Super busy at work right now.. cant say why.. but it will be out soon
I did take a short break in the middle of the day to meet my freidn Lapo for lucnh downtoawn. Lapo is from Italy and just finished his PhD in Computer Scecince at UVM. His wife Chengi who is from Hungary also just defended her PhD.. Like most foreing students. they want to get out of the US as qucikly as possible. Its heartbreakign since so much of the braintrust of our country is in students like this who study here.. then make their careers here..
here’s a statistic everyoen might be surprised to know..
More than 1/3 of all PhD students in this country are from outher contries and here on onm temporary education visas
if you narrow that down to Science, technology, engineering and Math (STEM) students, that total is 45 percent of PhD students are here on temporary visas
here’s the shocker. in my feild of electrical engineering, a full 70 percent (!) of phd students are here on temporary visas>
I cannot understand what the cgovenrment thinks is goign to happen if we no longer are welcoming to these students.. our universites will suffer.. and there wont be any talent to run the new manufacturing growth they supposedly want.. It doesnt make sense
THat was just one of the many great conversatiosn that Lapo and I crammed into our hour lunchl.. we talked AI stuff and had soiem ideas fir possible collaboraitosn oence theyy settle downin europe somewhere||even though we dont see each other very much, ill really miss seeing Lapo.. hoe we can stay conencted !
we even had the exact same tyvek wallets covered in engineering formula and measurement devices !
We had a great visit today from my friend Ben , his wife Lisa and his son Leon. , OK.. so thats really Ben Huh.. .. rhymes with ‘d-uh’ ., not with ‘shoe’.. I realize i’ve always gotten that wrong.
Ben is an old freind from the MIT-IBM Lab. He’s a very smart and creative thinker. I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with him. It was my first time meeting Lisa and Leon.. Leon is 3 years old and super cute.. his name Leon is Noel spelled backwards whcih is (im told) Korean for ‘Play’.. Ben says I had soemthing to do with that choice, whihc is really cool.
Theyt are a beutiful family. We got toys out and watched Leon line them up in perfect matrices. he’s goign to be a mathematican like his dad. Lisa is lovely. She does communications for the Dental School at Harvard. it was interesting talkign to her abotu the crazy state of affairs there.
Busy day aroudn the house. Diane is on a mission to get her whole garden in befor3 we head out for Gabes graduation. We dug, mulched, mowed, weed wacked and fertalized, .. all under Diane”s expert gardeners eye
one of the main accomplishments was to find the perfect O-ring to keep our mower gas cap from falling off.. we’d been using rubber bands.. but they quickly fall apart when exposed to gasoline.. I found the perfect replacement neopring oring at the hardware store.. It was nice to celibrate a small victory like that
Speakig of Rings.. I had an unexpected and welcome call from my old freind John S.. I should now say .. Dr. John S. He finished his PhD at Columbia last year.. john and I did many projects together.. the pumpkin king, the eel, stampo.. It had been more than a year that we had talked..
He’s got a startup now based on his PhD research.. and has a great long tiem girlfreind.. he talked about coming up for a visit soemtime this summer.
So nice to be back in touch ! nite all. nite sam -me
