Sandia chemist Mitch Anstey to illuminate the Smithsonian Future Is Here Festival

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Chemist Mitch Anstey of Sandia National Laboratories will join Patrick Stewart, George Takei, Brian Greene, Sara Seager and other notable minds from the galaxy of science and science fiction at Smithsonian Magazine’s The Future Is Here Festival on May 16-18 in Washington, D.C. Anstey’s talk, “Let’s Make Light of the Situation,” will explore different forms of luminescence, the principle of turning energy into light, with several glowing demonstrations.

Anstey first gave a version of his talk at Nerd Nite East Bay two years ago at the request of Sandia colleague Rick Karnesky, a metallurgist and co-boss of Nerd Nite East Bay with Rebecca Cohen. Nerd Nite is a monthly series of fun-yet-informative cross-disciplinary lectures held in cities worldwide.

Last year, Smithsonian Magazine asked Nerd Nite to collaborate on its second annual The Future is Here Festival, a celebration and exploration of science, technology, culture and the arts, all gathered around the exciting and elastic theme of “the future.” When the call went out to the bosses of the regional Nerd Nites to nominate their favorite talks for the festival, Karnesky immediately thought of Anstey.

“Mitch’s talk is a great mix of technical knowledge and experiential science,” says Karnesky. “I knew it would really resonate with the theme of the future and science fiction.”

At Sandia, Anstey’s research focuses on the fundamental properties of molecules that give rise to luminescence that can be used for radiation detection and biomolecular tagging.

“The talk is somewhat related to what I do on a daily basis, but on a much broader level,” he said. “I really didn’t want to talk about work and instead delved into other forms of luminescence that interest me and how they play into our daily lives. Think of LEDs, glow-in-the-dark T-shirts, whitening detergents, even the X-Men character Cyclops, whose power is derived from bioluminescence.”