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Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter (2013)

Chapter: 5 Nuclear Science Going Forward

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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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5

Nuclear Science Going Forward

WAYS OF MAKING DECISIONS

The Long-Range Plan Process

For over three decades, priorities for future U.S. nuclear physics facilities have been developed through a long-range planning process organized through the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), in response to requests for guidance from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSAC was initiated in 1977 as a joint advisory committee to NSF and DOE and currently is chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Lead responsibility for NSAC’s direction, including the selection of its members and the development of meeting agendas and charges for the committee, are shared by DOE and NSF.1 The U.S. nuclear physics community devotes substantial effort to its long-range planning processes, with several hundred scientists participating actively. The plans that result reflect the broad and varied scientific perspectives that are a strength of nuclear physics. The coordinating role that NSAC plays is valuable as is its role as a vehicle for transmitting the input and guidance that comes from the community to the priority-setting processes in nuclear physics.

The first comprehensive Long-Range Plans (LRPs) for nuclear science were published by NSAC in 1979 and 1983. Following on their success, DOE and NSF have asked NSAC to develop new LRPs every 5 to 7 years. As the LRP planning

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1 NSAC Web site; http://science.energy.gov/np/nsac/. Last accessed August 26, 2011.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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process evolved, the general nuclear physics community has become more involved. These LRPs provide a view of the significant scientific opportunities in the field and furnish priorities and recommendations for realizing them.

In many cases these recommendations have advocated and led to the construction or completion of a major facility. Indeed, the two large DOE-funded existing U.S. facilities for nuclear physics, the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), as well as the NSF-supported National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), were developed in response to the long-range planning process. The first appearance of the need for a rare-isotope beam facility came from a community process that preceded the development of the 1989 LRP. In a series of NSAC activities that concept evolved into the DOE-supported Facility for Rare-Isotope Beams (FRIB). Similarly, the support of the nuclear physics community for fundamental nuclear science, focusing on an underground laboratory, stems from community-driven action expressed at the Astrophysics, Neutrinos, and Symmetries Town Meeting that took place before the 2002 LRP and that was highlighted in the white paper that emerged from that town meeting.

The LRP process has evolved into a fairly standard sequence of stages. It commences with a charge from DOE and NSF, usually involving one or more budget scenarios. Community involvement ensues, first through informal workshops and then through large town meetings representing the different subfields of nuclear science, as well as through meetings that focus on applications and on education and outreach. The town meetings engage a very large fraction of the active nuclear scientists in the United States. Each town meeting develops an extensive and detailed white paper that discusses the scientific and technical opportunities in each field and sets forth priorities and recommendations. The white papers serve as a valuable technical resource during the writing of the LRP itself.

The defining event in the LRP process is a week-long meeting of scientists from all areas and constituencies of the field, with agency representatives as observers and international invitees. The output, as noted above, is a set of recommendations and a fleshed-out discussion of the field, including basic research, facilities, applications, education and training, and national workforce needs, all in the context of and under the constraints of one or more budget scenarios.

This process has been extraordinarily successful. Every major new facility built for nuclear physics research in the last 30 years emerged from within the community and was carefully vetted by the broader nuclear science community via this process and has usually been accorded the highest priority for new construction, and for completion of construction, in more than one successive LRP. Conversely, no major facility has been built without strong endorsement in one or more LRP documents. On the one hand, this history implies a rather long birthing process for such initiatives; on the other, it allows careful weighing and ordering of priorities

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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and lays the groundwork for the unanimous (or nearly unanimous) recommendations that emerge. This unanimity among scientists with widely different interests in the overall field is one of the most remarkable achievements of the LRP process.

The sequence of LRP documents has been enormously influential, both domestically (see above) and abroad. The process takes into account developments and initiatives occurring in other countries and, in turn, influences those initiatives considerably, as illustrated by the recent report of the Nuclear Physics European Collaborative Committee (NuPECC), Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe.2 The priorities in nuclear science laid out in the LRPs and in Europe, Japan, China, and elsewhere exhibit a very high degree of congruity, reflecting a clear worldwide consensus, driven by the physics questions at stake and the technical innovations that allow for their resolution, and a set of complementary approaches to answering these questions.

