30 March 2011 Physics Today www.physicstoday.org

bills, and spending has been frozen atFY 2010 levels.

Climate change isn’t mentionedTo pay for the increases he wants for en-ergy R&D, Obama has called for elimi-nating $4 billion in annual federal sub-sidies that now flow to oil, gas, and coalproducers. “Instead of subsidizing yes-terday’s energy, let’s invest in tomor-row’s,” he challenged Congress. Pitch-ing his new energy spending proposalsin economic terms, Obama said that theincreases will help US companies com-pete in a burgeoning global market forrenewable energy that is just around thecorner. Though he never mentioned thepolitically divisive term “climatechange,” the president proclaimed anoverarching goal for the nation to gen-erate 80% of its electricity from “clean”sources by 2035. That is the magnitudeof change climate scientists believe willbe required to avert the worst effects ofclimate change.

Obama created some confusion,however, over the definition of cleanenergy. “Some folks want wind andsolar. Others want nuclear, clean coal,and natural gas,” he observed in the ad-dress. “To meet this goal we will needthem all.”

In a conference call with reporters on28 January, Chu said that by the presi-dent’s definition, about 40% of the na-tion’s electricity is already providedfrom clean sources. But that includesnatural gas, which emits CO2, albeitonly about half as much as coal com-bustion. Chu noted that many of the na-tion’s oldest and worst-polluting coalplants will be converted to gas-burningplants in the coming years. AlthoughObama didn’t specify whether naturalgas generation, like coal, would count

as clean only if the CO2 is captured andsequestered, Chu indicated that wouldbe the goal. Excluding natural gas, hesaid, the US now gets 30% of its electric-ity from carbon-free sources that in-clude nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, andsolar. Increasing that to 80% will be“ambitious,” he admitted, “but is itover the top? No.”

Industries, environmentalists reactAdvocates for renewable energy wereespecially upset with Obama’s inclu-sion of coal in his clean-energy calculus.“Excuse me, but how is coal clean?”asks Scott Sklar, chair of the steeringgroup of the Sustainable Energy Coali-tion. “Even if you could sequester car-bon, it emits mercury [and] carcino-gens, requires much water, emits othergreenhouse gases, leaves us with coal-ash waste piles, and drives the blowing-up of our mountain tops, ruining water-ways and farmland.”

Antinuclear forces fault Obama’sembrace of nuclear energy. Thousandsof new nuclear reactors will be neededto accommodate rapidly growingglobal energy demand, producingenough plutonium in spent fuel eachyear to fuel between 50 000 and 100 000nuclear weapons, says Arjun Makhi-jani, president of the Institute for En-ergy and Environmental Research. Andthere still is no acceptable solution fordisposing of the spent fuel. “Makingplutonium in the course of boilingwater is not a clean way to boil water,”Makhijani says.

The major energy producers reactedalong predictable lines. The AmericanGas Association not only commendedObama for recognizing it as clean, butsuggested that gas should be added tothe alternatives to oil for transportation.

The American Petroleum Institute com-plained that Obama had failed to recog-nize that new jobs would be created withincreased oil development. The petro-leum industry pays taxes at higher effec-tive rates than other industries, said APIpresident Jack Gerard, and it gets nosubsidies for exploration. The tax deduc-tions that the industry gets, such as de-pletion allowances and credits for en-hanced oil recovery and for productionfrom marginal oil wells, “are similar tothose enjoyed by other industries to en-courage energy production and newjobs,” Gerard said. Nuclear Energy Insti-tute executive vice president Alex Flintextolled Obama’s plan, saying his com-mitment to nuclear energy reinforced bi-partisan support for increased domesticnuclear generation and for exportationof the technology.

The additional R&D spending willhelp lower the cost of solar electricitygeneration to make it competitive withfossil-generated power. Chu said hehopes the new solar push, which hecalls a “sun shot,” will lower the cost ofUS-produced photovoltaics by a factorof four before 2020. That could restorethe US to world leadership in PVs, a po-sition it has ceded to Japanese, Euro-pean, and, increasingly, Chinese manu-facturers, he said. US companies wouldthen be situated to reap many of thebenefits of what he anticipates will soonbecome an enormous world market forsolar energy.

“We have had our Sputnik mo-ment,” Chu said, borrowing a line fromObama’s speech. “We have watchedChina say that everything in the energyefficiency and energy generation sectoris a key industry and we want to de-velop it for ourselves, but we also wantto export it.” David Kramer

For underrepresented minorities, bridge programsease transition to PhD studiesExisting models for increasing the minuscule number of minority physics PhDs in the US include funding research experiences, forging university partnerships, and fostering a support network.

