Slow Solutions and Lecture Series Varia

First an update: despite my mention of having my son's swab test result will be out yesterday, no official result was announced. We however had an informal news that he was tested negative. Nevertheless, we will wait for the official announcement and instructions and my son stays quarantined at the moment, for the period of ten days. At this stage, we are worried about his SPM exam that is supposed to start next week. What would be the school/ ministry decision?

Second, on the issue of predatory journals, it seems to have quietened down a little. Maybe there were online discussions and forums about this, but I suspect that there will be very little change, if any, in the near future. My take on this, we can only start on individual efforts on changing the nature of how we publish our work. There will be sacrifices needed to be made, if so. As of now, I don't think there will be any high-level or collective decision forthcoming.

Opinions abound. We all have our own inflated sense of self-importance. So talk of changes and progress, contributions to society and nation, often sounded hollow when in reality, most of us are just in survival mode. That is why, I often just get switched off when opinions are given without corresponding actions. We will just do what we can do. Like a cynical comment that I have read (on a subject that I love) in the social media, talk is cheap.

At times, I felt that people just want quick solutions of the instant noodle type. However complex situations often require consistent small efforts leading to small changes (evolution type). Disruptive solutions can occur and usually made in times of crisis (like the current pandemic). Thus there is this window of opportunity now for us to think differently. Without creative solutions at hand, we will only be limited to the slow evolving type of solutions.

I remembered when I joined the university and was interviewed on what would be my contribution, I uttered something like bringing theoretical physics to the university and something to the effect like more of an international outlook. I also remembered that I sniggered on a remark passed and it offended one of the interviewer (not from the university). Luckily, the vice-chancellor then, had defended me on my reaction (otherwise, I might not have the current job).

I still maintain what I have said in the interview, fighting for theoretical physics and try to bring international visitors to the university. It is not an easy path, though, and there were many obstacles. Being an average theorist, I guess, only a few people would want to listen to me. I have already mentioned that I brought Paul Townsend to the university in a previous post. That was in the year 1997, when we had the International Conference on Frontiers in Quantum Physics (9-11 July) in which he was an invited speaker.

When I was appointed to be Head of Theoretical Studies Laboratory (TSL), ITMA in 2002, I had more flexibility of inviting people over and they are not necessarily "my guests" (e.g. Prof. Hongo as guest of Dr. Nik Mohd Asri and Prof. Ekrem Savas as guest of Prof. Adem Kilicman) as some would say. Rather spontaneously, the institute let me begin a lecture series called TSL Expository Lecture Series. The first one was held in January 2003 with visitors from Japan (Yoshitaka Tonimura and Tetsuyuki Yukawa) whom I borrowed from Prof. Lim Swee Cheng (see poster below).

The next one was held four months later in May 2003, where I have invited people I know, Kwek Leong Chuan from NTU, Singapore (CQT was not yet formed) and Jussi Kalkkinen from Imperial College and another is Hideo Sekino (I can't remember on whose invitation but he was lecturing on Theoretical and Computational Molecular Science). The third one in July 2004 with John Stillwell (San Francisco), Jorga Ibrahim (ITB - disciple of Andre Lichnerowicz) and Izumi Tsutsui (KEK). 

The fourth one is rather special as it was on Quantum Information and we were establishing a quantum information research lab then. It was held in November 29-December 2, 2005. It was also the 100th year commemorating Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers. The speakers were Kwek Leong Chuan, Andrew White, Stephen Bartlett, Antia Lamas Linares and Keiji Matsumoto. 

We were confident then, we are going to pursue this area vigorously but fate had it otherwise. The laboratory was asked to merge with INSPEM but it is more of a closure. Perhaps we were not as productive as some would want us to be. At the time of closure, we already had the fifth lecture series planned and we carried this over in Faculty of Science. It was a really difficult time for me with little financial support and almost broke down. It was held in December 12-15, 2006 with speakers Holger Then, Martin Lueders, Donald Jacobs, Kuo Jer-Lai. One listed speaker Wang Jiang Sheng did not come. 

When I joined INSPEM, I started again the lecture series and renamed it as Expository Quantum Lecture Series (EQuaLS) - you can see some of the history here. Somebody senior came to me what did I get for all these events. My immediate reply is that we get to learn directly from the world's best in the respective topics. Apparently that was not enough. To justify further, we did pick up some of the topics of these lecture series and made them into our own research programs and published some papers. It actually take years to develop these programmes to see some results and they are not instant noodle types of programmes. 

Finally, one of the things I have noticed though, was after a few of our lecture series, others within the university and outside began their own lecture series. I am not trying to lay any claim here but it is nice to see that the idea catches on. My own view of doing the lecture series is to set up the right intellectual atmosphere in our environment where serious matters get discussed instead of the usual endless gossips and office politics. We need to bring our level of research to the internationally respectable level that we see abroad. With Covid-19 pandemic going on, face-to-face events like these may be difficult to do but the last EQuaLS 2020 event saw the opportunity of more flexibility of engaging good researchers from abroad online. I hope we do take that opportunity and continue this lecture series tradition even after I retire.