The committee strongly supports continued reliance on the nuclear science long-range plan process. The time and effort required by that process to develop consensus in the nuclear physics community has been particularly worthwhile in the construction of large facilities. However, as discussed below, the committee recognizes that excellent smaller and/or international opportunities must sometimes be seized before the next LRP process begins in order to ensure the maximum scientific impact.

Planning in a Global Context

The way planning for new directions in nuclear science is done has evolved over the past several decades: first, as the field has become increasingly international, with large, complex projects pursued by teams of scientists from many nations, and, second, as countries in Asia and Europe have made, and continue to make, major investments in facilities and infrastructure for nuclear science. Highly successful examples of advances and of projects in nuclear science involving international partners are abundant in this report. Beginning in this millennium and extending to the end of the present decade, the worldwide investment in new facility construction will be well over $5 billion, with over 80 percent of this occurring outside the United States. Thus, planning is now done in a global context, taking into account the opportunities that lie outside the United States. That said, it is worth emphasizing that (as concluded by the OECD Global Science Forum Working

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2 European Science Foundation, 2010, Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe, NuPECC Long Range Plan 2010. Available at http://www.nupecc.org/lrp2010/Documents/lrp2010_final_hires.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Group on Nuclear Physics in 20083) the worldwide nuclear physics effort is, and for the foreseeable future should continue to be, focused on regional facilities with international participants and contributions rather than on global facilities. The issue that must be confronted is how to plan U.S. nuclear science involvement in foreign projects without sacrificing U.S. intellectual leadership.

U.S. loss of its intellectual leadership in nuclear science would gravely compromise its ability to capitalize on future discoveries in this critical area of science. It would also negatively impact the U.S. economy and safety as the country would not benefit from new technological developments in the field and would lose workforce trained in nuclear techniques. For the United States to maintain intellectual leadership in the field, it must develop and operate state-of-the-art facilities that yield scientific breakthroughs and open new frontiers of knowledge. This is what attracts leaders in the field to the United States and keeps them here and results in a new generation of leaders, some emerging in the United States and others being attracted here. At the same time, one of the best ways for us to build and maintain intellectual leadership is for U.S. scientists to do experiments at facilities overseas, as long as they are positioned and supported such that the scientific impact of their contributions is significant, and seen to be so, within a context of shared responsibility and shared achievement. Such an environment makes it possible to optimize scientific endeavors in a globalized world and also underlines how important it is for the United States to be a reliable and committed partner in such endeavors.

There is no one prescription for an optimal balance between the use of home and foreign facilities. In the LRP process, these questions are weighed, debated, and argued in an open and healthy way as people advocating different possible paths forward for U.S. nuclear science make their cases and critique other cases. Having international invitees present is important for the inside information and perspective that they bring. What is even more important, however, is the constructive push and pull between members of the U.S. community, who never hesitate to argue that the best way for the United States to build its leadership in a certain area of the field can be to invest in U.S. participation at overseas facilities if they see such a path as the best way to have a scientific impact, given that not everything can be done within the United States. Ultimately the U.S. program must fit within funding constraints that are determined by the federal government. Planning within these constraints, the nuclear science community attempts to optimize the program to maintain intellectual leadership.

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3 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2008, Report of the Working Group on Nuclear Physics, May. Available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/41/40638321.pdf. Last accessed on August 26, 2011.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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The Need for Nimbleness

Until now, the focus has largely been on how the U.S. nuclear science community and the support agencies make decisions about large facilities. As discussed in the preceding section, LPRs involve a rather long birthing process, which is desirable in the case of large facilities since it allows for careful prioritization and for the emergence of near-unanimous support for major national initiatives. The committee recommends, however, that the U.S. planning processes need to become more nimble, streamlined, and flexible when it comes to initiating and managing smaller projects or seizing international opportunities. What is needed is not so much a change in the LRP process as much as (1) consideration of how the sophisticated new tools and protocols that have been developed for the successful management of the largest projects in nuclear physics can best be applied to projects at the other end of the size and cost scales and (2) recognition that sometimes excellent smaller-scale and/or international opportunities must be seized before the next LRP process begins in order to ensure that the scientific impact of U.S. participation is significant.

