Posts

I demoed Google Glass to the Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy. It was a funny anecdote, and this is how it happened. In January my President Mariano Rajoy came to meet Obama, and also held a reception at the Ambassador’s residence. I was invited. I had Glass, and I decided to bring them to the event, not wearing them, but in their pouch. Right after entering I asked someone to take a picture of us, we started talking and it turned out that the person was the Head of Intelligence of the President’s cabinet, Alfonso de Senillosa. We started talking about technology and I mentioned the Google Glass I had on its pouch. He was very keen to try them so I took them out. He enjoyed trying them and I told him I would be honored to demo the Glass to the president if he wanted. At the same time virtually everyone around us also wanted to try them so I spent the next 30 minutes demoing and talking about the Glass with all the invitees and all the national and international media gathered around. ...

I’ve joined MapBox as Chief Scientist! This is a long-coming love story, made possible thanks to my recent extraordinary visa. An amazing next stop on my journey to bridge Science and Technology with Society at large. I am very excited to join this awesome team. Think of MapBox as a mix of Wikipedia for maps (leveraging the power of open data and crowds) and Apple style to master a product that is beautiful, fast and breaks beyond convention. Faster, better, open maps for anything that has a location. ...

Today is my last day at GAIN. Almost 3 years dedicated to bringing a pragmatic view of the challenges of climate change adaptation. It has been a wild ride. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done and very thankful to everyone I’ve worked with. I’ve truly learned a lot, professionally and personally. GAIN continues as NG-GAIN, now housed inside the University of Notre Dame. In fact I’ve spent the last 6 months dedicated to ensuring the transition is as smooth as possible. I will remain a very close friend and supporter, but now it’s time for me to move on to the next chapter on this journey. I’ve dedicated the last decade to broadening the impact of science. GAIN has been an important step, but I am thrilled to step up on that commitment. ...

-Last week it was announced that The 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation has gone to the Max Planck Society. The Asturias newspaper “El comercio” asked me to tell their readers how is it to make a PhD at the Max Planck. This is what I sent. - Todavía me quedaban ocho asignaturas de la carrera de Física, cuando en febrero solicité mi beca de doctorado al Max Planck. Mi profesor de Física Estelar II me lo recomendó. Yo acababa de llegar de Oviedo a La Laguna para terminar la carrera con la especialidad de Astrofísica y me pareció una locura. Los pocos compañeros a los que se lo dije me dijeron que me olvidase. Imposible. No me lo podía creer cuando en junio me invitaron a ir a dar una charla al comité de selección para la última fase. Nunca me olvidaré de que al acabar la misma todos los asistentes, investigadores de alto rango, se pusieron a dar golpes en las mesas, como llamando a la puerta. Luego supe que esa es la forma de aplaudir en academia en Alemania. Sólo aceptarían a nueve de los veinte candidatos, de entre los más de 500 que se habían presentado. Todos tenían excepcionales cualidades. ...

- During my recent trip to Myanmar (or Burma, or Birmania) we had the chance to visit a rural village. This was part of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders meeting. This is a little report about the experience.- Kungyangon Township is roughly 3 hours southwest of Yangon. I write “roughly” because the drivers of our 4 SUV parade, with police, lost their way. Not much to blame since some of the roads, bridges or even the village itself are not on the map. Oddly enough I could still spot the missed turn with my GPS and the data I had downloaded on the hotel Wifi. We also had, as I was told by our local translator, a group of 30 police that the government sent to “protect us”. Problem is they sent it to another village with a similar name, so we never saw them. ...

This is the little story of how Foursquare and Twitter led to a VIP visit to Space X, the rocket factory, back in 2010. I was at a conference in Irvine, CA. This is when I worked as a fellow of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies. The sessions were great but I had no plans the evening of the first day. After I was done with work I went to the bar for a quick bite. It occurred to me that maybe they had a Foursquare deal, so I used my mobile to check in. Indeed they had a free appetizer if you ordered a beer. Cool. ...

Today the World Economic Forum (WEF) announces this year’s awards of “Young Global Leaders” (YGL). I am one of them. According to the website: “Young Global Leaders represent the future of leadership, coming from all regions of the world and representing business, government, civil society, arts & culture, academia and media, as well as social entrepreneurs. Nominated under 40, these young leaders are proposed through a qualified nomination process and assessed according to rigorous selection criteria accepting only the very best leaders who have already demonstrated their commitment to serving society at large.” ...

“It is not about the Science, it is not about mitigation, it is not about projections… it’s about all of that, on top of the current adaptation gap”. This is what I was thinking as I left the NAS/NASA workshop Walking the talk: Climate Science in Service to Resilient Federal Properties. This workshop, incidentally, was canceled a few hours short of its original date, October 31st, due to Sandy. On the second attempt, it was again almost cancelled, due to exceptional wind and rain conditions in DC. That pretty much summarizes my take-away from the meeting. ...

The Open Data Catalog at the World Bank is a fantastic resource. I’ve used it many, many times. Especially while developing the GAIN Index. I’m sure I’ve spent hours on that domain. It’s astonishing the amount of information they’ve gathered in a consistent way. Our GAIN Index indeed uses, and references, roughly 80% of its components directly back to the Catalog. Proudly, but oddly, a number of people have told me that they use our page instead of the Bank’s to get a glimpse of the data for a particular country. As humbling as that is, it’s odd that our page gets visits to see the components, not the aggregation we do for our purposes. It’s like buying a book for the Bibliography. ...

Last week I ran the NCR Trail Marathon in Baltimore. This is only 4 weeks after my first marathon. I didn’t actually train for it, as it was not on my plans four days before the race. I crossed the start line breaking plenty of recommendations, like getting some time off, new shoes, new clothes, no music for the first time, first trail race, no setting goals or paces, … ...