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.
Sandia National Laboratories chemist Mitch Anstey demonstrates photo luminescence with fluorescein and rhodamine glowing bright yellow and red. Anstey will explore the science behind this and other forms of luminescence in his talk “Let’s Make Light of the Situation” at the Smithsonian Magazine’s Future is Here Festival. (Photo by Dino Vournas) Click on the thumbnail for a high resolution image.
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.
Who: Mitch Antsey, chemist
What: “Let’s Make Light of the Situation” talk
When: Sunday, May 18, 1:40 p.m.
Where: Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
For media: Mitch is available for interviews. Contact Patti Koning at (925) 294-4911 to schedule.
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.”
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
Sandia news media contact: Patti Koning, pkoning@sandia.gov, (925) 294-4911