Initiatives to recruit, prepare, or retainunderrepresented minorities for PhDdegrees in physics are on the rise. Somefocus on providing research experiencebetween undergraduate and graduateschool; others offer professional and so-cial support to students once they getinto graduate school. One of these so-called bridge programs for AfricanAmericans, Hispanic Americans, andNative Americans is credited with put-ting Vanderbilt University in Nashville,Tennessee, on pace to become a top pro-

ducer of underrepresented minorityPhD physicists and astronomers.

Vanderbilt owes that success to apartnership that began six years ago be-tween its physics department and theone at Fisk University, a neighboringHBCU (historically black college anduniversity) institution. “The Fisk–Vanderbilt master’s-to-PhD bridge pro-gram uses the master’s degree fromFisk as a way to fast-track students intoVanderbilt’s PhD program,” says theprogram’s codirector, Vanderbilt as-

tronomy professor Keivan Stassun. Ithas also doubled the enrollment ofFisk’s physics master’s program andis drawing an increasing number ofHispanic Americans to both schools.

The Fisk–Vanderbilt program is en-dorsed by the American Physical Soci-ety, which has launched its own bridgeprogram “to measurably increase”the number of physics PhDs granted tounderrepresented minorities over thenext 10 years. The APS program will as-sist physics departments interested in

March 2011 Physics Today 31

800-525-8528 WWW.DATATRANSLATION.COM

New Cost Breakthrough for

Vibration Analysis

Data Translation provides ideal solutions for Vibration Testing and Modal Analysis. The VIBpoint Framework soft ware, combined with our DT9837 Series portable USB or DT8837 Ethernet Dynamic Signal Acquisition Modules, is designed to replace more expensive FFT Analyzer instruments at a much lower cost.

Download a free trial of the VIBpoint Framework soft ware at: www.datatranslation.com/vibpointframework.

starting bridge programs or in formingrelationships with minority-serving in-stitutions, including HBCUs, whichgraduate a relatively high share ofAfrican American physicists at all de-gree levels. The society will also “workdirectly with minority students to pro-vide information on graduate pro-grams, bridge programs, and opportu-nities to advance their professionalcareer,” says program manager PeterMuhoro.

Talent at the crossroadsUnderrepresented minorities accountfor roughly 30% of the US population,but just 6% of people earning science andengineering doctorates in 2007, accord-ing to the October 2010 National Acad-emy of Sciences (NAS) report ExpandingUnderrepresented Minority Participation:America’s Science and Technology Talent atthe Crossroads. In physics, the disparity ismore glaring: According to the StatisticalResearch Center at the American Insti-tute of Physics (AIP, which publishesPHYSICS TODAY), just 13 of the more than1400 physics PhD degrees obtained atUS institutions in 2007 were awarded toHispanic Americans; another 13 wereawarded to African Americans, and al-most half of those were from fourHBCUs. And from 2001 to 2006 only 6Native Americans earned physics PhDs.

Skeptics of efforts to increase the PhDpool in science and engineering arguethat the job market for researchers andacademics is shrinking. But even if itdoubled, the number of underrepre-sented minority physics PhDs producedper year would still be small, notes SRCdirector Roman Czujko. (For more statis-tics about minorities in physics, visithttp://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/minoritytrends.html.)

The message of the report is aboutmore than achieving parity, says NAScommittee chair Freeman Hrabowski III,president of the University of Mary-land, Baltimore County (UMBC). It isabout ensuring the nation’s competi-tiveness and addressing the “low per-sistence” of science, technology, engi-

neering, and math majors—the phe-nomenon of STEM students, regardlessof ethnicity, dropping out at highernumbers than in other majors. “[Be-cause] more and more noncitizens areearning PhDs in America and returningto their home countries, we need morecitizens, of which underrepresented minorities are the fastest-growing [segment], to contribute to our health,energy, intelligence, and defense re-search efforts,” says Hrabowski. The report also highlights low awareness ofSTEM careers, lack of academic sup-port, and poor social integration as

issues that, if addressed, could increaseminority participation in STEM.