It is worth observing that the strategic management of science is carried out in quite different ways by different national governments. A comparison of the Japanese and U.S. systems is of interest. Japan has been extraordinarily successful in neutrino physics, among other areas. At the risk of oversimplifying, the Japanese system retains flexibility through a hierarchical structure and close communications between Cabinet members and senior science administrators. Decisions are made at a high level following careful but not unlimited review. This approach makes for a certain nimbleness that is less evident in the United States, where it sometimes appears that Congress, the funding agencies, and the researchers have become adversaries. Agencies answerable to Congress tend to become highly risk-averse and develop continuous review processes that, while effective in improving cost and schedule predictability, are themselves resource-intensive. Project-cost thresholds have been established at the funding agencies for implementing increasingly stringent levels of control and review, based on past experience. It can be tempting, however, to implement each control model well below its established cost threshold in the belief that the outcome can only be improved. It is important to keep in sight the goal of scientific research is achievement and discovery, and that cost and schedule predictability are tools to aid that process, not the primary objective.

Nimbleness is essential if the United States is to be an innovator and is to remain among the leaders in nuclear physics. Streamlined and flexible procedures for initiating and managing smaller projects are recommended. Among the changes that can be considered are the recognition that surprise, reassessment, and course-correction are a natural part of the research enterprise, that review and reporting

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×

requirements have reached the point of counterproductivity, and that discretion to move funding across “firewalls” within a discipline should rest with midlevel agency administrators under advisement from community leaders.

A NUCLEAR WORKFORCE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Challenges and Critical Shortages

The twenty-first century has brought a growing realization that a well-trained nuclear workforce of adequate size is crucial to address the serious challenges facing our world. The tragic suicide attacks of September 11, 2001, opened whole new classes of threat scenarios that require novel and sophisticated responses. There are significant new requirements and challenges in the fields of nuclear forensics, border protection, and nonproliferation, some of which are discussed in Chapter 3. And, present-day nuclear needs go well beyond those for threat reduction. The demand for a nuclear workforce for medicine, health physics, and energy is certainly not decreasing. All of these areas are important for national and world security and prosperity, yet their increasing needs come at a time when the nuclear workforce is shrinking.4

The workforce problem is one that has been building over several decades, but the severity of the situation has become obvious in the last decade. The fields of nuclear chemistry and radiochemistry have seen a steady decline in the number of new Ph.D.s from about 30 per year in the 1970s to fewer than 5 per year today.5 The threat of a terrorist nuclear attack has brought the situation to a crisis level, as described, for example, in the 2008 report from the American Physical Society (APS) Panel on Public Affairs Readiness of the U.S. Nuclear Workforce for 21st Century Challenges6 and the 2010 NRC report Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk. Unless education programs are reinvigorated, the United States will lack the expertise to pursue the research needed to advance and maintain those fields of nuclear physics and radiochemistry that are intrinsic components of nuclear medicine for diagnosis and treatment, the handling and storage of reactor waste, detection of the trafficking of nuclear material, nuclear forensics, nuclear weapons and stockpile stewardship, and the development of new accelerator technologies.

The workforce problem is not limited to low-energy nuclear physics and radio-chemistry; it affects all areas of applied nuclear science. The national laboratories

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4 American Physical Society, 2008, “Readiness of the U.S. Nuclear Workforce for 21st Century Challenges.” Available online at http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/upload/Nuclear-Readiness-Report-FINAL-2.pdf. Last accessed on October 29, 2012.

