On Sunday August 5, 2012, I was among a group of people who witnessed the Rover landing on Mars in real time at NASA's Caltech-managed Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Reading was and still is my real joy.

Curiosity - the rover and the concept - is what science is all about: the quest to reveal the unknown.

Our femtosecond snapshots can examine a molecule at discrete instants in time.

I like movies that are about real people in real time with real problems.

I teach at Caltech and oversee a research laboratory there. In general, I find that the majority of young people are excited by the prospects of research, but they soon discover that in the current market, many doctorate-level scientists are holding temporary positions or are unemployed.