The Fisk–Vanderbilt bridge programseeks to do just that. Since 2004, it hasexpanded to the other physical sci-ences, the life sciences, engineering,math, and computer science. The pro-gram’s directors attribute its high per-sistence rate—only 3 participants out of42 have dropped out—to selectingpromising students and providingthem with mentoring, tutorials in quantum mechanics and other chal-lenging classes, and seminars on suchissues as resumé preparation and time

Students in Promise, an NSF-fundedsupport network for graduate studentsat the University of Maryland, BaltimoreCounty, pose at a December 2009 gradu-ation ceremony with their thesis and dis-sertation coach Wendy Carter, far left,and physics professor Anthony Johnson,front center. Next to Carter is informationsystems PhD graduate Heather Holden,and flanking Johnson are physics mas-ter’s degree graduate Shelly Watts andphysics PhD graduate Robinson Kuis.

UN

IVE

RS

ITY

OF

MA

RY

LAN

D,

BA

LTIM

OR

EC

OU

NT

Y

32 March 2011 Physics Today www.physicstoday.org

management. Faculty members are alsoexchanged between schools and haveaccess to each other’s research facilities;that’s because the initial NSF and NASAgrants were shared, which “blurred thelines between our departments,” saysFisk physics professor Arnold Burger.

Culture shockLast year, the Fisk–Vanderbilt partner-ship was extended to Delaware StateUniversity, an HBCU that offers a mas-ter’s degree in physics and a PhD in op-tics; the program also produced its firstPhD graduate, Stephen Babalola, who isnow on the tenure track in materials sci-ence at Alabama A&M University. Ba-balola credits his success so far to the ac-cess he had to “the best researchers in thefield of radiation detection” at Fisk andVanderbilt and at Brookhaven NationalLaboratory, where he characterized rare-earth crystals for room-temperature ra-diation detectors. “I chose to work at Alabama A&M, an HBCU, because Iwanted to do my part, like [Fisk adviserArnold Burger] did for me, to mentor asmany minority students as I possibly canand to hopefully expose them to thetremendous opportunities I had.”

Exposing prospective minority PhDsto research is the primary goal of Co-lumbia University’s bridge program,which selects a half dozen bachelor’s de-gree holders each year and matchesthem with professors to work for up totwo years. The bridge participants arenot students, but the program allowsthem to take one course each semester;they also take writing classes and re-ceive GRE test preparation and otherguidance on the PhD applicationprocess. Columbia astronomy professorMarcel Agüeros, the two-year-old pro-gram’s first director, says bridge partic-ipants learn nuances about the researchculture, such as “when your advisermakes what sounds like a suggestion, itreally means you need to do this.”

Three of Columbia’s inauguralbridge participants have gone on toPhD programs in astronomy. NicholasHunt-Walker, now at the University ofWashington in Seattle, says the time hespent in the bridge program “was defi-nitely worth it. I gained a mountain ofresearch experience, a preview of grad-uate life, and a taste for the level of workthat would be required. I was fortunateto be accepted into every top-levelschool where I applied.”

Hunt-Walker says he still got hitwith culture shock. “Although the peo-ple in the department are accepting andfriendly, I feel a sense of isolation sim-ply because I’m unfamiliar with the so-cial terrain,” he says. “The culture of the

department and of Seattle in general isnothing like what I grew up around inNew York.” Conversely, Puerto Ricannative Nitza Santiago-Figueroa, whoentered the bridge program with Hunt-Walker, says she felt isolated in NewYork City. Santiago, who recentlymoved from the Columbia bridge pro-gram to the one at Fisk, says the smallerbut closer-knit community of Puerto Ri-cans in Nashville makes her feel likeshe’s “home again.”

Surrounded by PromiseOther bridge programs focus on reten-tion, often by addressing issues of cul-ture or acceptance. For Native Ameri-can students pursuing a PhD in thenatural sciences, the cultural challengecan mean having to choose between an-cient beliefs and modern science’s posi-tions on such subjects as Earth’s originsand astronomy, says Ted Greenwood,program director of the Alfred P. SloanFoundation’s Sloan Indigenous Gradu-ate Partnership. That partnership offersfull funding to Native Americans pur-suing PhDs in STEM subjects on five US campuses. Faculty members onthose campuses need to understandand be willing to accommodate a Native American student who may, forexample, “leave campus suddenly to gohome to attend the funeral ceremony ofa third cousin, even if he has a test thenext day,” says Greenwood.