5 Ibid. and references therein.

6 Ibid.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×

funded under DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are charged with addressing nuclear science as it relates to security, both stockpile stewardship and threat reduction. A significant fraction of the workforce involved in this research was originally attracted to the field through collaborative basic nuclear physics research programs between the universities and the national labs. Recruits have come from all subfields of nuclear physics, and there is a strong track record of successfully applying nuclear physics techniques to national security needs. Some of the recent and more novel success stories are highlighted in Chapter 3. However, as in the case for radiochemistry, there is an increasing decline in the percentage of physics Ph.D.s graduating with expertise in nuclear physics at a time when workforce demands are growing.7 The situation is most alarming when viewed in terms of the top research universities in the United States, where nuclear physics is now a major discipline in only a handful of physics departments.

One important positive factor that has worked against this decline is the broadening of the field. Over recent decades this broadening has taken place in the directions of fundamental symmetries, neutrino physics, cold atoms, open quantum systems, lattice quantum field theory, quark-gluon plasma, high-performance computing, and new areas of nuclear astrophysics—all of which are featured in earlier chapters. Continued expansion of the basic science domain in which nuclear physics and nuclear physicists play a leading role, driven by new discoveries, new opportunities, and new people, will further ameliorate the decline as new talent is drawn into this wider field. Even with this diversification of nuclear research, however, the workforce shortage will become acute unless a coordinated and integrated plan is implemented to build and sustain an appropriately sized workforce, coupled with the necessary research facilities. Some elements that could play an important role in such a plan are described below, but first the role of graduate students and postdocs as well as a crucial balance issue that must be at the forefront in any such planning are discussed.

The Role of Graduate Students and Postdocs

Nuclear physics has a long tradition of preparing leaders for a wide range of applications of nuclear physics and its techniques, as well as future leaders in basic nuclear science research. Each one of these future leaders starts out as a graduate student, and most are also postdoctoral scholars. Scientists in these early stages of their careers play critical roles in all aspects of the basic research enterprise, while preparing to become leaders in basic and applied research and development.

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7 American Physical Society, 2008, “Readiness of the U.S. Nuclear Workforce for 21st Century Challenges.” Available online at http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/upload/Nuclear-Readiness-Report-FINAL-2.pdf. Last accessed on October 29, 2012.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×

Graduate students in nuclear science are expected to play key roles in all aspects of the research program to which their advisors introduce them. They learn how to develop new experimental tools or theoretical techniques, mount experiments or perform calculations that may require massive computations, analyze and interpret data and results, disseminate their results in written and oral form to a variety of audiences, and ultimately learn how to propose new experiments or initiate new theoretical developments. Graduate students also often join their more senior scientist advisors in mentoring undergraduate students in summer research projects. Postdoctoral scholars are taking their first steps as independent nuclear scientists in their own right. They are developing their own research agendas, and collaborating with and helping to mentor graduate students. Postdocs have mastered the tools and skills needed to advance their research in nuclear physics, and they have the time to devote their full energies to doing so. Very often in a collaboration it is the postdocs who play the most important role in pushing a project to completion and making new discoveries. Together, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are the engines of research in nuclear science.

The 2004 report of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), Education in Nuclear Science, includes a survey of Ph.D. recipients in nuclear science 5-10 years after their doctorates.8 It found that 40 percent of them work outside universities, colleges, and national laboratories. They are contributing to the nation’s needs for nuclear scientists, addressing the nation’s challenges in security, health, energy, and education as well as contributing innovations in technology and business that help to drive our economy. The number of new Ph.D. recipients in all of nuclear science is about 80 per year and has been relatively constant over the past decade. Today nuclear science accounts for only about 5 percent of all the Ph.D. recipients in physics and astronomy, a percentage that has been declining in recent years as the number of Ph.D. recipients in physics in the United States has been increasing. This decline is often due to an insufficient number of research assistantships or of faculty mentors. Given the many ways that nuclear scientists contribute to the needs of the United States and the challenges and critical shortages that are described above, and given the wealth of basic research opportunities described throughout this report, there is a demonstrated need to increase the number of graduate students in nuclear science. The committee therefore endorses the 2004 NSAC report’s recommendation for an increase of 20 percent in the number of Ph.D. students in nuclear science over the next 5 to 10 years.

