Science

There is a growing and urgent need for a new kind of scientist – one who is skilled in applying not just knowledge but above all scientific skills to solve real-world problems, outside of academia or research. The fact is that many of our global drivers are complex, interrelated, dynamic, and strongly underpinned by science processes. Let’s see some examples: The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the compounding effect of interrelated progress in many fields from AI to Big Data, IoT, or cloud. Climate change and its impact (and opportunity) to drive positive change, like mitigation via more efficient factories or adaptation measures like green city spots that lower the temperature and improve our health. Sustainability and the need to play the interrelation of people and planet. These are just some quick examples. ...

I was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Panama earlier this month. It was a great opportunity to get to know the country, to give a workshop for NGOs about online mapping and, especially, have the chance to talk at the Forum about a topic so close to my heart: Science, Technology and the future of Education. The session was translated into several languages and broadcasted live on Internet. Here’s the link to the video: ...

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. ...

“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. ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson is, to my taste, one of the greatest outreach scientist of our time. Not long ago, the Templeton Fundation asked leading scientist and scholars “Does the Universe have a purpose?”. His answer is the one I like the most. Anyone who expresses a more definitive response to the question is claiming access to knowledge not based on empirical foundations. This remarkably persistent way of thinking, common to most religions and some branches of philosophy, has failed badly in past efforts to understand, and thereby predict the operations of the universe and our place within it. ...

Climate change is what we deserve were the exact words I heard from an otherwise well educated and reasonable scientist. The logic was something like: Climate has changed in the past. Yes there might be a significant change lately but so has happened millennia ago, for natural reasons, like volcanoes and other stuff. If you look at the long term climate, it's full of variations. *Climate changes* Therefore this change, that is doubtfully due to humans, is not really worrisome. Climate changes and we have to deal with it. And if we are the cause of it, more so. Why fight against the consequences we deserve? We are too many, we harm the environment too much. If we indeed are the cause and we disappear due to climate change, it's the natural thing. Like if we were a virus and Earth needs to heal. The earth will come back into its equilibrium afterwards. This logic comes from a highly educated person, doing basic research science. And the fact is this is not the first time I hear a similar catastrophic argument of cosmic justice. On this particular case, few others around the table agreed on it. ...

Last week DC hosted the Open Government Data Conference, the Tech@State, the Wikimania, and more. It seems clear the momentum here for open data and Technology innovation is growing strong. While you can read plenty of good reviews from these events I feel some important points regarding Open Data of where the ball is going are left amidst the background of where the ball is: Don´t be ashamed of the knowns unknowns. Open Data from the inside out, and at home. Standards, standards, standards. The challenge of non publicly funded open data. Hackathons and competitions can backslash on you. ###Don´t be ashamed of the knowns unknowns### ...