Janelia Farm's Gus Lott received a rock star's welcome when he showed up at the Academy of Science (AOS)—on a Harley Davidson 2005 Sportster, no less—during the Singapore students' visit. At first the group appeared mesmerized, listening reverently and nodding their heads as the tall, confident, and undeniably hip scientist—cowboy boots peeking from the hem of faded blue jeans—demonstrated his “g-PRIME” software.

When AOS student Devin Bowers admitted to finding the program “intimidating,” Lott, an engineer in Janelia's instrument design and fabrication shop, gathered AOS's Bowers and Aliya Jamil and Singapore's Cedrych Beh and Tse Yean Teo at the whiteboard to show in layman's terms just how g-PRIME, which turns a computer's sound card into a tool that can acquire and analyze signals, does its thing. For someone who believes, as Lott does, that “the engineering is easy, while the relating of it to scientists—both established and budding—is difficult,” he made that look easy too.

“In the case of cricket chirps, the software measures parameters such as chirp frequency, duration, amplitude, and time between chirps,” he said, jumping at once into colleague-to-colleague discourse with the students. In mere minutes, neither Lott nor his complex computer program seemed quite so intimidating. Bowers later described g-PRIME as a “godsend” in their analysis of cricket mating songs. By the time Lott headed back to Janelia Farm, the students were well-versed in g-PRIME, and their awestruck stares had turn into smiles of comprehension and gratitude.

—L.M.