Office Hours

MUSIC:
(Instrumental music)

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, everybody. My name is Giselle Kowalski and I am the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University. You're listening to Office Hours and today, I'm here with AnnaBelle. AnnaBelle, what's up?

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Hey, Giselle.

Giselle Kowalski:
How are you?

AnnaBelle Elliot:
I'm doing good. This episode was actually my favorite I've ever recorded. That's a little secret right there.

Giselle Kowalski:
Really?

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah.

Giselle Kowalski:
So yeah, you got to talk with Dr. Andrea Banzatti from Italy and he's in the physics department. What was your favorite part about this conversation?

AnnaBelle Elliot:
So the whole conversation, I felt so inspired. As we looked around his office, a lot of his different stories or metaphors, he would point to different images around or different pictures, pictures of the galaxy. There were so many things. So within talking about such a hard science and such logical and the numbers and within all this, there was such a space for humanity to shine. And I felt myself feeling so inspired, even coming up with different lyrics in my head. I just felt my artistic side really being ignited as we were talking about what he'd studied and his journey and it was really cool.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah, I know. I wish I would've had him as my physics professor.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Right?

Giselle Kowalski:
Looking back, I was like, "Wow." He makes it sound fun, which, for me, is really hard to do because we're both creatives and you don't think physics when you think creative.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Right.

Giselle Kowalski:
But he brings that emotion and that passion to physics.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Absolutely.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah. So we hope you enjoy this conversation between AnnaBelle and Dr. Banzatti.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
So to start us off, can you please tell me your name and then what you teach here at Texas State?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Yeah, so my name is Andrea Banzatti. It's an Italian name, so it has a different pronunciation than in English, and I teach physics and astronomy at the physics department at Texas State University.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. So for an icebreaker, we wanted to ask a silly question. So do you believe in astrology and then what's your sign?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Do I have to be honest?

