Building the Future, One Nanometer at a Time

Building the Future, One Nanometer at a Time

Daniel Marrujo continues his tour of Brookhaven National Laboratory with a stop at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), where interim director Kevin Yager breaks down the science of building materials at the nanometer scale, from carbon nanotubes to self-assembling DNA structures. Yager also outlines CFN's vision for an "exocortex," a network of AI agents designed to accelerate scientific discovery by handling literature reviews, running instruments, and troubleshooting experiments alongside human researchers. The conversation then shifts to the Quantum Material Press, where Dr. Suji Park demonstrates how twisting stacked two-dimensional materials at precise angles can unlock entirely new properties, including superconductivity. Scientists working at the frontier of nanoscience face a growing bottleneck: the sheer number of tools, datasets, and processes required to push research forward outpaces what any one person can manage alone. Yager describes this burden directly, explaining how researchers are pulled in every direction, reading publications, writing software, running physical instruments, even as the value of their work depends on deep, sustained focus. Meanwhile, at the QPress, Park's team faces a parallel challenge: identifying which combinations of ultra-thin materials, stacked at which angles, will produce useful new properties out of a nearly infinite set of possibilities. CFN's answer is a layered system of specialized AI agents that take on individual pieces of the research process, from surfacing relevant publications to operating lab instruments via natural language, freeing scientists to focus on higher-level problems, while the QPress solves its own challenge by giving researchers a rapid, physical way to prototype and test new material combinations without waiting on large-scale production. What You'll Discover in This Episode 00:53 — Kevin Yager introduces the Center for Functional Nanomaterials and its dual mission as both a research center and a user facility open to outside scientists. 05:36 — Yager describes CFN's "exocortex" vision, a network of AI agents designed to expand what human scientists can accomplish in a day. 08:56 — AI models are doubling in capability roughly every four to seven months, a pace CFN is working to apply directly to materials science. 11:40 — Synthetic DNA sequences self-assemble into designed nanostructures simply by mixing them in water and adding heat. 17:07 — Dr. Suji Park introduces the Quantum Material Press, a one-of-a-kind facility built to accelerate research into two-dimensional quantum materials. 18:29 — Stacking two sheets of graphene at a precise twist angle can transform the material into a superconductor. Let’s Connect * Daniel Marrujo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-marrujo/] * Kevin Yager [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-yager-79aa774/] * Suji Park [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sujipark-open-sesame/] * TSS Website [https://tss.llc/] Learn more about TSS: https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/ [https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Rare Earths, Real Power: Africa’s Role in Next Global Race

In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Mvemba Dizolele, Managing Director, Dizolele Advisory at the African Land Forces Summit to explore a continent often misunderstood by the outside world. Dizolele, a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, former senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at CSIS, and host of his own Africa Program podcast, brings decades of expertise to a wide-ranging conversation covering cybersecurity, mobile money innovation, drone technology, and the geopolitics of critical minerals. The discussion moves fluidly between grassroots stories of African youth using technology to organize and connect, and high-level analysis of how global powers are competing for access to the continent's resources. At the center of the conversation is a tension between extraction and partnership. Dizolele traces a throughline from the colonial-era rubber trade in Congo to today's race for rare earth minerals, cobalt, and lithium, resources critical to modern technology and clean energy. He points to historical examples, including the little-known fact that uranium used in the Manhattan Project came from Congo, to illustrate how the continent has long fueled global progress without receiving proportional benefit. The episode raises a pressing question: as the U.S. and other powers seek access to Africa's critical minerals, will history repeat itself, or can a new model of mutual benefit emerge? Dizolele points to a different model already proven elsewhere: the kind of technology transfer and capability-building the U.S. provided to South Korea and Taiwan, as a blueprint for how partnership, rather than pure extraction, can help African nations build their own industrial base while still meeting global demand. What You'll Discover in This Episode: (04:07) How Africa's youth are leveraging mobile technology and platforms like Kenya's M-Pesa to leapfrog traditional infrastructure gaps (14:39) The geopolitical race for critical minerals in Africa and how the U.S. is responding to Chinese dominance in the supply chain (17:22) Why the "silicon shield" model from Taiwan's semiconductor industry could offer a blueprint for an African "rare earth shield" (20:02) The little-known history of Congolese uranium and its role in the Manhattan Project (24:02) A conversation with Ben Affleck that reframes the assumptions behind foreign aid and development work in the DRC (27:33) Dizolele's personal mission to bridge the gap between global perceptions of Africa and its lived reality Let’s Connect: * Daniel Marrujo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-marrujo/] * Mvemba Phezo Dizolele [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvemba-phezo-dizolele-a086b84b/] * Mvemba’s Website [https://www.dizolele.com/] * Mvemba’s Podcast [https://www.dizolele.com/podcast/] * TSS Website [https://tss.llc/] Learn more about TSS: https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/ [https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Seeing the Invisible | National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Lab

