronic devices where you use silicon.

So, I mean, a solar cell really is an optoelectronic device that absorbs light, converts it to electricity, [00:07:00] optical sensors. Like photodiodes, the, the things that like your cameras and your, your cell phone are made of and everything. Those sensors are usually made of silicon. So yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a fatal flaw, but it is a property that silicon doesn’t have.

So you have to use different semiconductors to make lasers.

Bailey Tibbett: So I think, okay, maybe I was being a little harsh on the fatal flaw. Don’t

Dr. Brian Korgel: hate on silicon, it’s my favorite element on the periodic table. You are the

Bailey Tibbett: base of all thin film transistors. I should not have disrespected you. So, uh,

Dr. Brian Korgel: germanium is right under silicon on periodic table.

It also has an indirect band gap and also does not emit light. And that’s my second favorite

Bailey Tibbett: element. Don’t dis

Dr. Brian Korgel: on silicon or germanium. They’re not good light emitters, but they’re good. You can make them emit light as quantum dots.

Bailey Tibbett: Okay. That’s awesome. So, I know you kind of touched on it a little bit, but one of the themes for this season of the podcast is kind of talking about how the materials we develop in lab can [00:08:00] affect like the different technologies in the world.

So I know you kind of mentioned like silicon quantum dots being like really good for solar cells. Are there any other materials that you’re really interested in? to see like impact future technology.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Oh, yeah. I mean, so my group, we, we do silicon quantum dots, but we also do a bunch of other materials as well.

So when you make a quantum dot of mercury telluride, you open the band gap and you actually turn it into a semiconductor and it absorbs infrared light. So you can make photo detectors for infrared light. We’re trying to make like IR cameras. So like, you know, cameras that see in the dark and. stuff like that out of these quantum dots.

We have a project on copper, aluminum, zinc, sulfide, quantum dots that absorb really UV light and emit it as blue light. And so we’re trying to use those as protective coatings on silicon solar cells. Silicon solar cells [00:09:00] get damaged by UV light. So you put a protective like polymer barrier that absorbs the kind of UV.

you know, high energy blue light. And so we’re developing these quantum dots to absorb that light, but then re emit it at lower energy and sort of give the photons back to the solar cell to improve the efficiency. So those are like two projects we’re working on right now. The first company I started was called Inovalight and that was started to, so we can do lighting, so make light bulbs out of silicon.

So I just told you silicon’s a terrible light emitter, so why would you do that? Well, if you make quantum dots and they emit light and silicon’s non toxic and it’s biocompatible and all of this, so we were, you know, using silicon for solid state lighting to do that.

Audrey Colgrave: I think there’s a beautiful irony that solar cells are sensitive to UV light.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah, yeah, I mean, so, so there’s [00:10:00] this small part in the spectrum with this UV light where if you could harvest those photons and not damage the solar cell, you can increase the efficiency by. 2 percent or so, 2 or 3%, which sometimes people tell me 2 percent doesn’t sound very, very high, but solar cell manufacturers go to great lengths to even increase efficiency by half a percent or so.

So it could be significant if we could do that.

Bailey Tibbett: Yeah, 2 percent definitely. I think to the untrained ear, 2 percent is like, what is that? But I mean, I guess in perspective, like if people are really kind of pushing just to get half a percent efficiency, even better than 2 percent is a lot. That’s like four times.

That’s four times the amount.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah. Yeah. So, so typically, you know, for a silicon solar cell, the efficiency might be 24 percent and people have, um, spent. decades getting it there and, and eking out the, uh, the [00:11:00] efficiency even more, but that, that additional 2 percent on top of like the 24%. So going from like 24 percent to 26%, you’re generating that much more electricity over the lifetime of the solar cells.

So these days people are only a lot of times leaving solar cells, like in a, uh, utility scale, solar farm for like, 10 years, even though they’re rated for 25 years or so, but anyway, that 2 percent builds up over time, pretty significantly lowers your, your cost of electricity from solar.

