Science and Universities

Interview by Toni Pou for Barcelona Science and Universities and Núvol.

Judith Juanhuix has been working since 2004 at the ALBA Synchrotron scientific facility, one of the most fascinating in the country. She is currently head of the Life and Condensed Matter Sciences Section. D. in biophysics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. We took the opportunity to talk to her about the project and her career.

How did you become interested in science?

Basically, it interested me because it gave me certainties and in my world nothing was certain. I couldn’t find my place and everything had a certain patina of unreality. And, specifically, physics gave me an anchorage to reality. I was very attracted by the fact that the laws that governed the Universe were the same as those that governed my environment. And from there, I became interested in the complexity of all physical phenomena.

And at some point you moved from physics to biology.

Curiously, when I found my place in the world a bit more, I stopped being so interested in these absolute things and I started to be interested in the life sciences. Then I discovered that there was also a universality to life. The same biochemical principles that order a bacterium could be applied to higher beings. And from then on, since I had a facility for conceptualising experiments, I moved towards scientific instrumentation.

What is a career in science like?

Very uncertain. You don’t stabilise your career until after a long time and, moreover, as you have a very broad specialisation, it’s not like you can change companies and go to the next one, but the lab that can do you well may be in Berlin. Really, if you don’t have a great capacity for sacrifice and a great vocation, science is difficult. And it is very sad. There shouldn’t be such a big barrier to a career in science.

Is the barrier the same now as it was twenty years ago?

The situation has not changed much. The Science Act is trying to make a career in science less complicated. Scholarships are finally paid into the Social Security system and the chained work and service contracts have also been eliminated, but we still need to stabilise the situation. I would say that there is an awareness that the situation needs to improve, but the results are yet to be seen.

What is your assessment of the Law of Science?

It lacks development, but I rate it positively. It is the first science law that has a social character. The equality policies are there and they are good. It is a pity that policies in relation to LGTBI+ diversity have not been included. What has been done with the gender axis, could have been done in other axes. Some progress has also been made to avoid so much inbreeding. On the other hand, the law also establishes a minimum budget limit, but it is very low. If we were really ambitious, that minimum should be much higher to put us on a par with other countries.

How would you explain what a synchrotron is and what it is used for?

A synchrotron light facility is essentially a large microscope. We generate high quality X-rays to perform experiments on samples that can be seen with X-rays, that is… everything! everything!

Until?

Everything you can imagine can be studied with X-rays, because they have an oscillation of light, a wavelength, that is comparable to the distance between neighbouring atoms. This makes X-rays sensitive to atomic structure. And, of course, everything has atoms. From a drug to a semiconductor, battery or polymer.

How are these X-rays generated?

They are emitted by a large particle accelerator (electrons, in fact). And because X-rays interact in different ways with matter, we adapt them according to the needs of the experiment in stations that we call beamlines. Right now we have eleven operational and we are building three more, one of which is the one I run.

The ALBA synchrotron is based on a ring of 268 metres in circumference through which electrons circulate. The LHC collider in Geneva circulates protons in a 28-kilometre ring and, although it has a different working principle, it can also be considered a microscope. It has always struck me as curious that in order to see the smallest things, such large apparatus is needed.

As Feynman said in reference to the microscopic world, there is a lot of space in there. Small things are very difficult to control, so you need a lot of systems that take up a lot of space. Now, the LHC is really an “anti-synchrotron”.

Why?

It is an accelerator with two beams of protons travelling in opposite directions, which are made to collide in order to reproduce the initial conditions of the Universe. Here the collision is the protagonist. We, on the other hand, are interested in the particles spinning around without colliding at 99.999998 per cent of the speed of light. And when we bend their trajectory with magnetic fields, they emit the X-rays we use. The LHC, on the other hand, is not interested in particles emitting X-rays because they lose energy. That’s why it’s so big: with a small curvature, they emit less.

If many different types of samples can be analysed at the ALBA Synchrotron, the research must cover very different areas.

We divide it into three sections: Life Sciences, Materials Science and Electronic Structure and Magnetism. We can look at how two proteins bind together, how they bind with DNA or how a drug binds to its target and, from that, make it more specific so that it actually binds at this point and not at others. For example, we have seen the covid virions inside whole cells when they are infected. We can also see how a battery electrode degrades to make more efficient batteries.

Do you see battery research as strategic?

Yes, in fact, here we have just created a laboratory specialising in battery materials, where we study charge and discharge cycles and how electrodes made from different materials behave. The idea is to make batteries that store more energy with less weight, that have more charge cycles and that are non-toxic and do not require rare earths. But, as I said, we can study anything! I even collaborate with a research group that has studied the teeth of Iberian children from 2,500 years ago.

What can be discovered from these teeth?

We can find out, for example, how they fed and infer their living conditions and how they died. At ALBA we also do archaeology!

What else have you studied with archaeology professionals?

The frescoes of Sant Climent de Taüll, and Egyptian mummies!

Mummies!

The idea was to identify the components of the skin of the mummies to study the degradation process.

There is something about the lines of light through which the X-rays circulate to do all these experiments that is very surprising: in all this array of state-of-the-art devices and systems, there are many components covered with a simple aluminium foil like the one in the kitchen at home.

