Michael G. Lerner

Oh this is very exciting! Thank you, and I’d love to get together. Best contact is mglerner@proton.me.

And this is one of the many reasons you are the best, Dr. Deserno!

Next year!

killed it! Worked for NASA on the Apollo project, became an amazing painter, taught me to love poetry. But without that one supportive professor, how different would her life have been? (3/3)

structural misogyny, she was literally in whole buildings without a single women's restroom! Turns out that's only half of the story. She just told me about a professor who taught her engineering math who was so nice to her and so supportive. Without him, she never would have done it. And she (2/3)

My mom is so goddamn impressive. Grew up literally dirt poor. First woman to major in Engineering at the University of Colorado. Story I always heard was that she was an art major and one of her girlfriends dared her to take an engineering class, and she did it out of orneriness. Talk about (1/3)

A line curve showing number of awards for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal years 2021-2025 across NSF. The fiscal year 2026 curve lies well below curves for other fiscal years.

NSF Update

Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit.

Now by Directorate...

1/11

Plot of global temperature anomaly, using R, Hector, and ggplot2 with 5 different SSPs.

I have now figured out how to make this in R with ggplot2. I feel very proud.

Tongariro Alpine Crossing. All the students made it in under 10 hours. Absolutely amazing.

Thanks!

Biophysics people like @markusdeserno.bsky.social @samuelfoley.com and @diffusiveblob.bsky.social come to mind as folks who might have an example or two ...

Hey #Physics / #ITeachPhysics / #Biophysics / #Math friends: a math colleague has a student who took complex analysis last semester and who wants to practice using the residue theorem to compute *real things* instead of random toy problems. Do you have good examples? Surprisingly, I don't ...

I grew up with the In Living Color alt halftime show but ... dissertations are going to be written about NFL halftime shows now, right? 😻😻😻

Big news time! After 15 wonderful years at Earlham, I'll be starting in July in the Smith College physics department!

Well this looks really interesting

I love this method too. One practical suggestion: make them upload unlisted videos to YouTube. Otherwise you’re likely to get a weirdo video format/huge file.

Sale: 2 for FJ$99. 3 for FJ$149

My favorite kind of sale. The 3rd bottle costs more than the first two.

Who doesn’t love a good diffusion paper

I don't know that NIH was any more draconian in its IT policies than my other employers, but it was THE GOVERNMENT ... and it's where I finally internalized this.

Hi Michael! I appreciate you dealing with the 15 grad school LORs. To think that me dreading to sign up for physics junior year because of my awful experience with it in high school, would end up leading to one of the most fascinating research experiences I've had and a great mentor along the way. I cannot express how much of an impact you've made in the last half of my college career. Thank you once again and I will keep you updated.

It's letter of recommendation season, but ... my goodness, do notes like this make it worth it!

Here is a solid, thought-provoking post.

Zucchini tart with scallions, eggs, crème fresh, fresh herbs

Lunchtime tart for the wife’s birthday! Quite pleased with how it came out.

I just signed up, but perhaps that was too late to get the Zoom invite? Any chance you could DM it to me (or mail it to mglerner@proton.me)?

Definitely wanted this to lead to some biophysical version of the Coriolis force.

I am honored and excited to present our recent work on mixed AND asymmetric membranes at @bppbseminar.bsky.social! 🧪

My online talk will be this Friday, 11/21/25, 11am US Eastern time.

Many thanks to the organizers for putting this together! More details here: sites.google.com/view/bppb-se...

But now I think it's going to become a standard tool for me. It really leveled up the conversation.

Thanks! It came up naturally: they made up sample problems as part of the review for this exam.
In looking over their problems, I was like "y'all won't be happy, because the exam is going to have some problems that are noticeably harder than your examples," so I tacked this on as another review day.

I love having students work in groups to write sample exam problems in class. This time, I told them to take some existing problems and make them harder. It’s so cool seeing them dive into things like “well, we could give less information … what could we leave out?” #ITeachPhysics

I know this is not the question. But do we know the mechanism yet?

It's angular momentum day in my #Physics class, so of course we start with fidget spinners on their desks and Emmy Noether on the screen as they walk into the room :)