Audrey Colgrave: Not to run on too much of a tangent, but the American Cancer Society has said that every year our risk of dying of cancer gets lowered by 2%.

And so really, yeah. And so 2 percent is big in the grand scheme of things.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bailey Tibbett: It sounds like it’s, um, almost like the, the solar engineers version of compound interest. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say something

Dr. Brian Korgel: like you’re amortizing over 10 year, whatever. [00:12:00]

Bailey Tibbett: So what’s the, the work being, you know, trying to make it 2 percent more efficient.

I know you work with the center for solar powered future.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Can

Bailey Tibbett: you talk a little bit about the work that you do for them or if Yeah,

Dr. Brian Korgel: yeah. So I direct this center called the Center for a Solar Powered Future, SPF 2050. It’s funded through the National Science Foundation through a program called the Industry University Cooperative Research Center’s program, IUCRC’s.

Even just saying IUCRC. I’m

Bailey Tibbett: impressed that you remembered that after saying it to me. I’ve said it many, many times

Dr. Brian Korgel: because I’ve been directing this center for about 14 years. It’s a multi university center. So UT Austin plus Colorado State, Arizona State, and Texas A& M also are our research partners. In there, we get a little bit of money from the National Science Foundation, but the majority of the funding comes from our research partners.

So I think we have pretty good funding. 19 members right now. So like first solar is a [00:13:00] member. So they’re the U S manufacturer of cadmium telluride, for example. So we’ve, you know, worked with these industry partners thinking about research to Improve solar cells to the division of the center is to reach a future where solar power is enabling us to become carbon neutral by 2050.

That’s what the 2050 is there for. And so it’s been really interesting to see how We can collaborate with industry from a university perspective. So we have, this is all very fundamental research we do in the center, but there’s a goal for it to translate really quickly into industry when we get something working.

And that’s been, that’s been really exciting to. To see over time when I started the center, so put in the letter of intent to NSF, I think in like [00:14:00] 2009. And at that time, like solar was not even really a data point in how much like solar energy was, was used in, in, in the power grid. Now, I think in the U S it’s like 5 percent or so of our electricity mix is, is solar in a ERCOT.

in our little grid in Texas, the total power production capacity for solar, I think is almost 15%. We don’t, we don’t use it all, all the time, but that’s a lot. And it was less than 0. 1%. It was, it was basically zero, um, back in 2009. So over the course of, of the center, I’ve seen the solar industry grow from where people were talking about, Oh, Solar will never be cost competitive with natural gas and all of this.

And now solar in, in a lot of cases is the cheapest form of electricity.

Bailey Tibbett: Yeah. I guess having watched kind of the solar industry [00:15:00] go from, it sounds like absolutely nothing to, you know, kind of a larger piece of the energy puzzle that we have today. Are there any trends you see in terms of kind of like merging this academic research with, uh, with industry prospects like this happening again, or any trends in solar energy in particular?

Dr. Brian Korgel: Oh, yeah. I mean, so like the research in our center has evolved over time. I mean, when we first started, it was really all 100 percent focused on materials and devices and trying to get to an efficiency and a cost point you needed to for the industry to scale because solar panels are really big. Too expensive at that time.

And so now that the price of solar has just dropped, I mean, kind of beyond anyone’s imagination back at that time, there was like the sunshot goal where the, everyone talked about, can we ever get to a dollar per peak watt? We’re like, wow, that’s the, the sun, the moonshot sort of thing. [00:16:00] And that’s been like smashed like a while ago.

And so our research has evolved. Now we have research that looks at like we call a balance of systems, so once you have the solar cell out in the field, there’s a certain cost with just producing the electricity beyond the panel. So we, we look at how to lower those costs and power electronics and installations.

And we have projects looking at like weather forecasting on, you know, solar farms because clouds come over and people want to know when the clouds are coming and We care a lot these days about like land Management is a big topic thinking about that. There’s a topic of Agrivoltaics which is agriculture and photovoltaic.