Since X-rays interact with air, we have to create a vacuum and remove the air to get the purest possible X-rays. To do this, we heat the chambers. But as they are rigid, if they expand more in one place than in another, they can break. Therefore, we must uniform the temperature and we do this with aluminium foil, as if we were making a papillote.

The ALBA Synchrotron is an internationally consolidated facility. How do you envisage its future?

We are working on an upgrade programme towards a facility that will be called ALBA-II. We will change the accelerator system and upgrade the beamlines and make new ones, which will allow us to perform even more cutting-edge experiments with higher resolution.

You said you did research on covid. Should research on risky viruses be ongoing and more intense?

Yes, at ALBA we want to develop the tools to make Catalonia and Spain more bioresilient.

Bioresilience?

Yes: we need to be prepared for the next pandemic. As a society we need to have the right instruments to react when the next emergency comes.

What is coming is indisputable, isn’t it? The question is when?

Yes, and we don’t know when, but it may not be another covid. It could also be a pandemic that destroys wheat, for example. This would also be a global problem. To respond to these emergencies, which can be human or animal health, climatic, contamination or food emergencies, we need advanced tools in a biosafety environment that allows us to react quickly. We need to be able to scan infected cells, for example, with X-rays, but also with other tools, all of them integrated.

Are you talking about creating a new research centre dedicated to preparing for future pandemics?

Yes, we need an interdisciplinary centre to react when there is the next emergency and to be able to stop the shock as well as possible. This costs money, but the alternative costs even more. Right now we are in talks with different institutes to create a new centre with a certain level of biosecurity that will allow us to achieve this preparedness. These are future plans that we have within this great ALBA-II project.

Are there more plans for the future?

There is another very clear one: chip manufacturing. It is a strategic sector and its production is controlled by countries that are perhaps not sufficiently stable from a geopolitical point of view. Recently, Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès announced the creation of Innofab, a chip production plant here, next to ALBA.

Before working at the ALBA Synchrotron, you were at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. What differences have you encountered?

There are differences especially in terms of recognition and the idea that science needs time and stability. You can’t ask for results in two days. Science is not journalism or politics. It is a complex activity, but it is necessary to improve society, and therefore it must be clear that policies must be long-term. In ALBA we have been fortunate to have a twenty-year plan, something that has been noted in the productivity of the facility, but unfortunately not all research centres have it. Legislative changes in educational and scientific policies do not help at all. And then there is another big difference: it is recognised there that science, above all, is done by young people.

Is it not recognised here?

I don’t think so. Obviously, science belongs to everyone, but it is the doctoral students and postdocs who really put in the hours. I think that this young talent, which is becoming more and more numerous and which is doing most of the science, should be promoted a lot.

How should this young talent be recognised?

Once excellence is recognised with programmes like ICREA, a more extensive and serious mentoring programme is needed. A national programme of doctoral fellowships and projects that go out on a regular basis would also help a lot in the planning of people. People doing postdocs are right in the middle of life, deciding whether to start a family or not. And here there is a black spot that especially disadvantages women, because they systematically have more family burden and more social pressure to start a family. All this means that after the thesis or the first postdoc, the drop-out rate from scientific careers is very high, especially among women. This unpredictability should not be there. The adventure of science should be in the results, not in the paperwork. In other words, the surprise should be in the scientific discoveries, not in the discovery of whether the BOE or the corresponding National Plan has been published.

What do you like most about your work?

What I like most – and what stresses me the most – is the variety and unpredictability. On the same day I can be worrying about a connector…

Or putting on a foil…

Or putting up a foil and at the same time preparing a far-reaching project. I also really enjoy working with scientists who are interested in the techniques we use and see how we can match their needs with our possibilities. And at the same time, talking to very different people. In our team there are chemists, biologists, physicists, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, civil engineers, engineers, technicians? We have everything and I love that. I love the diversity.

What would you say to a girl or a young woman who is interested in science and thinks she could go into science?

First of all, it is very important that she has a vision of herself. It is very important that she imagines, that she thinks about whether this is what she really wants. Then, she should not go alone. She should be accompanied by someone she can find, someone she can trust. And, finally, that science is a social activity and, therefore, that she is also part of it. If it is part of society, it is part of society. I, who do not have an ordinary profile, also enter. And as science is social, the networks that I can make are important. She can go and talk to professors, researchers and others. Knowing everything that surrounds science is as important as knowing about science.

I hear you like Bach a lot.

I love it.

Why do you love him?

Because he orders me. Bach orders the universe for me.

So Bach does the same thing that physics did when you were attracted to science…

Look, I’ll tell you something: when I was setting up that beamline, in 2011, 2012 and 2013, every day I played Bach on my way here. From the “Goldberg Variations” to the harpsichord concertos. I was already in order. Strangely, on the way back it was impossible for me. I couldn’t listen to him. The entropy was at its peak, everything was already a mess [laughs].

Do you have a favourite piece?

The BWV 1060 concerto, but not for violin and oboe, but for two harpsichords. And from there I’ve gone to Rakhmaninov. It’s funny, but everyone who has listened to a lot of Bach ends up with Rakhmaninov. And, look, me too.

Does the Universe command you too?

He’s the ultimate romantic, and that’s something…. [he bites his lip and looks up].