University Briefs

Volume 3, #1The Scientist January 9, 1989 UNIVERSITY BRIEFS Astronomer Pins Hopes On His Star Appeal Exhausted by the hunt for research funds? Disgusted with departmental politics? Take heart, there may be an alternative. Witness the tale of Canadian astronomer Bruce Campbell. For four years, Campbell toiled at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia. But chronic underfunding made it impossible for the observatory to offer him a permanent position, so he left in June 1987. And while Campbell had just received a three-year grant from the National Science and Engineering Research Council for two research assistants and travel expenses to the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, he lacked a salary for himself. By this past summer, he was fed up. "I worked on the project for nearly 1-1/2 years without pay, and I finally concluded that I couldn't do that any longer," he says. So Campbell decided to follow in the footsteps of yesterday's artists and today's athletes and seek a patron. After all, he argues, a company could get a lot of good publicity by advertising itself as "the sponsor of the man who first discovered other solar systems." (Campbell headed a team that found variations in the orbits of nine stars, indicating that they may have orbiting companions.) All the astronomer wants in return is "a reasonable wage" and time off to observe. Campbell is working with officials at the University of Victoria to find a sponsor. He's had one nibble already: Cornell University's Carl Sagan "wrote to say he was considering ways of assisting me," Campbell says. While he waits for other offers, Campbell has taken a temporary job with the Ministry of Advanced Education and Job Training in British Columbia. The SSC's First Achievement The superconducting supercollider will eventually accelerate subatomic particles, but right now it is speeding change in the physics department at the University of Texas, Arlington. On November 10, the same day that the Department of Energy announced Waxahachie, Tex., as the chosen home of the supercollider, UTA president Wendell H. Nedderman proclaimed that his school - located 25 miles north of the SSC site - was prepared to take advantage of the proximity of the facility. "There's little doubt we will refocus our research efforts in physics and other departments, such as engineering, toward high-energy physics," Nedderman told The Scientist a few weeks later. Certainly the SSC's presence will not only alter the emphasis of the department, which had been on materials science and applied physics, but it will also aid in recruiting efforts. Says chairman Roy N. West: "It will be extremely helpful to us in achieving our own ambitions." The department, which received authority to grant doctorates in 1984 and to date has graduated only two doctoral students, had already begun to grow rapidly; it has two faculty openings now and 10 more positions expected to be added later. Trading Places: California And Leningrad When physicist Nikita Morozov arrived at the University of California, San Diego, on November 23, he became the first Soviet scientist to visit under a December 1987 agreement between the University of California and Leningrad State University. The accord - which provides for educational and cultural opportunities for undergrads, graduates, postdocs, and faculty - may also help lay the groundwork for joint research conducted by U.S. and Soviet scientists. At least that is the hope of Charles W. Van Atta, professor of engineering science and oceanography, who was, in September, part of the first wave of U.C. professors to visit the Soviet Union. Van Atta's lectures on fluid mechanics at institutions in Leningrad, Kiev, and Kaunas, Lithuania, were received "very enthusiastically," he says. More important, Van Atta says, he was able to meet fellow scientists and spread good will - the foundation upon which further cooperative efforts can be built. "Private people can do a lot more than governments," he argues. Interest in the program has grown so keen, says Birger Pearson, Education Abroad Program associate director, that participation in it has become quite competitive. In 1989, 20 U.C. professors are expected to visit the

University Briefs

The Scientist Staff

UNIVERSITY BRIEFS

Astronomer Pins Hopes On His Star Appeal

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