So how do you have a solar farm and still utilize the land for either? growing crops or cattle or things like that. And then circularity is a big topic. So it’s fairly recent that you have all these solar [00:17:00] panels out in the field. And at some point they’re going to reach their end of life. Like, what do you do with 450, 000 solar panels on a one solar farm?

So there are new companies that are started that focus on like solar cell. Recycling. So there’s a company called Solar Cycle, which actually has a solar cycling. Um, it has a solar cell recycling facility in Odessa, Texas out in the middle of the Permian Basin, like oil and gas country. And there’s a startup doing solar cell recycling.

And because they’re just also a bunch of solar farms.

Bailey Tibbett: So it sounds like solar energy has been kind of like a really big driving force in your research and your career as a professor. Um, this is kind of a little bit off topic, but if you weren’t to pursue a PhD and weren’t to become a professor, do you have any idea of maybe what would be driving your future then?

Would it still be solar related or would it [00:18:00] be something entirely different?

Dr. Brian Korgel: One thing I’ve discovered is that over the course of time is, is I’m an artist. And I didn’t fully appreciate it through, throughout my life. Like my parents weren’t artists. I wasn’t really exposed much to like what an artist does, but I make art now.

So I ended up creating a project, bringing artists into the lab. I was at a. Event. This may be 10 years, 10 years ago now in Moscow, Russia, where there’s a new university, what was new at the time called Skolkovo Institute of Technology, Skoltech, and they had an event called Ideas Lab, where it was a week long, they brought in like 35 or 40 professors from all over the world and different, different domains to talk about research that might speed innovation from The university into the private sector, and we came up with this project [00:19:00] concept.

We called it rapid design pivot, and the idea was to inject artists into the process of innovation, where, say, you have a startup company, and you have artists bring all these, like, Wacky ideas out of left field all to try to figure out what might work or often what might not work. So you can pivot to different ideas before you run out of money is your startup company.

So we ended up getting a grant for that. And then I was working with all these artists that we brought into the projects and we worked up to our first show and I was having lunch with a couple of the artists and I jokingly said, Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I made something for the show? And they both were like, yeah, you need to make something.

And so ever since then, I was sort of like forced. To make something for this show. And I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was very stressful for me. I was like, I’d never made an art object for [00:20:00] an installation and ended up, you know, creating something in that show and discovered, like, I really enjoyed that process.

So now I’ve had things in, I don’t know, six installations or something in the last, I don’t know, seven years or something like that. And so. I love my job. I like what I do. I like being a professor. I’m not going to quit. But there are times where I wish I had more time for art, for sure, to make art. In my current role as Energy Institute Director and all the other stuff I’m doing, I have very limited bandwidth to make art.

But I think, I think I’d probably be an artist if I, you know, full time artist if I wasn’t a professor. I don’t know how I’d make money because it’s very difficult for artists to, to make money and sustain themselves. So I’d probably still have a day job of some sort, even as an artist, that’s probably what I would do though.

I’d, I’d be making more art if I wasn’t a full time [00:21:00] professor.

Audrey Colgrave: Before we take advantage of this wonderful segue, there’s a famous photo on the MRSEC website of an artist who took being artist in residence pretty literally. Uh huh. Daniel. And built, he built a bunk bed above your desk, I believe, uh, and lived period of time while you were doing research?

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah, it’s Daniel Boshkoff. So he’s, he was one of the artists I was having lunch with who told me I had to make something, um, for that, for that show. Daniel’s, uh, he’s an artist. He’s also a professor at Hunter College in New York. Um, he’s a classically trained painter from Sofia, Bulgaria, but his art is not just painting, he’s a conceptual artist.

He’s super funny. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. And so we were getting ready for this first show I was talking about. And so we’d have artists coming to UT to try to work with the scientists. And one of the challenges was everyone’s so busy. [00:22:00] Like, so someone, an artist comes to, to Austin.

