Lauren B Drescher
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lbdrescher.bsky.social
Lauren B Drescher
@lbdrescher.bsky.social
64 followers 210 following 49 posts
Researching ultrafast dynamics in solids | Attosecond Physics | MSCActions Fellow | Experimental EUV/XUV shenanigans |📍Berlin | she/her 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
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lbdrescher.bsky.social
Let's continue! We want to learn how long it takes light to pull the rug out from under a crystal lattice, or to put it closer to jargon, understand how electronic excitation leads to displacive coherent phonon motion. First, how do we model the interaction of light with solids? /1
September 16, 2025 at 2:31 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
I've got a new paper out last week in Phys Rev B! We were wondering how quickly light can pull the rug out from under a crystal lattice (so to speak) and lead it to vibrate. How and why? A lengthy thread below! /1

journals.aps.org/prb/abstract...
Onset of coherent phonon motion in Peierls-distorted antimony by attosecond transient absorption
Optical excitation of carriers can launch coherent lattice motion by changing the energy landscape of solids. But how does the relaxation of optically excited carriers affect this coherent motion? Usi...
journals.aps.org
September 15, 2025 at 3:11 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
I for one am happy I did not put an OUTDATED tattoo on my arm only to get called out on a poster.
tessafisher.bsky.social Dr. Tessa Fisher @tessafisher.bsky.social · Aug 18
Found out today that by using millisecond pulsars as your reference points, you can determine your position in the galaxy down to 7km or less, which is frankly a ridiculous degree of accuracy on the cosmic scale #PSETI2025
A science poster on pulsar positioning system and its use in the search for technosignatures
August 19, 2025 at 7:47 AM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
So you're telling me LinkedIn and ResearchGate are both deleting critical comments for a famously litigious professor who once tried to sue a reporter writing about him over the release of state secrets? Huh.
July 6, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Lauren B Drescher
jessicalwarelab.bsky.social
Protect transgender scientists | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Protect transgender scientists
Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGnC) people are a primary target of the Trump administration. Multiple executive orders seek to erase TGnC protections; mandate denial of gender identity; and ba...
www.science.org
June 19, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Lauren B Drescher
paigebyerly.bsky.social
A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius.

This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology
June 3, 2025 at 8:24 AM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Honestly, the stuff that laser companies keep coming up with sometimes boggles the mind
Meme: My laser vendor told me cavity modes keep burning his Ti:Sa crystal so I asked what damage threshold he has and he said he just moves the crystal and gets a new pump spot very 10 hrs so I said it sounds like he's just feeding gain media to the laser and then his laser engineer started crying.
May 26, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Reposted by Lauren B Drescher
drdyidhuijg.bsky.social
STATEMENT: 'Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia'
Read the statement online here: tinyurl.com/mud7va29
Co-sign the statement, fill in this form: forms.gle/oDYgnobrMiSc...
Not In Our Name: Feminist Academics and Educators Speak Out Against Transphobia
We call on all trans-inclusive feminist academics and educators to sign this statement: ‘Not In Our Name’ We are non-trans feminist academics and educators. We write in support of trans rights, tran...
forms.gle
April 30, 2025 at 7:25 AM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Brb, writing down my favorite atomic lines somewhere on paper... 😬

www.wired.com/story/nist-d...
Trump Admin Plans to Cut Team Responsible for Critical Atomic Measurement Data
The team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes measurement data crucial for advanced research in areas like astrophysics, nuclear fusion, and semiconductors.
www.wired.com
March 25, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Lauren B Drescher
endoeartha.bsky.social
My speech for the Philly #StandUpForScience Protest.

