Driven by Curiosity: A Conversation with Dean Larry Gladney

Larry’s research focuses on discovering how matter, energy, space, and time are connected. He works with experimental particle physics and cosmology, trying to understand big questions like where the Universe comes from and why it’s expanding faster and faster. He has written or co-written more than 600 research papers.

At Yale, curiosity-driven science focuses on exploring fundamental questions and unknowns, driven by pure curiosity rather than immediate applications. This interdisciplinary approach has led to significant and unexpected discoveries, fostering collaboration among scholars from various fields. Yale supports this initiative through dedicated funding, advanced facilities, and the active involvement of undergraduate and graduate students in cutting-edge research.

We thank Larry for his contributions and for joining us in this edition of the newsletter to share his invaluable insights.

What sparked your interest in science? Were there any specific moments or experiences that influenced your decision to pursue this career path?

From my earliest years, I have always been driven by the questions of how things work, how they began, how they might eventually end. I was 12 years old when I realized these questions could be answered scientifically when applied to the universe itself. Reading a book in a school library on the history of Einstein and learning that he wrote an equation on a blackboard that governed the expansion of the Universe from its earliest moments to now, billions of years later, was like a religious epiphany. I never looked at any other option for what to do with my career. I can picture myself being content working on any number of interesting technical challenges, but I have never been happier than I have been when working on experiments to probe primordial, fundamental aspects of matter or energy.

Curiosity-driven science is based on curiosity alone and is independent of expectation as to where it might lead. If you want to explore a path because you think it will illuminate a known problem, that can be just as much curiosity-driven as following a path that you have no expectation will lead to anything useful to anyone else. Your curiosity provides the impetus. Only a small fraction of the things we rely on today had their origin in application-driven research. Even GPS, though it is certainly purpose-designed technology, depends on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, something that was curiosity-driven, but which makes GPS useful.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to Yale?

I was very happy at UPenn. I started there as a postdoctoral fellow and moved up through the ranks to chaired professor, then department chair, and finally dean of science. I had several invitations to move, but was really satisfied with the research environment, outstanding colleagues, great students, and chances to serve the neighboring communities. What was missing was a grassroots commitment to face the challenge of our time for leading universities: how do we achieve an inclusive community while maintaining all the benefits of a model designed around exclusion?

Having a faculty member dedicated to the task (and with the authority) of working with other faculty members to rethink how we do everything that we do was nearly unique. There is no arguing with the success of Yale and yet, while I was interviewing here, there was a palpable feeling that we could do better. What is the definition of excellence that leads to “better?” What would make us even prouder of what we strive to achieve in the future? The resources needed to “do better” are enormous and few universities could aspire to them without a very top-down approach. I was convinced that Yale could do so from the faculty—supported by the administration—working on what “better” looks like.

Of course, I did not have to give up on my own personal ambition of working on world-leading experiments, so I took the chance on coming here. I have always been satisfied that it was the right choice for me and, hopefully, for Yale.

What is it like to be the dean of two different areas and how do they complement each other?

Wow! A tough question. It was not anyone’s plan to try! The tradition here, though, is that almost everyone has multiple aspects and overlapping responsibilities from different areas of research or teaching. How do you become an effective teacher and researcher at Yale—a place that demands very high standards for both? Are teaching and research complementary? The answer is “yes” for most of us, but there is no set model on how to make it work.  We mostly just figure it out for ourselves.

For me, being a dean in two different areas means I get to think about deep questions that often have surprising answers if they can be answered at all. That is just fun! I also see though that there are complementary viewpoints that are not so easy to recognize for those without my vantage point. It takes tons of resources to do science and everyone in science has visions of how much more they could do if we just had more.

The tunnel vision though is that so much that is directed around what “I” could do if I had more. Personally, I am reminded everyday of how profoundly important it is that we function as a community. Thought diversity is really a thing and we underestimate its importance until we look back on just how important it was that we got that question or that idea at that time.  We need the input of many voices to do our best science. I work even harder as a dean of science to try to maintain what I see and what we measure around our ability to build and maintain community because of my role as dean of diversity and faculty development.

How do undergraduate and graduate students get involved in curiosity-driven research projects at Yale?

Even for those in academic administration, we have to remind ourselves from time-to-time that supporting students is also about the most important way that we support faculty. Most of our risky ideas, i.e. ideas that may well not work out, require us to make use of graduate students, postdocs, and even undergraduates, to explore. The essence of curiosity-driven science is finding the balance between what you aspire to do and what you can do while still being responsible for the academic careers of our students. I recently heard one of our science colleagues describe the faculty as working for the students rather than the other way around. We take seriously the 19th-century concept that the research university provides the best means of educating the next generation.

