Antoine İşlegen-Wojdyla

A view of San Francisco from Engagement hill/SCA trail, with the Golden Gate Bridge looking very small and verdant hills, in March 2026

A walk in the garden

🎉 The overall winner of this year’s #DanceYourPhD contest is Sofia Papa. She and five other dancers re-create the piezoelectric effect, the ability of some crystalline materials to generate electricity when subjected to stress.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/4rtrGgq

Announcing: Coming to PBS on April 1!

LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman is a visually striking science-driven nature series that reveals Earth’s ecosystems through radical shifts in scale—from microscopic wildlife to the planet’s most iconic species, and even the potential for life beyond Earth. 🧪🦠

Thanks for being a beacon of hope during your tenure at the office of science 🌟

I grew up during political turmoil and war. My community faced many challenges. What kept me going in school during all that was something my parents instilled in me from early on. Money can disappear. Fame & beauty fade. Politics changes. "Education is the only lasting wealth in the world".

Happy international woman’s day
#IWD

It seems things were getting better in science — at least up until a year ago. Efforts such as @spie.org workshops and book of portrait do make a difference.

Here’s a former student of mine who shared her experience

www.optics.arizona.edu/news/another...

A floral composition with geometric features in front of of a painting

A floral composition in a dark room with murals from Teotihuacan and intricate shadows

A floral composition in front of a portrait painting

A floral composition in front of a tribal painting, with red walls

Another lovely #bouquetstoarts at @deyoungmuseum.bsky.social this year — always a good opportunity to revisit the permanent collection from a fresh angle

#art #flowers

omagad

seriously hot wheels in mill valley

Good luck 🤞

An optical table in a dark room with many lights from various instruments

Experiments in the dark @berkeleylab.lbl.gov

Logo of mygale.org

I have a fond memory of mygale.org, a free web hosting platform in France in the mid 90s, a bit like Geocities.

I published my first website there at around 12yo, using Microsoft publisher, with lyrics hand typed to impress a love interest (we didn’t call it nerdmaxxing then)

Screenshots of a scientific article, with maths equations, picture of a scientific instrument and graphs

New paper in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation where my @als.lbl.gov SULI student Chuzida expands the Wigner transform formalism developed by @boazhsan.bsky.social to x-ray beamsplitters for Fourier-Transform spectroscopy

#science #MathSky #physics #AcademicSky
doi.org/10.1107/S1600577525011452

Baby turtle in Saint Martin, winter 2026

Day 2 of the Accelerate UX workshop with a panel on lab UX and a fun hackathon to control beamlines with blueskyproject.io

People are still discussing the best framework to build a user interface – but all agree: @berkeleylab.lbl.gov has the #bestviewfromalab!

indico.physics.lbl.gov/event/3289/

Rodeo beach in spring 2026

the rite of spring

Happy birthday MPG!!

Excellent day 1 for the workshop on user interfaces and user experience at scientific user facilities/particle accelerators hosted by Seij De Leon and Tiffany Tran at the @als.lbl.gov, with participants from all over the world.

indico.physics.lbl.gov/event/3289/

Two scientists looking at synchrotron instrumentation

Random shot from the @als.lbl.gov where we’re installing a novel photon energy sensor on beamline 6.3.1 while the sun is setting over @berkeleylab.lbl.gov

Inside the Grace cathedral in San Francisco during the Aura show

beatitudes

A photo of a woman in the lab, wearing glasses with dark hair.

Jelena Vučković helped drive the photonic chip revolution by integrating light and electronics on a single platform! 💡

Learn more about her work in #PhotonicsFocus: https://bit.ly/4aBzQhu

The main topics where AI should accelerate research and where the US dept of energy wants to direct resources — worth a read!

www.energy.gov/documents/ge...

Dont forget today 2/10 at 11am PT Maher Alghalayini will present two demonstrations of AI-driven robotic platforms using Bayesian methods to learn how parameters affect material quality. Get the zoom link and more: https://bit.ly/4qvwLFn

Your prayer is important to us patreon.com/berkeleymews

Spring in #sausalito

Steady Nerves, by Chaos Fiction 8 track album

Thanks to the always wonderful @kalxberkeley.bsky.social I discovered Teargas hockey from the excellent SF indie band Chaos Fiction
chaosfiction.bandcamp.com/album/steady...

Interesting talk by Eno Reyes on software development agents at the AI Agent workshop at @berkeleylab.lbl.gov with an emphasis on the importance of environment (ontology of data etc.) and the critical importance of evaluation loops in coding tools

indico.physics.lbl.gov/event/3209/o...

This piece has brilliant infographics but terrible news to convey

Display from a laser casing manufacturer

Structured lasers, showing a grid, a bullseye and lines of various colors

3D printed representation of the first zernike polynomials, used in optical aberration theory

Fiber lasers modules on display

Every year the optical candy shop opens during @spie.org #photonicswest in San Francisco
🍭 😍 🌉🌉
Always a great occasion to meet old friends and let new generations of scientists shine and salivate before the display of optical technology — which often runs our daily lives in the background

Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95 ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away

Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She was 95.