THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 28, 1995 TAG: 9506290637
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 162 lines
Thousands have fanned out across the country, hunting for work. Graduating scientists, the lucky ones, are headed to jobs at large corporations and small companies, or to academic positions at universities.
Then there's Rodney Meyer, 35, an Illinois native who has been living in Norfolk for the past eight years. In a couple of months, Meyer will receive a Ph.D. in physics from Old Dominion University, a goal toward which he's been working for more than a decade.
He's highly trained. He's motivated. His grades are good. And he's still waiting for a job offer.
``It's a game of musical chairs,'' Meyer said. ``You don't want to be the one left standing.''
Not since the 1950s, when armies of young researchers were recruited to help the United States win the Cold War, has there been such career upheaval in the sciences. Federal dollars to fund basic research are being sliced, and more cuts are on the way.
That means a long summer of job-hunting for newly minted scientists like Meyer. Of this year's 1,600 Ph.D.s in physics, for example, only half will be able to find university postings. The remainder will have to hope for employment in the private sector.
``Funding for science is in turmoil,'' said James L. Cox Jr., chairman of ODU's physics department. ``The government agencies that fund research don't know how much they're going to lose - or even if they're going to be in existence. It's a very confused and troubling time.''
Working scientists in universities and research facilities around Hampton Roads feel the effects as well.
``At the moment, it's tough,'' said Michael Hill, associate professor of physiology at Eastern Virginia Medical School. ``But very good people are still getting funded. We have to be honest with our post-docs (graduating Ph.D.s). We have to prepare them to be competitive in this current marketplace.''
The emphasis, Hill is quick to add, is on applied research: useful products that can be developed over a relatively short period of time.
Hill's research on blood vessel function has been the beneficiary of a five-year, $350,000 National Institutes of Health grant that expires late next year. Now he's awaiting the agency's answer on a grant proposal to continue his work another five years.
``We're very much dependent on grants to pay the salaries of the people who work in our labs. People can lose their jobs,'' Hill said. ``NIH funding is probably not going to get much better in the foreseeable future.''
NIH supporters were aghast earlier this year when Republicans presented plans to shrink the institute's budget by $8 billion over seven years. Congress appears ready to pass more modest reductions, but researchers will feel the pinch.
``Basic research is not in trouble because it does something wrong,'' said Joel Widder, acting director of the National Science Foundation's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs. ``It's just that everything is on the table. And the scientific community won't be exempt.''
Gerald J. Pepe, associate dean of research at Eastern Virginia Medical School, says fighting for money saps scientists' energy and reduces the chance of real breakthroughs.
``The enthusiasm for being creative is what is being lost: the novelty, the newness,'' he said. ``You tend to do things more in line with the status quo to get the funding.''
In the long run, argues ODU's Cox, the country has no choice but to pay for a healthy scientific enterprise. ``Otherwise, we take a back seat to the world.''
Soon-to-be Dr. Rodney Meyer doesn't know whether he'll have a job by September, but he has no regrets about the career he's chosen.
``Those guys at the Ford truck plant make a real good living. But you're putting the same nut on the same bolt day after day,'' Meyer said. ``In physics you're breaking new ground, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Q&A with EILEEN HOFMANN
Staff writer James Schultz discussed government funding for
science with Eileen Hofmann, associate professor of oceanography at
Old Dominion University.
Q Are bad times ahead for basic science research?
A Bad times are here. Basic research is having a very hard time
right now because most of the federal agencies, for a variety of
reasons, now have a mission-oriented mandate. They have to fund
science that has a practical application.
Q Why is basic research important?
A It provides an understanding of processes. It answers questions
about why systems work they way they do. You've got to know that
before you can come up with an application, a technological
development will benefit the rest of us. If you don't understand how
something works you can't go do that.
Q What is the essential difference between applied science and
basic science?
A In basic research you really are trying to understand the way
things happen. In applied research you're trying to take that
understanding and change something. Basic research is what I do. I
can see that some of thethings I do might have application in
(ecosystem) management. But I would not do that. Someone else would
take what I have done and apply it to make a decision about how to
manage an ecosystem.
Applied science is the place where the non-science community
actually interfaces with the science community. They see something
that is of use to them, that they can buy, use, whatever, to make
their lives better. The non-scientific community doesn't see the
years of research and development that went into somebody being able
to make the gadget or the machine.
Q: Is it harder or easier today to be a practicing scientist?
A: I have been doing what I do for about 12 years. In that time
period I have seen a major change in the way we do science. Many of
the people I work with who have been doing this for the last 25 or
30 years say the changes are really phenomenal.
What has happened is that the available funds for research have
decreased substantially. The number of people competing for those
funds has gone up. That, coupled with the fact that there are not a
lot of positions opening up at universities or federal research labs
right now, have made it very difficult for somebody coming out of
school with a brand new Ph.D. to become established.
Perhaps the field that is feeling it the most right now is
physics, where there are no jobs. We read a lot about the people who
are getting Ph.Ds. in physics and then going to work for companies
on Wall Street, doing stock market predictions based on dynamic
systems modeling or chaos modeling. That's something people in
physics get a lot of training in. So they're going off being
stockbrokers, or numerical analysts actually.
Q: Can we as taxpayers afford all this science, all this
scientific research?
A: As a society, we can't not afford it. We have to have it.
Right now the science community is faced with a
mortgaging-the-future kind of thing.
Look at something like the National Institutes of Health, or NIH.
One half of the graduate students in universities in the United
States are funded out of NIH. Those are the kinds of funds that
disappear first, when the agencies are asked to make budget cuts.
The funding for graduate students is going down rapidly. That's
not something we can make up out of our (university) resources. I
can't go to my department chair and say I need X number of student
stipends because NASA has cut back a program. The state doesn't have
that money.
Q: Why give money to graduate students?
A: If graduate fellowships and post-doctoral fellowships
disappear, those people will go off and do other things. They will
not continue in the sciences because there are no jobs. That's
what's happening right now. We're losing a younger generation of
scientists.
We could lose our ability in applied science. The danger is we
fall behind other nations in training scientists, and then being
able to maintain excellence in various areas.
Q: Do you have any advice for young, would-be scientists?
A: What I tell my students, what my colleagues tell students, is
that you have to go into this with your eyes open, knowing it's
going to be difficult at the other end. And if you can do more than
one thing, there are more opportunities. That makes you more
marketable.
The bottom line is, if you like it, by all means do it. You'll
make something work out.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW by CNB