Dr. Zhong Lin Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology (Podcast and Interview Transcript)

Lisa Padilla: Okay that’s great Dr. Wang. I think we have covered all the questions that maybe I had there. There is one if you want to answer it for those people who aren’t as tech savvy as maybe I would be to dig up some information on you. Where would be a good place to point people to learn more about your work about Georgia Tech, about the projects that you are working on, about the research that you have done?

Dr. Wang: I have my own website it is http://www.nanoscience.gatech.edu/zlwang that’s the website. Or you can Google search, just type my full name Zhong Wang, you will find the first hit is my personal web page that has many of news regarding our research, our published papers, our group members, past members, current members, a lot of information.

Lisa Padilla: Yeah your contributions have been hard to miss. And it’s been really interesting to talk with you. Hey one question that I didn’t do enough research on but maybe you would grant me a little bit of description about what nanotubes are?

Dr. Wang: Nanotube is carbon made, nanotube is graphite. I don’t have it in front of me is if you have a single sheet and graphite and when it grows, it rolls over from a tubular structure and this diameter can be as small as a couple of nanometers and the thickness is about 0.2, 0.1 nanometers so from a tubular structure that’s called nanotube. Majority it’s carbon based but you can have other materials in the tubular structure as well. It has been around for about 20 years.

Lisa Padilla: Great, that was interesting also. And then as I am talking to you, another question that occurred to me that I didn’t put on that list but that I am curious for your thoughts. So the web is wrangling with resolution issues and animation issues and bandwidth, less though these days, but I saw a technology at the conference that I went to this week that has pushed 3D ahead. There was, before that technology you wear the glasses and excuse my sort of layman’s description that’s kind of what I do best, you know you wear 3D glasses to trick your eyes into a stereo view but really you have one point of focus and up until recently they couldn’t figure out how to make 3D stereo. And so this technology does that, the website is http://www.micoy.com if you are at all curious about it. But the reason why it’s interesting so I have a little, we are doing this the show for INC. I have a little podcast and I kind of interview wacky people mostly related to tech. But in any case what their technology does and their website is http://www.micoy.com is add the stereo, add the actual peripheral vision to the 3D software and so they can bend it at the edges. So you walk around this example they gave and it blurs your peripheral like your regular vision would be. So I thought that was interesting and it’s just for my thinking as a scientist maybe you have some thoughts about going beyond the third dimension like do you have any thoughts about fourth dimension?

Dr. Wang: Most times we live in three dimensional, okay. Time is another dimension. From the scientific point of view three dimensional image is tremendously powerful. I have a lot of colleagues that work on three dimensional bioimaging, you can locate the special pieces suspicious at three dimensional space, that helps a lot for them for diagnostic, for identification purposes. From my own research we also in a lot of cases look at 3D information not only for visualization but for technology purposes, how do we get them out of a particular structure. For example like our brain, our brain is three dimensional, how can you utilize CT technology to get a three dimensional at a high resolution. And that can help a lot to understand how the brain works, if you have any disease, how do we diagnose it. So we think a lot of 3D from this prospective but the 3D movie is fascinating. I remember this is probably 20 years ago when I first came to America as a student, first time I saw some 3D in Disneyland, I was totally amazed by what they could do and the visualization is just astonishing.

Lisa Padilla: It is astonishing and it’s fascinating and it’s stayed that way for a long time so I am kind of excited to see what this might bring. Okay. Well Dr. Wang, I really appreciate your time. I will be in touch with you, just a follow up and share some media with you. If you wouldn’t mind doing the same then, any images that you think we might be able to cut into the show, would be great.

Dr. Wang: Okay. I will Email you some of those images so you can use it.

Lisa Padilla: Well I will get up as early as ever needed to have a conversation with you like this; it doesn’t feel like work to me.

Dr. Wang: Okay. And anything else you need?

Lisa Padilla: No, that’s it. Thank you Dr. Wang, I will be in touch shortly.

Dr. Wang: Okay. Well thanks very much for giving me an opportunity to talk to you. I hope that it is useful for the audience to get some information about what we do.

Lisa Padilla: Yeah definitely. We got great video and audio too today. So have a great day and know that you definitely did your duty today to share and educate.

Dr. Wang: Well thank you very much for giving me the opportunity I appreciate that; you have good day too.

Lisa Padilla: You too, great, thank you Dr. Wang, bye.

Dr. Wang: Bye.