MICRO JOURNEYS PODCAST

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.

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.

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 (NSLS II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York. Joined by Denise Olds from the NSLS II 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 NSLS II 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 NSLS II is not abstract — it is directly connected to the materials, batteries, and electronics that define modern life and national security.