#38 – Ask a professor anything: Virtual coffee hour with students

Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi

Nanoengineering students peppered me with questions of all types, and I responded with my wisdom, such as it is. Identities of the questioners have been redacted. We covered the following topics.

How did you know you wanted to be a scientist? Why chemistry in particular? How are you trying to generate an inclusive community in the classroom during Covid? What aspects of remote work would you keep once life returns to normal? Did you develop any “Covid hobbies”? Are you working from home or remote? You mentioned that you work while taking walks by dictating problem sets into your phone. How does that work? Why did you start the podcast? What are your most successful podcast episodes? What episodes do you have coming up? Do you have any particular goals for the podcast? Tell us about the book you want to write? What have you learned about being a professor that you didn’t know before you started? Is there an opportunity cost to speaking with us now? How did you know you wanted to go into academia? Why did you enroll in the COVID vaccine trial? How do you come up with proposal ideas, especially as a student when you don’t know much about the topic? How does your group come up with project ideas for graduate students? What skills should engineering students try to pick up before starting their jobs? What have you learned as a manager? How do you get good work out of a team? Is that a piano behind you? How did you become a fan of classic Star Trek?