They’ve got to find like an Airbnb somewhere. They’re kind of off campus. They’re trying to set up meetings with the, the. the faculty and the scientists and it was, it just takes a lot of time. So Daniel, um, kind of came to my office on one of his visits and he kind of starts asking me, uh, could, could I like just sleep in one of the grad student offices or something like this?

And I’m like, no, I don’t, I don’t think that’s a good idea, but you can probably sleep in my office, you know, I mean, it’d be fine. And, and so I thought, So he seemed interested in that and I was kind of open to it. I didn’t know Daniel very well at that time. So I don’t know how this is going to go. But my, I imagine him bringing in a little cot, you know, unfolding it in my office and that’s what you do.

Well, he starts like looking around my office that day when we discussed this, [00:23:00] he goes to the art store and he made a little, a little mock up of my art. Of my office to scale and this loft. Um, so my office had a pretty high ceilings. I’ve moved offices since then. So I’m a different building now, but he designed this design, this loft for, for my office.

And so I have. I was on the sixth floor of this building, Norman Hackerman building. You can see the Capitol and you can see the tower from there. It’s a really nice view. And he starts talking about building a loft and I’m like, you’re not going to block my view. Right. And so, so he designed this thing where it didn’t block the view.

It was a single bed, and then he had a little desk up there next to it, so he built himself a little, a little mini office as well, so he had a place to work. And, uh, so he knew a couple of people in the art department here, so Jeff Williams, who, I don’t know if he still does, but he was running the [00:24:00] studio art program, the MFA program in art, so.

Daniel knew Jeff and Jeff’s wife and they were, they’re sculptors and they also know how to do construction. So, so they could build stuff and they came in one Sunday afternoon, brought some wood and saws into, uh, NHB and, and fabricated this loft and, uh, It was amazing. And so Daniel lived in my office for about four months.

He would come for like two weeks at a time, two or three weeks. There’s a shower on the ground floor of NHB, this little hidden shower. I don’t know if most people even know there’s a shower down there, but it was amazing. So it worked out great. We would, we kind of cohabited. You know my office he would work up high we call it like he’s on floor 6.

5 of NHB he ended up calling this it was really an art piece So I didn’t know that much about what artists did so [00:25:00] now that I know what artists did everything from the lens of, Oh, this is an art project, you know, is living in my office. He called the Institute for higher listening location number five or something.

So he had done some similar things over the course of his career, but it was incredible. So I learned a lot about like how you could. use space together and collaborate really effectively. So I would get in the morning really early, he’d be up there sleeping. And, uh, we’d talk for a little bit and we got in this routine of every morning having breakfast tacos together.

And I would teach him something about nano, you know, like what is a quantum dot or something? And then he would teach me something about art. And like, I didn’t even realize there’s all this art on campus, even. in these spaces that Daniel would be like, you know, that’s actually a very famous artist who did that.

So, so I now know a lot about the art on campus and it was really transformative. So yeah, we’ve got a few of these [00:26:00] photos. I think this one you’re talking about Daniel’s like sleeping up on the top of the, the, in the loft and I’m, you know, down in my desk like working and it’s a very classic photo I think at this point.

Bailey Tibbett: That’s so cute. Yeah, I think it’s the Norman Hagerman building that has like that kind of infamous amongst the campus at least the infamous canoe sculpture

Dr. Brian Korgel: Oh, yeah, people will either I think most people love it. There are people who hate it though I think or they’re like, what is what like it’s a bunch of boats like Yeah, no, so that yeah, that that’s neat

Bailey Tibbett: so I guess now that you’ve trained kind of your art Artist I is, has it affected any of the ways that you look at research now?

I know you talked about kind of bringing artists in to collaborate with like innovative ideas that maybe researchers might be a little pinholed about, or may not think of just because we haven’t exercised that part of our brain in a long time. Right. Um, but is there anything like [00:27:00] in specific that you think kind of having this perspective is allowed you to change how you do?