In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo takes viewers behind the scenes of one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the United States — the National Synchrotron Light Source 2 (NSLS2) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. Joined by Denise Olds from the NSLS2 communications team and a leading beamline scientist, Daniel walks the experimental floor of a facility that serves over 2,300 researchers from around the world annually, exploring how synchrotron light is being used to study everything from quantum materials to structural biology to next-generation energy storage. The NSLS2 sits at the intersection of national security, scientific discovery, and technological innovation — and most of the public has never heard of it. With 29 active beamlines and room for nearly 30 more, the facility is only halfway built out, yet already producing research that shapes medicine, defense, advanced manufacturing, and energy. For Daniel, the visit carries personal weight: his background in spectroscopy and semiconductor characterization at the Defense Microelectronics Activity gives him a firsthand understanding of just how critical these measurement tools are to protecting national interests. The episode makes clear that the science happening inside NSLS2 is not abstract — it is directly connected to the materials, batteries, and electronics that define modern life and national security. What You'll Discover in This Episode [00:43] — How NSLS2 serves over 2,300 unique users per year across fields ranging from structural biology to quantum materials, and why the facility describes its mission as shining light on the world's most challenging problems. [02:51] — What it looks like to walk onto the experimental floor of a live synchrotron beamline, and how the physical design of the facility — including vibration isolation — is engineered down to the nanometer. [03:02] — How the beamline functions as a 120-meter supermicroscope, using coherent X-ray beams narrowed to 40 nanometers to image materials at the atomic scale with three simultaneous detectors. [05:27] — The role of calibration in synchrotron science, including how metal foils and absorption edges are used to tune X-ray energy with extreme precision for spectroscopy studies. [05:41] — How multimodal imaging works in practice — combining fluorescence detection, pixel array detectors, and diffraction detectors simultaneously to capture chemical composition and crystal structure in a single scan. LET’S CONNECT * Daniel Marrujo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-marrujo/] * Denise Olds [https://www.bnl.gov/staff/dyazak] * Hanfei Yan [https://www.bnl.gov/staff/hyan] * TSS Website [https://tss.llc/] Learn more about TSS: https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/ [https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

From F-15s to AI Wingmen: Inside the Future of Air Combat

In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Colonel Keagan McLeese, call sign "Waldo", commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing and Beale Air Force Base, recorded just two days before McLeese hands over command and flies his final mission as an Air Force pilot. The conversation traces his path from a teenager earning his private pilot's license to the cockpit of the F-15 Eagle and F-22 Raptor, the origin of his call sign, and his philosophy on leadership forged through two decades of fighter pilot debriefs. From there, the discussion widens to Beale's role in America's power projection mission and the technology now reshaping how the Air Force fights. That technology is Collaborative Combat Aircraft — semi-autonomous drone wingmen designed to fly alongside manned fighters, expand the "magazine," and feed real-time intelligence back to the pilot in command. As artificial intelligence takes on a larger role in life-and-death decisions in the air, the conversation turns to a pointed question: how much authority should a machine actually have, and who stays responsible for pulling the trigger? McLeese's answer is direct: CCA platforms are built to be semi-autonomous, not autonomous, meaning a human pilot must still issue the final "consent to kill" before any hostile aircraft is engaged, preserving human judgment at the center of an increasingly AI-driven battlespace. What You'll Discover in This Episode: * (08:35) How Colonel McLeese earned his call sign "Waldo" and the embarrassing dogfight behind it * (13:15) What Beale Air Force Base actually does for America's power projection mission, from the U-2 to the 195th Guard Wing * (21:50) Inside Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA): how AI-powered drone wingmen could multiply the Air Force's combat power * (34:26) The bittersweet reality of giving up command, explained through a surprising family analogy * (36:17) What happens during a "Fini Flight" and why the colonel’s own son will be there for it Let's Connect:  * Daniel Marrujo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-marrujo/] * TSS Website [https://tss.llc/] Learn more about TSS: https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/ [https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Encrypted, Translated, Transmitted | The Tech Keeping Coalition Forces Connected

In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo takes viewers inside one of the most quietly powerful demonstrations at African Lion 2026 in Tan Tan, Morocco. Joined by Staff Sergeant Thalia Gonzalez, Master Sergeant Michael Patterson, and Airman First Class Caleb Hilton, Daniel gets an up-close look at the Wave Relay MPU-5, a compact networking and radio device configured to run real-time multilingual voice translation inside the MC Hammer edge-computing environment. What begins as a hardware introduction quickly becomes a live demonstration that reframes what battlefield communication can look like when technology removes the language barrier entirely. The episode digs into one of the most persistent friction points in multinational military operations: the interpreter bottleneck. When coalition forces operate across language lines, the speed of the mission has historically depended on the availability of a human interpreter. That single dependency can introduce delays of hours, creating a vulnerability not in firepower or logistics, but in communication itself. Daniel and his guests explore how that problem compounds in fast-moving, unforeseen field environments where waiting is not an option. The Wave Relay MPU-5, operating within the MC Hammer edge-computing stack, solves this by converting voice to text, translating it in the cloud, and returning it as audio in the recipient's native language, in real time, with no proximity limit, and protected by dual-layer AES-256 encryption. What You'll Discover in This Episode (01:10) — What the Wave Relay MPU-5 actually is, how it functions as both a networking device and a radio, and why its IP-based architecture makes it uniquely suited for translation applications in the field. (01:36) — A breakdown of the MC Hammer edge-computing environment; what it is, what cloud tiers it operates across (Unclassified, IL2, NIPRONET IL5, SIPRONET IL6), and why having that infrastructure at the tactical edge matters. (02:55) — A live demonstration of real-time voice translation in action — English to Arabic, French to English — showing exactly how the system performs under field conditions with minimal latency. (04:15) — A whiteboard walkthrough of the full data flow: how a voice packet travels from radio to cloud, converts to text for translation, then reverts to audio and reaches the recipient anywhere in the world. (05:17) — How the MPU-5 achieves beyond-line-of-sight communication using local SIM cards, Starshield, or standard internet service providers, and why proximity is no longer a constraint. (06:58) — The security architecture behind the system: CSFC compliance, dual-layer AES-256 encryption over both IP address and MAC address, and how soldiers can remain masked even within their own network. Let’s Connect * Daniel Marrujo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-marrujo/] * TSS Website [https://tss.llc/] Learn more about TSS: https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/ [https://tss.llc/micro-journeys-podcast/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.