Spanish Banner: Intercambio de Enlaces
Spanish Banner: Intercambio de Enlaces.

Welcome to the Team


"Harold, is everybody here?" Madame Chartier asked.


"Yes, M'am."


"Good." She looked at the group. "I'm sure that one of the biggest questions on your minds has been ‘what sort of research are we going to do?'"


As you probably already know, I received the Nobel prize in ‘13' for work with energy storing matrices. I took a three month vacation afterwards, and then I accepted a teaching job here at the Polytechnique. After several press conferences at which I expressed my interest to work with young people, the public decided that I would ‘rest on my laurels.'"


The truth, I had never been busier. Shortly before embarking on my three month voyage, I met a gentlemen who was a part of the Zurich Consortium." She smiled. "You won't find that name on the New York Stock Exchange."


This gentleman, Franz, had spoken with a friend, Mitchell, who knew some of the secret details of my research. Mitchell had told Franz that there was a potential that he couldn't talk about, but that he, Franz, should talk to me to see if I would have an interest in receiving money from a group of silent partners in order to develop the matrix technology for practical purposes. Two corporations and the French government had the rights to develop power plants using the technology, but there was something else – space travel."


We will put you on spin-off projects, things that I didn't have time to investigate. There is an element of serendipity to success in research. When this is all over, and we sit down to look at the results, we will see that some projects were destined to be more crucial to our overall success, than others. Does that mean that in the end we declare some ‘winners' and some ‘losers'? I hope not.


My advice is this: work hard with your project, but watch what happens with the other projects. You may reach a point where you want to help out with a project that is showing signs of early success. And if your project is successful, be ready to delegate out responsibility to others."


There is one other thing I want to say before we watch a computer presentation. Typically, a student takes undergraduate classes for four or five years to learn the basics before beginning research. Well, we don't have time for that. Several colleagues of mine have prepared mini-courses for you to take to give you the basics skills of math and physics that you will need. We encourage collaboration when you study these.




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