“One of the things people find is thatif you have a single minority student ina physics department, that studenttends to do most of his or her workalone,” says James Stith, former AIPvice president of physics resources.Stith cites the physics departments atthe Georgia Institute of Technology andMIT and the applied physics depart-ments at the University of Michiganand Stanford University as examples ofdepartments that have produced clus-ters of minority physics PhDs by mak-ing it a priority to do so.

Stith also points to UMBC, whosenationally recognized Meyerhoff Schol-ars Program for undergraduates seeksto provide a campus-wide social andacademic support system for itsawardees, primarily underrepresentedminorities intending to pursue a PhD ina STEM subject. In the past five years,more than 40 of the 22-year-old pro-gram’s alumni have earned STEMPhDs. At the graduate level, UMBC of-fers Promise, a regional branch of theNSF-funded Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, whichtargets minorities but coordinates sem-inars, guest lectures, and social gather-ings for all STEM graduate students.

US–China nuclear co-operation. The US andChinese governmentsplan to create a center

of excellence to promote nuclear secu-rity and safeguards in China andthroughout Asia. A second new centerwill focus on radiation detection train-ing for customs officials. Agreementsfor both centers were signed by repre-sentatives of the two governments dur-ing Chinese president Hu Jintao’s Janu-ary visit to Washington, DC.

The nuclear security and safeguardscenter will be built on the outskirts ofBeijing and is intended as a forum forexchanging technical information, shar-ing practices, and training people in theoperation of nuclear facilities and han-dling of nuclear material. The US willprovide nuclear security equipmentand expertise. Steven Chu, the US De-partment of Energy (DOE) secretary,said at the signing that the agreementrepresents “a major step forward in im-

www.physicstoday.org March 2011 Physics Today 33

OF

FIC

IAL W

HIT

E H

OU

SE

PH

OTO

BY

CH

UC

K K

EN

NE

DY

newsnotes

“I wish there was a Promise when Iwas in graduate school,” says ElaineLalanne, a research scientist at UMBC’sCenter for Advanced Studies in Photon-ics Research and the first African Amer-ican woman to obtain a PhD in physicsfrom the New Jersey Institute of Tech-nology. Lalanne’s advice to minoritystudents facing challenges in complet-ing their PhD: “Don’t isolate yourself.Seek out support mechanisms, likePromise. Go to conferences. Seek helpeven on the Internet. There is light at theend of the tunnel.”

Jermey N. A. Matthews

plementing the global nuclear securityoutlined by our two presidents at theNuclear Security Summit last April.”

The radiation detection training cen-ter will be in Qinhuangdao, about300 km east of Beijing.

The centers represent a “vehicle forbuilding a culture of security,” saysDamien LaVera, a spokesman for the Na-tional Nuclear Security Agency, a semi-autonomous agency within DOE. TF

Tevatron countdown. Hopes amongparticle physicists to extend the life ofthe proton– antiproton collider at Fer-milab through 2014 were dashed on6 January: “Unfortunately, the currentbudgetary climate is very challengingand additional funding has not beenidentified,” wrote William Brinkman,director of the US Department of En-ergy’s Office of Science, to MelvynShochet, chairman of the department’sHigh- Energy Physics Advisory Panel.So, contrary to the recommendation bya HEPAP subpanel (see PHYSICS TODAY,December 2010, page 34), the Tevatronwill be turned off this fall.

Highlights from the Tevatron in-clude the discovery of the top quark in1995, the observation in 2006 that Bmesons oscillate, and the indicationslast year that B- meson decays produceslightly more muons than antimuons,which may help explain the dominanceof matter over antimatter. In addition, alarge range of mass was excluded forthe elusive Higgs boson, which recentlyhas seemed within the machine’s reach.The search for the Higgs will continueat the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) atCERN.

At a web-streamed all-hands meet-ing on 19 January, Fermilab directorPier Oddone stressed that the future ofthe lab is “very strong and very bright.”Data from the Tevatron will take a fewyears to analyze. Beyond that, he saidthe lab’s strategy will be to exploit theLHC and to do research and develop-ment for future machines. He estimatedthat about 100 jobs will be cut, not justat the Tevatron but so as to “optimizethe workforce . . . for the future missionsof the laboratory.”

Meanwhile, on 31 January CERN announced that the LHC will continuerunning at 3.5 TeV per beam for an extrayear, through 2012. The collider willthen be shut down to upgrade it to runat its full design energy of 7 TeV perbeam starting in 2014. TF

Global online science fair. How does a 10-day excursion to the Galapagos Islands sound? Or a front seat in the

Hu Obama