More Microchips, Moore Problems

02/09/22 • 48 min

A podcast episode about research and development of microelectronics.
The race to make smaller and smaller electronic chips is coming to an end, after many decades of creative engineering. Individual transistors are now just a few nanometers (that’s billionths of a meter) in length, so there’s not much more shrinking to be done. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. The 20th century effort to pack transistors onto tiny silicon wafers transformed clunky, heavy early electronics into the sleek, portable devices we see today. The challenges of the 21st century will be to make these microelectronics energy efficient and to push the boundaries of what’s possible in a world increasingly integrated with technology.
This episode's guests are Sinéad Griffin and Ramamoorthy Ramesh

Previous Episode

Energy storage: Save your electrons for a rainy day

Have you ever wondered how electricity is available all the time? That’s the seemingly magical science of energy storage. In this episode, we speak to a policy leader and a researcher about the history of piggy-banking power to spend it later, and how this field is evolving to help us prevent extreme weather-related blackouts, adopt more renewable energy, and build bigger, better, more environmentally responsible batteries.
Featuring:
Noël Bakhtian, director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage Center. Noel formerly served as director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies at Idaho National Laboratory and as a senior policy advisor for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Before her shift into policy and leadership, she was an engineer at NASA Ames Research Center working on Mars landing projects.
Mike Gerhardt, research scientist at SINTEF Industry in Norway helping develop new battery and fuel cell technologies using experimentation and computer modeling. Before moving to SINTEF, he was a postdoc in the Energy Conversion Group at Berkeley Lab.
*Special thanks to The Apples in Stereo for use of their song*
This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Aliyah Kovner. Art by Jenny Nuss.
Audio samples from Halleck, Joao_Janz, and philtre.

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Climate Modeling

For decades, scientists have been able to predict future Earth conditions, like rainfall and temperature, with impressive accuracy using computer programs called climate models. These models are helpful at telling us what might happen to our weather depending on how much we curb greenhouse gases emissions now, and they can be used to study how much human-driven climate change plays a role in big events such as Hurricane Harvey or last year’s Pacific Northwest heatwave, compared with our planet’s natural processes.

We hear about climate models all the time, but how many of us know how they actually work? In this episode, we peel back the curtain, discussing where these models came from, what they can do amazingly well, and their current limitations. And our guests talk about what it's like for them, personally, when their work is doubted, minimized, or politicized. After all, climate scientists find themselves in the hot seat a lot more often than other scientists. Today's guests are experts not only in the science itself, but also expert at staying cool under pressure, communicating their science with the public, and laughing off the negativity.
Featuring:
Jennifer Holm, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Climate and Ecosystem Science Division. Her work focuses on modeling terrestrial ecosystems, with an emphasis on tropical forests.
Michael Wehner, a senior scientist in the Applied Math and Computational Research Division. A veteran in the field, Michael used to write climate models, and now uses them to study how human-caused climate change impacts extreme weather events like hurricanes.