For adventurous physicists, D.C. holds jobs, speaker says

Clark Cully, a former Fermilab physicist, left in January 2008 for a program at the National Academies of Science in Washington, D.C. He spoke Sept. 30 at a Fermilab symposium.

Federal agencies, think tanks and contractors in Washington, D.C., are eager to fill positions with people grounded in hard sciences, said a former Fermilab physicist at a Sept. 30 symposium.

Clark Cully spent five years as a graduate student searching for heavy W bosons using data collected at CDF, but he left particle physics in 2008 for a career in the capitol.

Cully, who recently took a two-year job as a Presidential Management Fellow for the Department of Defense, encouraged other Fermilab scientists to consider work in Washington, D.C. He said an ability to learn new material and process technical information quickly is a desirable quality in the nation's capitol.

"Physicists are good arguers, we're good strategists, we're really good at jumping into this battle of ideas," Cully said in his talk. "Physicists have that logic to engage in a topic and to find and drive home a core issue."

When he left Fermilab in January 2008 for back-to-back six-month programs at the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Energy, Cully had his doubts.

"I was a little torn," Cully said. "How could I feel generally as intellectually satisfied in Washington, D.C., as I did when I was trying to solve the mysteries of the world?"

Soon after beginning work, Cully found that satisfaction once he began sorting through complex government problems. Although physicists going to D.C. probably won't use particle physics directly, their knowledge base and thought process will distinguish them from the many lawyers populating the field, Cully said.

Switching to a career in government service isn't for everyone, Cully said. Those considering a switch should have a broad interest in all areas of science and an ability to communicate with non-scientists, he said, along with a tolerance for unpredictable work and long hours.

Cully recommended programs through the National Academy of Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science, and others, such as the Presidential Management Fellows Program and the Nonproliferation Graduate Program.

— Chris Knight

New employees

Front row, from left: Nancy Yackle, BSS; Constance Lang, WDRS; Catherine Sexton, BSS; Chenghwei Liu, WDRS; Nausheen Shah, PPD. Back row, from left: Tingjun Yang, PPD; Julie Saviano, PPD; Paola Squillacioti, PPD; Pierluigi Catastini,PPD; Gerben Stavenga, PPD.

Supersymmetry particles - the pot of gold at the end of matter

From Medill Reports, Oct. 14, 2009

About 80 percent of the mass in our Universe is currently invisible to us. It is thought to be made of a mysterious hypothetical substance called dark matter. Scientists here hope to find more clues about it when the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] in Switzerland, restarts in late November after nearly a year-long shutdown due to mechanical problems.

"In my opinion, the most exciting theory that could be proved is that of supersymmetry," said physicist Mark Oreglia. "If we can find supersymmetry particles it would explain a number of problems we have in physics, like dark matter." Oreglia is a physicist at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, and an investigator for ATLAS, one of the four large experiments that will study the subatomic particle collisions at the Swiss accelerator. The experiments partner scientists from around the world.

Should operations go as planned, findings promise a cornucopia of new theories forwarding the knowledge of the scientific community and general understanding of the universe.

Read more here.