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HBCU Fellows Summer at SLAC
By Davide Castelvecchi
One scientist at a
time, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) fellows
have contributed to bringing diversity to cutting-edge research. The
program, now in its third year, enabled three visiting faculty to spend
two months at SLAC this summer.
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HBCU/SLAC Partnership
Fellows receive Certificates of Achievement (left to right):
Michael Watson (KIPAC/Fisk University), Jonathan Dorfan (DO),
Stephen Egarievwe (EA/Fisk University), Lee Lyon (HR) and Bryan
Mitchell (ESRD/Paine U). (Photo by Diana
Rogers) |
The fellowships were
envisioned by retired employee Al Ashley, to expose participants to
research opportunities they would not have access to at their
institutions. The purpose is to provide the scientists with experience
that can make a difference in their career and in their teaching.
Meanwhile, the fellowships allow SLAC to tap into underutilized research
potential.
The HBCU fellowships
are funded by a DOE grant through Paine College, a historically black
liberal arts school in Augusta, Georgia.
Many historically
black institutions are small liberal arts colleges. Most have limited
resources for maintaining labs and demanding teaching loads on their
faculty, explains HBCU fellow Bryan Mitchell. “We don’t have a lot of
time to do research, unless we bring in grants to get release time,” he
says.
Mitchell teaches in
the Biology Department at Paine, where he is in charge of three classes
every semester.
He worked on
crystallizing a protein to prepare samples for a SPEAR3 beam line. The
protein is part of a study to find new methods of fighting bacteria that
have become resistant to antibiotics.
“This was a perfect
opportunity,” says Mitchell, whose stay at SLAC has just ended. “I’m
going to take a lot of knowledge back with me, and pass it on to a lot
of students.”
Thanks to the
experience gained at SLAC, Mitchell says he plans to apply for grants
that will enable his students to do research on campus, instead of
having to use labs at nearby institutions.
Michael Watson, an
astrophysicist from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, spent his
two-month fellowship at the Kavli Institute. This was his second summer
at SLAC.
Watson set up computer
simulations of the turbulent regions around active galactic nuclei.
These are mysterious cosmic phenomena—perhaps gigantic black
holes—astronomers discovered at the center of some galaxies, including
our own Milky Way.
“Both times I have
been here have been enjoyable,” he says, thanks especially to the access
to SLAC’s resources. “That includes personnel, but also journals,
articles and books that I wouldn’t have back home,” he added.
Watson says his
research may open doors to scientific collaborations. “Now, when I go
talk to other scientists, I have a tangible asset.”
He also wants to
encourage his students to do research as part of their education, and
thinks his experience will help him assure the necessary resources. “The
thing a small school needs is a small start-up,” he says.
Stephen Egarievwe, a
nuclear physicist and computer scientist from Fisk, is developing
software for the Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO), a nuclear decay
experiment SLAC is developing in collaboration with several other
institutions. With his software, he says, “Collaborators who are not at
the Lab will be able to view and control the experiment remotely.”
Egarievwe is also here
for the second time. He was an HBCU fellow at SLAC in 2002. Last summer
he worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Both summers were beneficial
to him.
“When I got back to my
school, I was able to use the training and experience I got here to
provide research projects for my students, which helped many of them to
get into graduate school.”
In the future,
Egarievwe hopes to be able to train minority students who come to SLAC
for summer internships. Providing opportunities is not only good for the
students themselves. Egarievwe points out, “SLAC and DOE benefit as
well, because by providing students with know-how in these fields, they
prepare scientists who will be a resource for future research.”
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