Не имей 100 рублей, а имей 100 друзей
Don't have 100 rubles, have 100 friends
- Russian proverb
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Vladimir Shiltsev |
Vladimir Shiltsev, director of the Accelerator Physics Center, wrote today's column.
It is an exciting time to be a scientist at Fermilab. The list of projects and ideas that people are working on is growing every day. As usual, there is never enough money to fully fund all the wonderful science ideas that we have, but I see a good deal of enthusiasm and a "can-do" spirit that moves us ahead in many areas.
Research at Fermilab always has depended on this can-do spirit and the informal collaboration among people from different departments and divisions, and today it is more important than ever. The Accelerator Physics Center depends and thrives on this approach. Whether we are developing new beam collimation techniques, the concept for a high-intensity neutrino source, new high-temperature superconductors and fast-cycling superconducting magnets or electron cloud studies, our work always benefits from the help, knowledge, experience and institutional memory that we find throughout our laboratory.
I also encourage our scientific leaders to go directly to division and department heads and seek support to make things happen. This approach makes their work fun and rewarding. It also helps retain our best and brightest "can-doers."
When I talk to people who have been at Fermilab for a long time, I often hear about the good old times and how the can-do spirit of the early days of the laboratory has been diminished by too many reviews and too much red tape. But that is something that people have always complained about.
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| Fermilab founding director Bob Wilson sent a handwritten note to colleagues about keeping the Fermilab spirit alive. |
More than 30 years ago, our founding director, Robert Wilson, wrote, "Let's try hard to keep the good old can-do informal spirit of Fermilab alive! I ask each of you to be intolerant of creeping bureaucracy!"
Fortunately, we are far from being bogged down in bureaucracy. The regular rotation of our scientific leadership supports our can-do culture and continues to infuse us with new ideas. In Russian and European scientific societies, where I came from, it is a common to be "born as a scientist" and work your entire productive life in the same group, often under the same boss. In contrast, in my 13-year career at Fermilab I've worked for 10 different supervisors, learning new things from every one of them.
We need to remain focused on reaching our research goals rather than waiting to see what the boss will order. With our strong can-do approach and the help of lots of friends, we will continue to achieve our goals and make discoveries.
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