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8 Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), 2004, Education in Nuclear Science. Available at http://science.energy.gov/~/media/np/nsac/pdf/docs/nsac_cr_education_report_final.pdf. Last accessed on October 29, 2012.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×

Balance of Investments in Facilities and Universities

Advancing the research frontier in many areas of science has required the construction of large research facilities at national laboratories or universities, to serve a large base of users from many universities and colleges. This has been true for a while in particle physics, is now true in nuclear physics and astronomy, and is becoming more common in areas like condensed matter physics, biology, and chemistry. In this circumstance, strong partnerships between universities and colleges and the institutions where the facilities are located are essential to reaping scientific rewards from the significant national investments that it takes to construct and operate world-class facilities. The relationship between the facilities and the college and university groups that use them is symbiotic: Without the facilities, the science cannot be done; without the colleges and universities, there would ultimately be no people doing the science. Universities are where scientific advances attract the brightest young minds into nuclear science and where future nuclear scientists make their first research contributions. Strong partnerships between the national laboratories and universities that host major facilities and universities and colleges around the country are essential to ensure that there is a next generation of nuclear scientists. Even as the pressure for more resources to support operations of the major facilities themselves becomes more acute, the long-term health of the field of nuclear science and of the nuclear science workforce that is needed by the nation requires that a balance be established and maintained between the needs of university and college programs on the one hand, and major facilities and national laboratories on the other. To this end, funding for educating, training, mentoring, and supporting the research of budding nuclear scientists from undergraduates through junior faculty is an essential component of moving the science forward. This component of the national effort is as necessary as the facilities to advance nuclear science research and to provide the nation with the nuclear workforce, expertise, and applications that it critically needs.

Mechanisms for Ensuring a Robust Pipeline

The agencies that support nuclear science research should be creative in finding new ways in which to partner with university and college groups in order to ensure a robust pipeline. Several mechanisms for doing so are listed, some of which are already in operation. These suggestions should not be interpreted as exclusive. The symbiotic relationship between educational institutions and facilities needs strengthening across a variety of fronts. There is no one solution; what is provided below is a selection of actions that are contributing to or would work toward the desired goals. Formal recommendations of the committee that include several of these steps are set forth in Chapter 6.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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  • The introduction of a national fellowship program for graduate students in nuclear science or entering the field would identify and support the best students in the nation pursuing nuclear science research, with the goal of attracting the highest caliber students into the field. While the fellowships would be awarded to students at U.S. universities, the research supervisor could be a national laboratory scientist. Care should be taken in the selection process so that it is receptive to exceptionally good students located anywhere, as one benefit should be to identify and recognize outstanding students wherever they may be found. A national prize fellowship would promote nuclear physics to U.S. undergraduate students and first-year graduate students considering such opportunities. Models for the nuclear physics fellowship program can be found in other fields; examples within the DOE include its fellowships in the computational sciences, the fusion energy sciences, and the stewardship sciences.
  • The introduction of a national prize fellowship program for postdoctoral researchers in nuclear science would provide similar encouragement and support for those at the beginning of their research careers. Winning a prestigious named fellowship in a national competition will raise the profile of a researcher at an early stage and enhance the visibility of the brightest early-career nuclear scientists in the academic world. Giving the winners both support and freedom as they launch their research careers will maximize the scientific impact of these future leaders of the field at a time when their abilities are fully developed and their energies are devoted solely to research. Furthermore, the existence and visibility of such a program will serve to attract highly talented students to do graduate work in nuclear science. The fellowship procedures should be designed to achieve a balance among giving winners freedom to choose how they want to develop their careers, ensuring that they find a host university or national laboratory that welcomes and mentors them, and ensuring that over time many institutions get to host winners working in many subfields. The astronomy community has developed mechanisms for achieving these goals for Hubble and Einstein postdoctoral fellows. Funding agencies could also support an annual symposium, for example, coordinated with the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) of the APS fall meeting, at which current holders of the fellowship give talks. Such a symposium, patterned on NASA’s successful Hubble Fellows Symposia, whose webcasts are often viewed by faculty search committees, would draw further attention to the fellowship and to nuclear science
Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×
  • while building a sense of community among emerging leaders working in diverse areas of the science.9

