9:00am Opening Remarks – Philip B. Allen, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
In May 2001 I went to two meetings of strikingly different character. The first, in Chicago, was called "Spectroscopy of high Tc Superconductors." The gurus of solid-state physics were all there, making glacial progress on a hard problem, without the benefit of much outside fertilization. For example, Stephen Wolfram wasn’t there. The few young scientists were respectfully quiet. It wasn’t much fun. The second was a workshop at Columbia on nanoscience, an inherently interdisciplinary subject. Topics were diverse and optimism was tangible. Few speakers feigned competence in all of engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology. The audience was young and not intimidated by the gurus. It was fun. I decided that if I am lucky enough to have 10 more years of research at Stony Brook, this is the field I want to work in.
Brookhaven Lab will get $86M to make a nanocenter. This is great news for us as well as for BNL. Rick Osborn will be here late today to tell us about it. How should Stony Brook scientists react? The unofficial line is to join up, working within a BNL framework. This will succeed well for those (like me) who have, or wish to form, strong collaborations with BNL scientists. This is expected to work well for BNL. There is no downside. By all means, do it!
Except, I think, something is missing at Stony Brook, namely, an institutional commitment to interdisciplinary collaborative research. This has also been missing at BNL, but will appear there, thanks to the nanocenter, and not here. So let’s imagine an alternative reaction: Stony Brook also gets a nanocenter. The rising tide can float all ships. New York State can match at Stony Brook the Federal contribution at BNL. Will this hurt the BNL effort? On the contrary, two complementary centers will strengthen each other. By strengthening the Stony Brook part of the equation, we can better help Brookhaven.
My field is solid-state physics, so let me use physics as an example of what’s missing. At both Stony Brook and BNL, solid-state physics is housed in a physics department along with string theorists and nuclear experimentalists (to name a few types). This is good for physics, but also bad. We are separated from materials science, electrical engineering and chemistry. This contrasts with the organizational schemes at universities like Illinois and DOE labs like Argonne, which unite solid-state physics and engineering. Our institutional reward structures do not promote interactions across departments or schools, and solid-state physics suffers, both at Stony Brook and at BNL. The nanocenter will force a change in culture at BNL.
We can change Stony Brook also. Again, let me use physics as an example. The greatest advance in physics in 30 years (in my opinion) came from solid-state experiments: Binnig and Rohrer invented the scanning tunneling microscope. Chemists and engineers have embraced this tool, but the STM is too real and direct a probe to get adequate respect from physicists. Nanoscience thrives now largely because of tools like the STM. But physicists, having turned over the STM to chemists and engineers, need to work with chemists and engineers to survive in nanoscience. And we will do it with pleasure, I am sure.
Nanoscience requires fabrication, characterization, application, and theory. The tools are too expensive for any one lab to develop and maintain. We need a cross-departmental infrastructure to promote sharing. Each tool has to be lovingly maintained by a faculty-level scientist. Sharing the tool is expensive, and has to be rewarded. The Stony Brook nanocenter can invent the rewards, perhaps by providing lab space in a central building occupied equally by the various disciplines.
I am very pleased that you all came today. We are here today to have fun. To meet each other, find out what colleagues are doing, and to ask ourselves privately the question, should we dream of our own nanocenter? Tomorrow we can ask the tough questions about focus and funding. And today, thanks to Gail Habicht, we have free lunch.
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7/11/2002