https://bazhirov.com Weekly notes and long-form writing on materials science, software, and building Mat3ra. en-us Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7495555601423450112 https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7495555601423450112 Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The difference between a project and a product is compounding. A product gets better with every use. A project is reinvented every time. https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7493018923961868288 https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7493018923961868288 Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT That is part of why I find this field so meaningful: small improvements in materials quietly reshape what is possible in energy, health, and technology. https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7490482185150500867 https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7490482185150500867 Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The results live in files. The decisions live in conversations. The reasoning lives in someone’s head. https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7487945423941459968 https://bazhirov.com/posts#post-7487945423941459968 Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Reproducibility is often described as a scientific virtue. In practice, it is the main bottleneck. https://bazhirov.com/writing/wth-is-materials-informatics https://bazhirov.com/writing/wth-is-materials-informatics Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:00:00 GMT Meta, Google, and Microsoft all made news in materials informatics in 2023. What the field actually is, and why it is suddenly crowded. https://bazhirov.com/writing/cloud-security-for-research https://bazhirov.com/writing/cloud-security-for-research Fri, 03 Aug 2018 12:00:00 GMT The question every research organisation asks before moving mission-critical work off its own hardware, and what the answers looked like in practice. https://bazhirov.com/writing/what-is-materials-modeling-2-0 https://bazhirov.com/writing/what-is-materials-modeling-2-0 Mon, 27 Nov 2017 12:00:00 GMT From the last U.S. nuclear test in 1992 to simulation as the default instrument of materials research, and what that shift asks of enterprises. https://bazhirov.com/writing/why-do-hard-things https://bazhirov.com/writing/why-do-hard-things Fri, 02 Dec 2016 12:00:00 GMT Bardeen and Brattain touched two gold contacts to a crystal of germanium in 1947. An argument for work whose payoff is decades out. https://bazhirov.com/writing/how-big-is-cloud-scale https://bazhirov.com/writing/how-big-is-cloud-scale Mon, 16 May 2016 12:00:00 GMT What the word cloud actually stands for once you stop picturing an icon and start counting racks. https://bazhirov.com/writing/the-materials-discovery-cloud https://bazhirov.com/writing/the-materials-discovery-cloud Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:00 GMT Making a new material is slow, largely invisible work. The case for treating discovery itself as infrastructure.