Ginsberg, Naomi S.
Oral history interview with Naomi Ginsberg, 2021 May 19.
Interview with Naomi Ginsberg, Associate Professor of chemistry and physics at University of California, Berkeley and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The interview begins with Ginsberg discussing her multidisciplinary background in science and how she prefers not to draw boundaries between research fields. She talks about how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected her research and the science community in general. Then Ginsberg turns to her childhood in Canada and recalls being a curious child with many interests. She describes her undergraduate studies in engineering at the University of Toronto and her summers of research at the Institute for Biodiagnostics, which is where she became seriously interested in physics. Ginsberg discusses pursuing a PhD at Harvard University under Lene Hau, where she worked on ultraslow light in Bose-Einstein condensates and superfluid dynamics. She then talks about wanting to switch gears toward biophysics and choosing to go to LBL for a post-doc in photosynthesis work. Ginsberg describes accepting her current position at Berkeley and the different cultures between the chemistry and physics departments. Towards the end of the interview, she touches on her DARPA grant for research on organic semiconductors, as well as the advances in technology that have informed and shaped her research over the years. Ginsberg looks back on the many grad students she has mentored and points to open-mindedness and confidence as key characteristics for their success.
Naomi Ginsberg is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She completed her graduate studies at Harvard University.
Brenner, M. P. (Michael P.),
Corkum, Paul B.
Fleming, Graham R.
Hau, L. V. (Lene Vestergaard)
Steinberg, Aephraim.
Harvard University.
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
National Research Council of Canada.
University of California, Berkeley
Biophysics
Bose-Einstein condensation.
Chemistry
Condensed matter. fast
Electrical engineering
Materials science.
Molecular dynamics
Optics
Photosynthesis.
Women in physics
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA