Seeking: charismatic scientists, engineers

A group photo of mentees from 2008.

Near Valentine's Day every year Roger Dixon and Erik Ramberg play matchmakers at Fermilab.

They put out a call to laboratory employees: Seeking successful scientists and engineers who must love sharing knowledge for a 10-week relationship.

The annual February round up of participants for the laboratory's mentorship programs create a great opportunity for scientists to meet and educate prospective future colleagues.

Typically about 200 student suitors vie for a chance to spend time with the mentors.

"Young people are the future of the field," Dixon said. "It's important to turn them onto science."

Dixon, head of the Accelerator Division, and experimental physicist Erik Ramberg manage two of the Fermilab internship programs: the Internship for Physics Majors (IPM), for foreign students; and the DOE-sponsored Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program (SULI), for U.S. students. They need a dozen mentors at Fermilab to work with the group of interns they intend to select by the end of March.

Volunteers should have projects with goals that can be reached during the 10-week internship. The idea is to give the interns, who are mostly undergraduates, laboratory experience and an introduction to a field many of them may pursue.

Ramberg got his start in particle physics as an intern at SLAC, and he's been a long-standing mentor at Fermilab. He says the interns are very bright and self-starting and often do excellent work for their mentors.

The mentorship program has been successful at recruiting students for scientific careers. About one-third of the interns go on to pursue careers in particle physics, and more than half end up working in a scientific field. Some students have even ended up back working at Fermilab.

"I've had a number of students who have done very significant work on the projects," Ramberg said. "I wish more could stay on."

A meeting for people interested in becoming mentors for one of the internship programs will take place on Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. in Curia II.

-- Kristine Crane

Implementing integrated quality assurance memo

All employees should have received a memo from Director Pier Oddone Friday or Monday. Employees who are off site, or those who did not receive the memo, can access it here.

Conflict brews over science in US stimulus package

From New Scientist, Feb. 10, 2009

Biomedical research is among the big winners, and physics among the losers, in the latest deal-making over the mammoth US economic stimulus bill.

The US Senate is today expected to pass an amended version of the stimulus package, which is expected to cost an estimated $838 billion.

Overall, science fared well in the Senate. According to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (pdf format), the Senate bill includes $17.8 billion for research and development, including $2 billion for new facilities and equipment - compared to $13.2 billion in the version previously passed by the House of Representatives.

This boost is mostly due to an extra $6.5 billion provided by the Senate for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health. But the two main agencies that support the physical sciences - National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science - were not so favoured. In the Senate bill, they get only $1.2 billion and $330 million respectively, compared to $3 billion and $2 billion in the House version.

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