Watching the processing of one of the techniques he helped develop—a fast manufacturing method for radioactive seeds used in prostrate treatment—former chemistry intern Luis Nuñez (left) is pictured with Mike Drobnick of SourceTech Medical of Carol Stream, Ill. Chemist Nuñez is currently Argonne’s deputy associate laboratory director for Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences.

Future X-ray researchers of America and the world gather at Argonne for two weeks of hands-on training each summer. Graduate students Angelica Sanchez and Jason McClure set up an experiment with Eugene Goremychkin (center) at the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source. Argonne is the only laboratory in the world with both neutron and X-ray facilities.

Environmental engineer Laura Skubal was involved in DEP programs from her sophomore year in high school until completing her doctoral degree. She is holding a micro sensor that she and her colleagues developed. The device won an R&D 100 award for in 2002.

Argonne’s science education programs shaped and influenced their careers, top scientists say

A core benefit of Argonne’s science education programs is their impact on participants’ careers. Many become leaders in their fields. Two recent Nobel Prize winners remembered their Argonne experiences in their acceptance speeches:

“In my senior year, I spent a semester doing ESR [electron spin resonance] at Argonne ... There, I experienced full-time research, performed by a team of professionals who would discuss what the important problems were, decide what to do, how to do it, and then go into the lab and do it. I loved it!”—William D. Phillips, Nobel Prize in physics, 1997.

“The chemistry I appreciated the most from textbooks was physical chemistry. However, undergraduate research at Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory taught me that I didn’t have a long enough attention span for the elaborate plumbing and electronics of gas-phase chemical physics. I was later attracted to biological chemistry because of the almost daily interplay of experimental design, observation and interpretation.”—Thomas R. Cech, Nobel Prize in chemistry, 1989.

Physicist and educator Walter E. Massey, now president of Morehouse College, was a post-doctoral researcher at Argonne at the beginning of an illustrious career that includes positions as dean of the college at Brown University, director of Argonne, director of the National Science Foundation and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Argonne’s own scientific staff has benefited from its educational programs. “Since 1989, more than 240 participants in our student research programs have been hired at the laboratory,” said Harold Myron, director of Argonne’s Division of Educational Programs.

One of these is Luis Nuñez, who first came to Argonne in the early 1980s as a participant in the laboratory’s undergraduate program, where he worked with a group of scientists studying ion implantation in Argonne’s Physics Division. Through that decade, he moved on to graduate participation in superconductivity research and post-doctorate research in materials science. Today, he is Argonne’s deputy associate laboratory director for Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences. Nuñez has also been awarded several patents.

“The laboratory’s programs,” Nuñez said, “kept me at the frontier of science and made me grow as a scientist.”

Environmental engineer Laura Skubal works in Argonne’s Energy Systems Division. She and a colleague won an R&D 100 award in 2002 for developing a microsensing technology that detects toxic gases and may be used to combat terrorism.

She was introduced to the laboratory when she participated in Argonne’s pre-college research programs as a high school sophomore. She continued in Argonne’s educational programs until she completed her doctoral degree.

“Argonne’s student programs,” she said, “are an outstanding way to introduce a young person to science and engineering. I became involved in and performed research that most students do not encounter until they are college seniors or in the workplace. Well-known scientists were my mentors; my interaction with them continues to this day. The high school programs stand as the cornerstone for my career in environmental engineering.”

Since 1999, Argonne has operated the National School on Neutron and X-Ray Scattering to teach graduate students and scientists experimental methods for conducting X-ray and neutron research. Argonne is the only facility in the world that can offer students both X-ray and neutron research facilities. Dozens of the school’s 225 graduates have since become active researchers at the Advanced Photon Source and Intense Pulsed Neutron Source, both located at Argonne, and at many other research facilities.

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