  • Future graduate students in nuclear science are undergraduate students first. The participation of nuclear scientists as research mentors for undergraduate students during the summer—for example, in NSF-funded research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs at universities as well as in similar programs in national laboratories and at other universities—plays an important role in attracting some of these students into nuclear science and in adding nuclear physics to the educational experience of physics students who go on to careers across the full spectrum of science and technology, from medical doctors to engineers to teachers to scientists in other fields. Each year, the Conference Experience for Undergraduates (CEU) program brings over 100 undergraduates (typically about one third are women) with nuclear physics research experience to the annual conference of the DNP (see Box 5.1). The CEU program gives undergraduates the opportunity to present their research to the nuclear science community, provides them with a capstone experience for their research projects, builds a sense of community and collective accomplishment among future nuclear scientists at a very early stage in their careers, and exposes them to the full breadth of the field. The program has met with tremendous success, the enthusiasm of the DNP community, and support from NSF and DOE as well. The CEU poster session is one of the best attended events at the annual meeting of the DNP.
  • The NSF is to be commended for its CAREER awards and the DOE for its Early Career Awards and its former Outstanding Junior Investigator program. In addition to providing their recipients with support at a critical career stage, these awards help to highlight their outstanding achievements and increase their recognition at their home institutions and throughout the community.
  • It is essential to keep nuclear science groups at universities, colleges and national laboratories vital and vigorous. This requires that retiring or otherwise departing nuclear scientists be replaced and, where existing efforts are below optimal size, new faculty or staff positions be created. Bridging support is a very good investment when it facilitates the creation of new faculty and staff positions.
  • Competitive awards for shared research instrumentation awards, such as the Major Research Instrumentation program of the NSF, work well in nuclear physics because the funding is matched reasonably well to typical

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9 Portions of this paragraph were adapted from NSAC Subcommittee on Nuclear Theory, 2003, A Vision for Nuclear Theory. Available at http://www.nucleartheory.net/docs/NSAC_Report_Final8.pdf

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Box 5.1
Conference Experience for Undergraduates:
A Capstone Experience with an International Reach

Held annually since the fall of 1998, the CEU was developed and organized to provide undergraduate students who had conducted nuclear science research the opportunity to attend the fall meeting of the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP) of the APS, and to present their research to the professional nuclear science community. The program is supported by the NSF, DOE (at six national accelerator laboratories), and the DNP. The number of participating students has grown to well over 100 annually, a one third of whom are women. Travel grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and all participating students receive lodging. Activities for the students, in addition to participation in regular conference activities, include the research poster session, two nuclear physics seminars targeted to the advanced undergraduate level, an ice cream social, and a graduate school fair. The program has met with tremendous success and is enthusiastically supported by the DNP community, with the CEU poster session one of the best-attended events at the conference. In the fall of 2009, at the joint meeting of the APS and the Japanese Physical Society, held on the Big Island of Hawaii, 116 American and 20 Japanese undergraduate students participated in the CEU (Figure 5.1.1). Two previous joint APS/JPS meetings (fall 2001 and 2005 on the island of Maui) also provided an opportunity for undergraduate students from the two countries the rare opportunity to meet, interact, and initiate long-term connections.

image

FIGURE 5.1.1 Many of the more than 100 undergraduate students who conducted research in nuclear physics and then presented the results from their research at the 2009 meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics in Waikoloa, Hawaii. SOURCE: Courtesy of W. Rogers, Westmont College.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×
  • project sizes. With a competition every year and resources given up front for successful proposals, this program stimulates the nimbleness described above that is so critical for medium-sized projects. Similarly, modest grants to universities for infrastructure improvements or equipment purchases can often be cost-shared with university resources. Such funding enables university groups to train students to build state-of-the-art experimental equipment at their home institutions. More of these smaller grants should be made available, as they can help to reverse the erosion of the infrastructure for nuclear physics at universities. They are also perfect examples of the symbiosis between universities and facilities: Building detectors or detector components at a college or university draws students into the field, and both the apparatus and the students subsequently play crucial roles in doing nuclear science at the large facilities.