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah. Be as honest as you want to be.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Okay, so yes and no. So as a scientist, I really believe what can be tested and demonstrated with the scientific method. At the same time, I like to say that in everything we have done as human beings, there is something true. There is something valuable. Now there is no time to go into it, but even in astrology, there is something interesting and valuable about the human person and how humans have inquired about the heavens, about the future. But the short answer is no, I don't.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. Yeah, that's a valid answer. Valid answer. So let's get back to the beginning. Where are you from and what was it like growing up there?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
So I'm from Italy. I'm from the north of Italy. Growing up there was very different from here. I come from a family with four sibling. I grew up in a relatively big city, Milano. It's a very busy city. Everyone is very busy. In Italy, we are known for being hard workers and always busy, always running somewhere. My youth has always been, on the one hand, full of things and full of learning also. Both my parents were teachers and then one of my parents, my father, became a psychologist later in his life. But my family has always been full of learning and teaching and education and beauty and art and music and literature.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
For everybody listening, if they were to close their eyes and just imagine and visualize something from growing up, what would that look like? What did your downtime look like growing up, especially if anyone's listening that's never been to where you were from? What's some visuals?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Okay. Well, the city is very different from what you're used to here. Italian cities, European cities, there is many old buildings that show you about the long history that people have had in that place. And I realized moving to the US how deep of an impact it can make on a person. Another thing that I could say is that especially here in Texas, everything is very flat. And Milano is in the north of Italy, where due to the pollution, it's not so easy anymore. But on clear days, if you climb up the roof of the cathedral that is at the center of Milano, you can see the whole arc of the Alps around you from one side to the other. You go essentially from France all the way to Switzerland and Germany and Austria. And I went up there with my family, with two of my kids, and it was such a fantastic view.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
It's probably hard to imagine something like that, living here.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
What you just described, that view of the sky, has that been a motif at all? We'll get into it, but as we start talking about your relationship to the sky and your work, is that a reoccurring consistency, that view of the sky, in a way, that tendency to look up?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
I didn't grow up with the fixation to be an astronomer. I know some people say that they were born essentially with a telescope in their hands or that they always wanted to be an astronomer. That's not my case. Really, my vocation as an astrophysicist is quite late. It happened during college. And yes, it's bound to looking at the sky and for sure bound to a sense of beauty and contemplation of beauty that I've received through all my youth, my family, my friends. But really, the fact that I started to be attracted by the sky at a professional level, not to study, to really make it an object of study. That came only during college and I remember when that happened. We were with some university friends. We used to go on retreats to study together, to help each other. And so on one of these retreats, we were going out to the countryside in the middle of Italy in a beautiful farm where they were doing local farming and we would eat fantastic food and be in a fantastic place.
And during the day, we would study all day and help each other with exams, preparing exams, and et cetera. But in the evening we decided to, one evening, me and another friend who was also attracted by astrophysics, to do a stargazing night. The problem was that that night, there was full moon. So you may know that when there is full moon, it's very hard to look at the stars because the moon is so bright that you don't see the stars. And so I asked myself, "Well, how can we do a stargazing night if we have the full moon, what do we do?" And then I decided, "Well, maybe I should study the moon and present it to my friends." And so I started studying it to prepare that evening.
I still remember that moment as a beautiful time. And in the evening, I presented the moon to my friends. I started by reciting a poem on the moon from Dante, a great Italian poet. That evening was beautiful and I realized that I love to not only look at the sky, but also really to enjoy the sky together with others, to learn something that I could describe to others so that they could enjoy more deeply as I did.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. So if we take a step back then, from what you were explaining in college and we go back to when you were a kid, what did you expect to be when you grew up?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
One thing I remember is that Robin Hood was my hero, and so I thought when I grew up, I could be Robin Hood. And then maybe later, another image that I have from when I was little that I could project myself into, as a future myself, was also ... It's hard to explain in English. It's being an alpino. Alpino is a soldier of the mountains. I have a picture over there actually. And they essentially have a hat that is very similar to Robin Hood. It has a feather and the shape. And also, my family, during World War II, I had two brothers of my grandma who went in Russia to fight. And so it was part of my family having the history of these two alpini, which just means people from the Alps. So if I remember an image I had when I was little, together with Robin Hood, later probably was that of being an alpino.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
If we're to jump forward a little bit, where did you go to college and what did you study?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
I was still in Milano at the time. College, I did my bachelor's and master's in Milano and it was in physics.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
How did you find yourself in Texas then?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
It's a long journey. So at the end of my master's, I was looking for a research project for a master thesis and one of my professors told me that there was researcher who was available to take students in Munich at the European Southern Observatory. And the topic was planet formation, how planets form around other stars, and I was attracted by that topic. So I got that opportunity, I went for six months in Munich, just outside Munich. This is one of the best European centers for research and for ground-based observatories. That's the first time that I lived abroad or lived outside my parents' house for a long time. It was also a hard time. It was my first time outside of my house, yes.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Right.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
It was a hard time, but it was also a great time of growth for me and really of solidifying that interest in astrophysics research. And so going to the European Southern Observatory really opened my eyes to what research really was and is. That was completely different from the environment I had been in growing up at my university.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Did you get to get your hands on more and be more interactive there?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Yeah, absolutely. It was very, very observationally driven. But also, the atmosphere was not about people who knew and others who didn't, but it was about a common endeavor, a common adventure of discovery. And so there, I understood, "Yeah, I would like to keep doing this and keep working in research." And after that, I found a PhD opportunity in Switzerland and I had an American professor, and that's my connection to the other side of the ocean.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. Yeah.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Because at the end of my PhD, by the time I finished and I got my PhD, through my advisor, I made connections to a researcher who used to work at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is one of the very best research institutes in the United States for astrophysics. And so I had this great opportunity to come across the ocean and work for three years there. And by the time I finished there, I got another connection and another opportunity of research for another three years at the University of Arizona. So I moved there with my growing family. At the time, we had two kids and then we moved to Tucson. The University of Arizona, I worked there for three years. By the time I finished that research appointment, I was applying for jobs across the US really and there was one here at Texas State University. And so we decided to move again, the whole family who grew even more, and now we are here. It's the fifth year that we are here.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. So this is five years ago. Wow.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Yeah.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Okay. So going back to when you were getting your PhD, what lessons did you learn that you carry with you today?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Many.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Is there anything specific to even that time in your life that maybe you didn't quite experience before or something new you learned?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
The first year of my PhD was also one of the hardest years in my life. I had a deep crisis. Before the end of the first year, I left Switzerland for three months. I went back to Italy and I was trying to reinvent myself as a farmer or as a social worker. For three months, I was away because I had a very tough time with anxiety and it was really a tough time in my life, and it was due to multiple factors. But the PhD is hard, doing a PhD. In the end, I went back. I went back and I successfully finished. Sometimes now, the students ask me what do they have to do to find a career or the right things to do as an astrophysicist or as a student. I always tell them what I experienced in my life, what my path was that was maybe not so linear and not so easy, and I invite them to allow themselves to be surprised by what happens in your life.
I tell them one example is that I have tried with everything I could to avoid chemistry simply because I didn't like it. And in the end, I ended up doing spectroscopy. Spectroscopy is a technique that essentially is tightly connected to chemistry. It's the way we study molecules in space. So I ended up doing what I was trying ...