Everything I do is for my community 💜✨
Hello Philadelphia! I’m Dr. Eartha Mae Guthman. I’m a Philadelphian, a trans woman, a neuroscientist, and a proud card carrying union member with UAW. I first worked in a lab 15 years ago. I fell in love then and there with the scientific method, and I've worked as a scientist ever since. Today, I want to talk to you about how this administration’s attacks on trans people and trans health research harm us all. When I began transitioning seven years ago, I was terrified! For my safety. For my scientific career. Would my colleagues find me credible? Would they see a scientist who happened to be trans, or would they only see me through the lens of my transness? I decided then, regardless of the outcome, I would dedicate my life to improving healthcare for trans people. For the past seven years I’ve worked towards this goal. I’ve spent holidays inventing new tools to study the brain and behavior. I’ve spent weeks going to work after dark, sitting with my mice to run overnight experiments, and then coming home, crossing the Delaware with the sunrise. I’ve been fortunate to have achieved success in my work: I’ve published over a dozen papers, including guides on how to develop animal models for hormone therapy; I’ve been awarded highly competitive NSF and NIH grants; I’ve been appointed a fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and at other academic organizations. And, about a year ago, I received the best news of my career: I had been awarded a prestigious NIH grant to not only fund my research at Princeton, but to provide me funding to start my own lab. In my lab, I want to ask questions about how hormones impact the brain to influence mood, the body, and behavior. I want to apply this research to design better hormone therapies– yes, for gender affirming care, but also for birth control, menopause, endometriosis, PCOS, the list goes on! My goal, set so many years ago, was within my grasp. I had put in the work and sacrifice, taken the risks, and it had all seemed worth it. But my dream grows less likely by the day because of Republican efforts to reverse decades of acceptance for various minorities. Through anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders and laws, the administration seeks to restore hierarchies centered around race and gender, resegregating America. A textbook example of fascism and fascist takeover of institutions. Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders censor me and those like me. At the State of the Union on Tuesday, Trump complained that NIH wasted money on “transgender mice”, directly attacking the work my colleagues and I do. Wednesday, a White House press release called trans health research “fraud” and “waste”. Yesterday, Nature reported that the administration has bypassed congressional control of the budget to terminate ongoing grants related to trans healthcare. They report that the NIH will terminate hundreds of already awarded, active research grants if they support DEI or trans people in any way. I don't know how or if I’ll get paid next month, and I don't know if I’ll actually get the funds that congress has already awarded me to start my lab. I don't know what's going to happen to my career, and I'm really fucking furious. I've dedicated my entire adult life to this work. But to Trump and his supporters, I am not a scientist who should be judged for the work I do, who happens to be trans. To them, I am trans, and therefore cannot contribute to science because I’m inherently biased and unfit. But I'm here speaking to you now because this moment is about more than just me. Under the guise of this anti-trans and anti-DEI moral panic, Republicans are weaponizing the state to attack all science. Their actions prevent us from making life-saving discoveries across all fields. They see science as a tool to control people and carve their desired reality into our bodies and minds, not as a way to understand our beautifully complex world. But we can stop them. Because we are many, and they are so, very, very few. Right now we need to give our legislators hell until they start standing up for us. Push universities to establish contingency funds for researchers whose active funding is terminated. And keep showing up, keep protesting. Keep standing up to cruel bullies and fascists. Don’t comply with unjust orders or demands, fight back! Fight for a world where the next scientist like me is seen for her contributions to science and human health, not seen only as trans. And lastly, fight for a world that loves and values trans people.
March 7, 2025 at 7:16 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Not sure how I feel about conferences asking me to upload my slides before the event begins - they must know we all make our slides the day before the talk at the earliest, right?
March 4, 2025 at 2:38 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
I am of the opinion that when submitting abstracts to conferences, they should let you put emojis at the end of some paragraphs. I think my submission would really benefit from me adding the 💅 or maybe even a 🎤⬇️ combo
February 13, 2025 at 1:56 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Wow, I somehow imagined the "demon core" to be larger, more like bowling ball size and not orange size
wellerstein.bsky.social Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein.bsky.social · Jan 5
I obtained a high-res version of the Daghlian "demon core" experimental setup, and have since added it to Wikimedia Commons, so now the world can stop using low-res photos of it. I find that when I look at it, I'm obsessed with identifying the "seam" between the two hemispheres for some reason...
"A sphere of plutonium surrounded by neutron-reflecting blocks of tungsten carbide. A re-creation of the August 21, 1945 criticality accident at Los Alamos to measure the radiation produced when an extra block was added, making the mass supercritical." https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Partially-reflected-plutonium-sphere.jpeg Detail of the core of the previous image. At this resolution one can clearly see that a) the core is laid on a horizontal axis (presumably so that it can be easily removed without disassemblying the whole thing), b) it has striations along its (nickel-plated) surface. For scale, the core was 8.9 centimeters (3.5 in) in diameter, so about the size of a large-ish orange. (Or just see previous photo, which conveniently has a ruler in place for scale). I have placed a blue (in honor of the "blue flash") line along what appears to me to be the deepest striation, which looks about 50% down the middle of the sphere (which is slightly off-axis within its housing). the tolerances between the two hemispheres was very small, but should be large-enough to be visible (on the order of 1/1000th of an inch)...
January 10, 2025 at 9:01 AM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Trying to hunt down a reference to an article in an issue of "Electronics" from 1960 but I'm getting sidetracked by these extremely fresh radio industry ads
Ad for a General Electrics transistor. The package with contacts is drawn above a stylized picture of snow capped mountain peaks and a blue sky. The word "cool" is printed above
January 7, 2025 at 11:32 AM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Just one more peer review to do and then the year is over
December 20, 2024 at 12:10 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Working hard to finally get these lovely plots from our theoretical model to converge with the experimental data... Turns out it's quite hard to keep track of all the signs and angles when your polarization goes elliptical...
A polar plot showing three curves with different amounts of lobes, one has a two-fold, the other two a four fold symmetry, also their orientation seems to change. Not much more info is given.
November 26, 2024 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Lauren B Drescher
hansonmark.bsky.social
The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on?

direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A 🧵 1/n
#AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub
November 19, 2024 at 12:27 PM
lbdrescher.bsky.social
Happy #LGBTQSTEMDay! 🥳

On the occasion, my introduction on 🦋:

I'm a physicist focused on fundamental dynamics during and immediately after excitation with light.
This summer I moved back to Berlin. Outside science, I collect records and during my postdoc the Berkeley hills made me an avid cyclist.
A picture of me on a bike with the Berkeley hills behind me. I'm wearing a white graphics t-shirt, sunglasses and a black helmet. Behind me, a wooden fence and green foliage and rolling hills of the Bay Area valleys A picture of me, a white woman with curly black hair wearing sunglasses and a black top and black nail polish. In the background is a set of turntables and mixer on a rack of vinyl records, a yellow/creme striped wall and a leaf of a Monstera
November 18, 2024 at 1:13 PM