Yeah,

Dr. Brian Korgel: I would say I’m, was pretty transformed over. The last 10 years in terms of, uh, just my career, how I see what I do, how I see what other people do. I always thought. you know, if you talk about fundamental research, I always thought, Oh, we’re doing this blue sky research. It’s very fundamental. You know, we’re just exploring all these things.

And then when I started talking to artists about ideas they might have for like materials we’re making or something like that, I realized like, We are so penned in like by we’re constrained by the by the grants and I didn’t fully appreciate how much we are so like if I get a grant from the National Science Foundation for [00:28:00] some fundamental research, I can’t really deviate all that much from.

from what I said I’m gonna do. And so once you get grants, which you have to, because that’s what supports your work, it, it kinda really dictates what you’re What you’re doing in, in your lab. And I think I didn’t really appreciate how much that was true until I was working with, with artists injecting, like, really like out there ideas that probably most of them you, you wouldn’t do, but.

I think I started to see my own research more from that creative eye, and then wanting to do things that were really stretching the boundaries. Like in the MRSEC, I mean, I created this artist residency, which I don’t know if y’all still, yeah, have. There are no other artist residencies, I don’t think, in any of the MRSECs, right?

Audrey Colgrave: Popping in here to confirm that, yes. Our Artist in Residence program is still running. As of the release of this [00:29:00] episode, we have recently celebrated the display of work by our most recent resident, Virginia L. Montgomery. Her work hangs in the zero floor lobby of the Engineering Education and Research Building, and the accompanying video is accessible on the CDCM website.

Dr. Brian Korgel: And so just bringing, bringing those ideas. So I think it’s really working with artists, making art has really opened up or allow, I’ve allowed myself to embrace a certain kind of creativity that, that I had within me, but I wasn’t really using, I think, in, in my work to what I would consider full potential.

Bailey Tibbett: I think I would say you’re like a very perspective researcher, right? Like you did a postdoc in Ireland, you had the artist work you did in Russia. So it sounds like you’ve had like, not only kind of like an artist perspective about research, but also kind of a global perspective. Yeah. So could you touch a little bit on how that like global perspective has affected your research as well?

Dr. Brian Korgel: Oh, yeah. [00:30:00] I mean, that’s, I definitely have a very global international perspective. And it’s one of the things I love about being a professor. Like I have friends. It’s all over the world, other professors, you know, we’re, we’re kind of fortunate cause we are, you know, first languages is English here and science is done in English everywhere.

So, so I can, I can easily talk to people from, from other countries cause they, they know English and I feel very spoiled, but, but, uh, it, it makes it easy to have friends all over. When I did my postdoc in Ireland, I’d never been to Europe before. So it was my first time to Europe, was flying to Dublin to move there with my wife and two kids who were a year and a half and three years old also at the time, it was a major step, you know?

So, so I guess the theme throughout my life is also like risk taking like in my career. And it wasn’t like I was. trying to [00:31:00] do a postdoc in Europe. It was just, I was a chemical engineer. I wanted to continue to do nanomaterials. And most of the people doing the work I wanted to do were chemists and, and we’re doing it around the world.

But once I was over there, I, I was part of a multi university projects, so it involved researchers from Italy, and Switzerland, and Sweden, and the U. K. And I saw how you could create this international network of partners collaborating on research. And that kind of model really wasn’t being done in the U.

S. I grew as a person by living in Ireland outside the United States. There’s just so much to learn like culturally. So when I came back to UT, that, that sort of transformed my life. And so I’ve always had international collaborations in my research. I did a sabbatical. in Spain. So I [00:32:00] lived in Spain for eight months.

Um, after I was here, I lived in France for six, six weeks during that sabbatical did part of a sabbatical in China for like a semester. So I’ve, that postdoc experience in Ireland transformed my perspective kind of in the same way as working with these artists and you can’t go back from something like that.

