Anna Krylov: The Politicization of Science in Academia — #25

Anna I. Krylov (Russian: Анна Игоревна Крылова) is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California (USC), working in the field of theoretical and computational quantum chemistry.Krylov is an outspoken advocate of freedom of speech and academic freedom. She is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a member of its academic leadership committee. Her paper, The Peril of Politicizing Science, launched a national conversation among scientists and the general public on the growing influence of political ideology in STEM. It has received over 80,000 views and, according to Altmetric, was the all-time highest-ranked article in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.Steve and Anna discuss:0:00 Anna Krylov’s background, upbringing in USSR7:03 Ideological control and censorship for the greater good?14:59 How ideology underpins DEI work in academic institutions30:40 Captured institutions37:05 How much is UC Berkeley spending on DEI, and where the money is going41:46 Krylov thinks it can get worse52:09 An idea for soliciting anonymous feedback at universitiesResources:Professor Krylov academic page:https://dornsife.usc.edu/chemistry/krylov/Wiki page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_KrylovThe Peril of Politicizing Science, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2021https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.--Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Announcing this for some friends at Mechanize - a startup that builds environments for training and evaluating frontier LLMs. Its customers include the top AI labs, and it has contributed to the breakthrough in coding capabilities of frontier models. Mechanize is hiring! https://mechanize.work/b/hsu Compensation is extremely competitive. For technical roles, $300-500k. They are also seeking smart generalists. For example: Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors  $500K salary Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve  $300K salary Mechanize understands that my readership is highly selected. There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE you will be interviewed if you apply via the link above.