For the sciences, we exist to expose students at all levels, even high school students in a few cases, to fearless pursuit of our curiosity as to how the world works. I started research work as a first-year undergraduate—a work-study student—because I needed the financial aid. It was the perfect fit for me to get involved in the nitty gritty details of making scientific measurements on fundamental particles. That was way beyond my imagining as something I could do in my first year of college. It takes a certain amount of bravery, but every curious student can, if they remain persistent, get involved in research projects at Yale.

Can you share about the role of post-doctoral fellows in FAS science and how important those positions are to the advancement of science frontiers?

The profound difference between post-doctoral fellows and graduate students is that graduate students demand a multiple year commitment of time and energy from a faculty member. We really are tied to seeing them become successful and many of us take full responsibility for making them so. Postdocs are different in that our primary job is to provide them space and resources to pursue things by virtue of their own drive, curiosity, creativity. They can be leaders within the laboratory or office. They can also be the more effective role models who are closer in age and perspective to the graduate and undergraduate students in the group. The emphasis therefore is more on the “working” part of a working relationship and less on the education part of the relationship. So, it is safe to say that postdocs are essential for advancing science, but for different reasons than, say, graduate students.

What are the implications of curiosity-driven science in the context of artificial intelligence, and how does Yale address these modern challenges?

This is a complex question. I do not want to get too much into technical detail, but it is inevitable that we have to introduce some. Artificial Intelligence, in the most obvious instances, might be used to automate discovery. There are a great many research projects that have visual or some other sensory record which needs to be quantitatively examined to discover new species or new behaviors, for example. Datamining has already had a profound impact on research over the last decade and a half. This is mostly through Machine Learning though and hence it is not quite what most of those not in science tend to think “AI” means.

Actual generative intelligence—I do not mean generating text or images here—that generates theorems, proofs, hypotheses is still “around the corner.” What is more likely in the near term is using AI to automate the generation of models. Models represent aspects of the natural world that are too small or too large, or too complex, or too dangerous for us to observe experimentally through direct means. Looking at huge datasets by eye and coming to an appropriate model is rapidly becoming impossible for human beings.  Computers can be particularly good at this though. At Yale and other places, we are experimenting with ways to use AI agents to do this work, but more importantly, exploring the roots of why this approach is or can be expected to be successful.

Automating the production of models and then the production of code that simulates the model to compare directly to measured data is the current forefront. It is like adding scientists—except that it isn’t. What is happening is that we need human scientists more than ever to judge whether the models generated make any sense or are promising for what might come next. Scientists are one of the few workforces that are not threatened by AI automation and, in fact, are best positioned to benefit through their rapid adoption.

What are some special challenges of doing curiosity-driven research, and how does Yale solve them?

The biggest challenge to doing curiosity-driven science is that all forms of science are expensive. It would be enormously more costly to society to not do scientific research, but, unlike the production of goods or services, with curiosity-driven science you simply do not know what opportunities you have squandered by not being vigorous in our support of it. Hence, there is always the challenge that we do not invest enough.

We also have a challenge in sharing the journey with those who have an interest, but do not have a highly visible way in. Citizen science is growing, but the opportunities are far larger than have been realized just yet. We can engage so many more people in the adventure of exploration that has been with us since people first looked at the night sky or observed waves on the ocean or marveled at a fierce storm. We understand all of these now and our challenge is that there are unfathomable depths behind what we know about the world that is invisible to our eyes. We know for certain that invisible stuff is there from studies done here at Yale and elsewhere:  dark matter in our genome (so-called junk DNA); the brakes and motors that determine evolution; the identity of the constituents of our universe that make up more than 95% of its mass. We are constantly challenged to find ways to support the students, faculty, and staff that make it possible for us to see the unknown. It is inevitable that the technologies and cures of tomorrow will be based around some of these unknowns. While it is impossible for us to foresee right now, there is no surer bet we can place for humanity’s future.

Yale does not have unique answers to these special challenges, but it does differ from almost any other university in the approach to facing these challenges. We support curiosity-driven science through lowering barriers to collaboration and providing access to amazing students, graduate and undergraduate. We also free faculty to work across departmental barriers that threaten to corral approaches to research. It is not unusual at Yale to find faculty in sciences working with humanists or social scientists on questions that are not completely definable in any one domain of knowledge.