Multipurpose Science Labs

Everyone who has joined a video call with me over the past two years has seen the aerial photo of Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, IL. I use it as a virtual background, and I would joke that it’s always summer at Argonne (I get extra chuckles during these snowy winter months). While the seasons aren’t constant, one thing is: the incredible rigor and breadth of the science performed on this campus.

As I mentioned in my first LinkedIn article “Ode to Science ,” I started my scientific journey two decades ago at a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility when I was an undergrad at the 美国加州大学伯克利分校 . Later, I would be a user at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials as a postdoc. Through those experiences and being in both academia and the private sector, I’ve come to a deep belief:

Solutions to our nation’s most complex challenges start with science.

In DOE lingo, Argonne is a “multipurpose science laboratory” and one of the 10 stewarded by the Office of Science. In addition to Argonne leading research discovery in fields ranging from high-energy physics and materials science to biology and advanced computer science, what I find to be the most remarkable, most impactful, and most unique about Argonne is the breadth of its scientific capabilities and expertise.

The book “Range” by David Epstein is one of my favorites, and I’d like to pull some concepts from it to illustrate my enthusiasm for our national labs, especially multipurpose science ones like Argonne.

One of Epstein’s theses is that teams with people from more diverse professional backgrounds will approach a complex problem with more perspectives and more varied analogies (more on that in a minute). And as a result, more breakthroughs and solutions can be achieved.

In my second LinkedIn article “Why Entrepreneurship ,” you’ll see I’ve already started applying what I learned from “Range.” Notably, complex wicked problems are much harder to solve than simple ones since there are no repeating patterns to follow and no straightforward solutions from a single domain. Solving those wicked problems require us to see deep structural similarities between the problem at hand and other ones.

This is where analogies come in— when we connect ideas that are only abstractly similar. I suspect that we’ve all had experiences where we or someone else makes a mental connection and declares, “Oh wait, this reminds me of that. Stay with me here, I think I have a solution.”

When you have an environment where the group can see beyond the surface and draw from a wide range of disciplines, and where hypotheses can be tested using the biggest and most powerful tools and supercomputers in the world, I’d argue that’s where the magic happens.

Of course, what happens at a multipurpose science lab isn’t magic but multidisciplinary science.

A good example I’ve seen at Argonne is the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) , a DOE Energy Innovation Hub, that brought together all flavors of scientists and engineers to tackle a complex system with many constituent components— the battery. Its success and legacy, in my opinion, are due to the seamless integration of the diverse researchers and the collaborative leadership of the late Dr. George Crabtree .

Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI) innovators that embed at Argonne are one of the beneficiaries of this vibrant research campus while they build and scale their startups. Not only do they receive funding support, access to facilities, and mentorship from experts, they are also immersed in a culture of multidisciplinary experimentation.

As CRI Director working closely with entrepreneurs and investors, I think a lot about what strategic value is at the table. When I look at a multipurpose science national lab like Argonne, I see the colocation of “big science” across otherwise disparate disciplines as one of our differentiators.

The combination of deep expertise in a wide range of areas along with an approach that values the long term gives me confidence that the national labs will have a role to play in solving wicked problems and in delivering a more sustainable, prosperous, and equitable world.

About Dick Co

Dick Co is a scientist, educator, and startup founder who believes in the power of entrepreneurship to improve lives and unlock the?human and technological?potential needed for a more resilient and equitable planet. As Director of Chain Reaction Innovations , Dick works with the?CRI?team and stakeholders to create and implement programming and vision that continually deepen and grow?CRI’s impact.?Dick is an Executive Scholar at Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management , and he holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics and A.M. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 美国哈佛大学 , and a B.S. in Chemistry from the 美国加州大学伯克利分校 .