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The power of the world’s fastest supercomputers and most
intense neutron beam will soon be added to NC State’s nanoscience
equipment list. Both are being built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL) in Tennessee, a U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratory
now managed in part by NC State.
In April 1, 2000, seven universities and the Battelle Memorial
Institute were selected by DOE to manage
and operate ORNL, where a 300-million-dollar modernization program
will add a dozen new buildings over the
next five years. Among them are the Spallation Neutron Source—the
nation’s biggest science project ever—the Center for
Nanophase Materials Sciences, and the
Center for Computational Sciences with its ten-teraflop supercomputer,
nicknamed “Cheetah.”
ORNL is a multipurpose research laboratory with 4,500 employees
and a research budget of about $700 million per year. It began
as a Manhattan Project lab during World War II, and had the
world’s first nuclear reactor. Today, ORNL is DOE’s
largest multipurpose energy science laboratory, and the national
leader in neutron science, materials research, and high-performance
computing.
ORNL director Dr. Bill Madia is especially proud of
the lab’s pioneering work in nanoscience, declaring: “Nanoscience
is the heart of rock and roll if you’re a
scientist.” Madia is eagerly anticipating the 2006 completion
of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), now under
construction at a cost of $1.4 billion. The SNS will generate
the world’s most intense pulsed beam of neutrons,
with concentrations at least ten times greater than at any other
facility in the world. Scientists use neutron beams to see how
atoms are structured in nano- and bio-materials.
The “new” ORNL plans to make interactions with
universities its highest priority, including: joint university/ORNL
faculty positions, joint seminars and workshops, joint research
proposals, summer programs
for students and faculty, and joint think tanks. ORNL is looking
to team up with more university experimental
programs to complement its analytical programs.
In fact, both ORNL and NC State believe that the partnership
will make it easier to attract prominent scientists from other
prestigious research institutions. They are betting that offering
the best of both university and national laboratory world will
be a draw in certain cases. Joint research institutes have already
been suggested in areas of strength such as advanced materials
and nanoscale science, advanced computational science, complex
biological systems, proteomics and structural biology, neutron
science, bioinformatics, genomics, environmental science and
technology, and homeland security.
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NC
State’s chancellor, vice chancellor for research, and several
research faculty serve on key steering and review committees
at all levels at ORNL. Dr. Ray Fornes, associate dean for research
in the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, acts as
a direct liaison with ORNL’s deputy director for science
and technology, facilitating new research relationships between
faculty and ORNL scientists. “Our faculty now have easy
access to the expertise of Oak Ridge’s world-class scientists,
which is so important in this highly technical arena,”
Fornes points out. “Together, we can be a powerhouse of
nanoscience capability for research funded through the National
Nanotechnology Initiative.”
Beyond all that, it is difficult to even try to estimate the
value of ORNL’s resources as a training ground for graduate
students and post-doctoral research associates. “It can
be pretty irresistable to young scientists,” says Fornes,
“to learn they might be able to do their dissertation research
at a national laboratory of this caliber.”
For more information, please visit
http://www.ornl.gov/ |
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