So, so I’ve continued to have these international collaborations all over the world. which has been really fun. And I’ve tried to bring that to the classroom. So we have at UT, the, this program called faculty led Maymesters, faculty led study abroad programs. So I created a class. I took a title sort of based on something Daniel came up with.

I call the class advanced nanotechnology and innovation for beginners, um, in Japan now, cause it’s in Tokyo, but I’ve taught it. three times in Barcelona, a couple of times in Copenhagen, I think four times in Tokyo. And so [00:33:00] it’s a spring semester class compressed into May. And you as a faculty member take UT students over to country and teach a class over there.

And so in that class, I try to kind of merge the three things that are the kind of passions in my life, nanotechnology, innovation, kind of business creation, and then a global perspective. So I, when I do that class, I try to bring in people I know from the country, come talk to the class and expose the students to what it’s to sort of what it’s like to work in an international.

And then when I was doing a lot of art, I would also fold that in. So that was, that was one of the main reasons I moved the classroom. Well, Barcelona has also a great design and aesthetic, but Japan, in terms of innovation, how people interact with technology, how technology is developed is a very unique place in the [00:34:00] world.

So that’s sort of why I teach the class over there. But yeah, my very international. perspective to my life. I travel a lot, probably, probably too much. I would say I’m on the road a lot, but it’s really exciting to me to, to think about that. And when I think about my own work also, sometimes I, I feel like what I’m, what I’m doing is also, kind of a broker for peace between countries, because when you’re working with people in different countries, you get to, you get to know them, you get to understand their perspectives.

And I think that that is really important if we want to avoid, you know, war and misunderstandings.

Bailey Tibbett: So in taking all these international experiences that you have while you’re on the road, how do you fold them into kind of, Interacting with you like your students in the lab and like working with your graduate students

Dr. Brian Korgel: I try to I try to force my students to also get with the program [00:35:00] Some are more willing than others you’d be you’d be surprised some some students really just want to stay in the lab at UT and you know just Just let me get my PhD.

Don’t bother me with this, like, go to France for six weeks and, you know, collaborate with this research group. But I’m always looking for opportunities for my students. So the way I view myself as a PhD advisor is a facilitator. So try to, I mean, I’m also doing science sort of through them, you know, I mean, they’re, my students are the ones who are in the lab doing things.

It’s, it’s not me. Um, and I have things. I’m really interested in. So I bring that to the lab, but as an advisor, I really think of myself as, as a facilitator. So trying to help PhD students find unique opportunities that, you know, are part of the things I’m involved in and I’m helping create for them. So whether it’s an internship at a.

Company, for example, through the, through SPF [00:36:00] 2050 or a national lab or a collaboration with an international partner. I, I always encouraging them to talk to people, get to know them. If, if we find some travel money or something, send them abroad to work in a lab for four weeks or six weeks or something like that.

So. I try to teach my students, my grad students, that, like, your network, who you know, getting out of your comfort zone, meeting people, is really important for your career. And I’m a super introverted person. A lot of people don’t, they’re like, what? You seem really extroverted. I would have never guessed. No, I’m, I’m like, extremely introverted.

You know, but I like what I’m doing. I like, you know, I like working with people to build things and do that, but I’m a very introverted person. And so I’ve had a challenge, you know, through, through my life as I was growing and becoming a professor, [00:37:00] learning how to talk to people. random people I don’t know and it’s uncomfortable at first and all that.

So I’m always trying to, you know, set up my students to talk to people, uh, where maybe it’s not so comfortable, but it’s good for them.

Bailey Tibbett: Yeah, so I, I guess if you could talk to, you know, the introverted version of yourself that’s about to be, you know, an extrovert among introverts, I guess, like, what advice would you give to yourself?