AnnaBelle Elliot:
To avoid.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
To avoid. And in the end, now I can tell them I can say I love spectroscopy. I learned to love this technique to observe the space and the universe and to appreciate its profound beauty. This is one of the things I've learned in my PhD. Allow yourself to be surprised by life. Don't just try to fulfill your dreams because often, we don't even know. Other people suggesting to students, "Oh, you should be what you want to be. You should create yourself and be what you like, whatever you like." And I tell them, "Yes, your dreams are very important. But at the same time, it's very important that you also follow life where it leads you, and also that you allow yourself to be surprised by it. Because you may be surprised and find a path in your life that you never imagined before, but that really makes you happy."
Then later, I realized how tight it is with how we do research. Research, especially at the frontier, is into the unknown. We don't know what's waiting us there. We have ideas. We make hypotheses. We try to test them. But really, one of the most exciting aspects of research is just to dive into the unknown and allow yourself to be surprised by what you see, what you find. But the openness of the researcher, to see and to follow the unexpected, to understand where it leads you and what nature is telling us, is not only extremely important, but it leads to some of the greatest discoveries that scientists have made.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
That's very interesting, that connection. I feel like you just tied so many things together with that mindset and so I'm really excited to see how you're going to answer this next one with what we just talked about. Do you feel comforted or scared by how enormous our universe is in comparison to us as humans?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
So space, the size of space is something that, for us, it's extremely hard to imagine. And so it's hard to be scared because we don't see it, but we would be scared if we were up there. So we can only think about it. So think about the enormous space that there is in the universe and how little we are in the universe. It gives you vertigo. It cannot give you anything else than just vertigo. If we look from there, from that perspective, probably fear would be what dominates our instinct just because it would leave us without points of reference.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
What makes us comfortable here. But if we look from here up, instead, it's just beautiful. The sky that we see, the night sky. You get the impression of how huge the sky is, and yet it feels like it's a big beautiful gift. It's something for you, something that you can stare and appreciate in its beauty without fearing it.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
So studying physics, let alone astrophysics, is kind of intimidating. So how do you make students feel comfortable approaching such a complex topic?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Oh, I love this one. I teach an intro-level physics course in the fall. 80-85% of my students are engineering majors. So as I walk in on the first class, I know that they don't want to be there. I know that I'm the physics professor that everybody hates just because they have to take the course and they have to take a good grade because otherwise, it lowers their GPA and most of them don't want to be there. I really love this challenge because the first thing that I tell my students when I walk in class the first day each semester is that the thing that I care the most is not that they learn a physics formula, but that they discover that their time is valuable.
I tell them, "We are here for the same reason. We just want to discover that our life is worth living right now. I have to teach, you have to take this course, but we can do it in a different way. We can just take it passively or we can be protagonist of it and really enjoy it and discover and take it as an adventure. And I tell you that you will be happy of one semester spent this way." As always, some students just don't care anyway. But many students, every semester, I see them just lighting up. And by the end of the semester, they thank me because they came in hating physics and they came out understanding that it's not that suddenly they love physics, but they understand that there is something for them to learn and they can understand and that they can appreciate and that they have learned something. They have grown as people.
That's what I tell them. I care that you grow as a human person. I always use an analogy of climbing the Alps and I tell them, "I invite you on a hike where we will go," and I show them a picture. And I tell them, "Look, now this is exam number one, exam number two, exam number three, and this is the final. And during the semester, we'll walk together. I'll bring you at the feet of the mountains, and then I will enjoy seeing you enjoying climbing up. Because by then, you will love doing that."

AnnaBelle Elliot:
So if you could give your younger self a piece of advice, what would that be? Especially as we talked back and we talked through a couple phases of your life and different places you've lived, if you were just to zone in on one of those past versions of yourself, is there something you would want to tell them?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
No, but I would be very curious to look at myself also knowing what came later, right? That's what we don't have in our life. We never know what's coming after. But if we could have that perspective and look back and see how what we did led us to where we are now, I think it would be beautiful. It's something that some of us desire to do at some point in their life. They decide to write their story. I believe that actually each one of us should write their own story at some point because each one of our lives is so unique and so beautiful, even in the challenges and even in the bad things that happen to us, but so dramatically enormous that each one of us should write a book of their story.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Is that something that you have in the works at all?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
No, but I asked my father to and he wrote a little book with his own story, and I'm reading it these days. It's so beautiful to be able to read what my father went through when he was young.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
So finally, if you could visit any celestial body, which one would you visit?

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
So the pictures that we can see from NASA on solar system objects are so beautiful that I would like to visit all of them. Mars is so beautiful, if you look at the pictures that the Mars rovers have gathered. If I could, I would visit every single planet and every single moon of every single planet of the solar system. Yeah, they are just so beautiful. We'd probably need a spaceship to be able to go around, also, because these planets are so beautiful to enjoy also from the outside. So you should go around them a few times and then maybe land in a spot and then explore a little bit, but then go out.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Well, that is all of our questions then, so thank you so much.

Dr. Andrea Banzatti:
Thank you.

AnnaBelle Elliot:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Office Hours. We hope you enjoyed this conversation, and make sure to tune in next time to learn more about the experiences of our amazing Texas State faculty. Also, remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at @TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the host and the guest, not of Texas State University. Once again, I'm AnnaBelle and I'll see you next time.