  • The DOE has recently funded several Topical Collaborations in Nuclear Theory. While it is too soon to fully evaluate the scientific impact that results, these efforts appear to be strengthening connections between groups at national laboratories and universities, creating new bridge-funded faculty positions, and invigorating small university groups, thereby advancing the goals described above. There were many more strong proposals for such collaborations than could be funded in the initial round; indeed the call for proposals had the effect of stimulating nuclear theorists to come together in new ways, developing new proposals and new ideas. A new competition for future such collaborations would build on these successes and this momentum.
  • As noted above, the successful broadening of the field of nuclear physics in recent decades into many of the areas described earlier in this report has been crucial to maintaining a nuclear physics presence in universities and colleges and a nuclear workforce for national needs and has played a key role in keeping the field intellectually vibrant. Further broadening is occurring—for example, when experimental nuclear physicists employ their expertise to advance the search for dark matter and theoretical nuclear physicists take on the challenges of cold atom experiments—and will continue to occur in the future. As new discoveries, new opportunities, and new people expand the domain in which nuclear science and nuclear scientists play a leading role, the funding agencies should help nurture such expansion.

Broadening the Nuclear Workforce

The population of the United States has become increasingly diverse, and individuals of gender, race, and ethnicity who are underrepresented in the physical

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
×

sciences, including women and racial and ethnic minorities, now constitute a large majority of the student population in colleges and universities nationwide. The nuclear science community has developed a number of strategies to recruit undergraduates into nuclear science proactively, often with particular attention to the underrepresented groups. As described above, mechanisms include the many REU programs at universities and colleges, similar programs at the national laboratories, and the CEU. Nuclear scientists at colleges and universities also teach undergraduate science and engineering students, reach out to minority-serving institutions and their faculty, and develop bridge programs that foster the transition of students from smaller colleges to graduate studies at research universities. This engagement adds nuclear science to the educational experience of students who go on to careers across the full spectrum of science and technology. With revitalized undergraduate and master’s programs in nuclear engineering, there are new opportunities for nuclear scientists to partner with their colleagues to enhance nuclear science education, to reach out to students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, and to prepare students for a broad range of opportunities in nuclear science, engineering, and technology. Many institutions also reach out to schools and to their communities, visiting schools and opening the doors of their laboratories to school teachers and to students, both informally and via varied, more formal programs, including some that give them the opportunity to participate in nuclear research. All of these efforts, each in its own way, serve to broaden the nuclear workforce. Support for such programs from the funding agencies is a way to recognize the need for a robust pipeline of education and training for the next generation of nuclear scientists.

Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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Suggested Citation:"5 Nuclear Science Going Forward." National Research Council. 2013. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13438.
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The principal goals of the study were to articulate the scientific rationale and objectives of the field and then to take a long-term strategic view of U.S. nuclear science in the global context for setting future directions for the field. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter provides a long-term assessment of an outlook for nuclear physics.

The first phase of the report articulates the scientific rationale and objectives of the field, while the second phase provides a global context for the field and its long-term priorities and proposes a framework for progress through 2020 and beyond. In the second phase of the study, also developing a framework for progress through 2020 and beyond, the committee carefully considered the balance between universities and government facilities in terms of research and workforce development and the role of international collaborations in leveraging future investments.

Nuclear physics today is a diverse field, encompassing research that spans dimensions from a tiny fraction of the volume of the individual particles (neutrons and protons) in the atomic nucleus to the enormous scales of astrophysical objects in the cosmos. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter explains the research objectives, which include the desire not only to better understand the nature of matter interacting at the nuclear level, but also to describe the state of the universe that existed at the big bang. This report explains how the universe can now be studied in the most advanced colliding-beam accelerators, where strong forces are the dominant interactions, as well as the nature of neutrinos.

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