Like with taking these risks and challenges? I mean, you mentioned a bunch of the different risks you take in your career. Like, I couldn’t imagine moving to Ireland with a kid. I have a cat and that’s already like, I don’t even know how to get her on the plane. That’s too much for me. So, um, So I guess what kind of advice do you have for people who are looking to take kind of like these risks in their career?

Dr. Brian Korgel: I’m always throwing myself into situations where I feel like a fraud, sort of. I’m like, people look at me like I’m an expert and I, I really don’t know anything about what’s going on here. I’m [00:38:00] also a beginner. And, and so I think even, even when you become an expert in something, if you lose that, like, beginners mind sort of perspective.

I think it’s, um, it limits what you’re doing. So, so I always try to try to remember that. So when I’m in an uncomfortable situation or I, you know, I have things, I think all people probably wrestle with things, but like imposter syndrome is a huge thing for me. And, and people are like, But you’re really successful.

I’m like, I know it makes it a thousand times worse. Yeah. It’s um, so, so all of these, all of these things, I think that, that all people sort of feel and, and then just being conscious of it and recognizing, look, I know you, you feel a little bit uncomfortable right now at the moment, but once you get going, you get to know these people and you do this stuff, you always enjoy it.

Bailey Tibbett: That’s so cool. Well, okay. So [00:39:00] thank you for your time and letting us interview you. I think we really look forward to seeing like kind of how your research evolves over time. It sounds like it’s still continuing to evolve with a different artist perspective, international perspective, like so many kind of this growth mindset, I guess, just to wrap us up as a final question, kind of turning it back to the main theme of the podcast.

We talked a little bit about how solar energy, some trends that you’ve seen in solar energy, like impacting. Technology in the future. But I guess now that we’ve talked about more of like the soft skills of research, do you see any kind of emerging trends in these soft skills also impacting material science in the future?

Dr. Brian Korgel: Well, material science is just such an exciting realm to be in. Like I said, I was initially really focused on just bio. I was really interested in like. DNA and, and all of that still in, and still am like interested in that, but I gravitated more into the field of materials during my PhD, partly because my advisor [00:40:00] walked into the lab one day and said, Brian, have you heard of quantum dots and gave me a project making quantum dots.

That’s how I really got into materials. But the more I learned about quantum dots, the more I learned about materials throughout my career. It’s just, uh, been really exciting because. I mean, they’re everywhere. One of my favorite classes to teach is on materials. So we’ve chemical engineering 350, uh, which is chemical engineering materials, but it’s really introduction to materials to the, to the undergrads.

I love teaching that class because I mean, I’m teaching them things about like crystal structure and you know, what’s a semiconductor and stuff like that. But just helping students appreciate. how materials interface with their lives. Like, I’m just looking around the studio here at all the different materials that are used in different ways.

And so when you start to think about materials in your life, I mean, what can be More exciting than working on, [00:41:00] on that, you know, coming up with fabrics that can charge your cell phone or something, or light up, you can have a little light up display as a t shirt. Like those are things that can be made eventually.

Like you have to develop, there’s still some tech technology gaps, but I love working on that stuff. So I think, I think it’s this. combination of just what, what can you make, you know, how can you make people’s lives better and then understanding the world around you in this pretty deep way, the more you understand materials, the more you understand the world around you.

And that’s pretty exciting to me.

Audrey Colgrave: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us on the materials universe.

Dr. Brian Korgel: Yeah.

Bailey Tibbett: Well,

Dr. Brian Korgel: yeah. Thanks for it. Thanks for having me. It’s been fun.

Bailey Tibbett: That’s all for today’s episode of the Materials Universe podcast. Thank you for listening to our interesting conversations with inspiring guests from different fields of science and engineering.

We hope you enjoyed learning something [00:42:00] new. Please leave us a review and share this podcast with friends. You can follow us on social media at texascdcm on Instagram and X. We’ll Thank you to the National Science Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin, and an additional thank you to the Lates Audio Studio crew for their help with the production of this podcast.