I am an experimental particle physicist with 20 years of research experience, but I now work on science policy and funding issues. My view of physics has broadened now that I no longer have to get all of the details to work myself, and I find myself thinking about science more broadly than just physics.
3 responses so far ↓
Kristin // January 30, 2006 at 12:49 am
Don’t all scientists have to work on funding issues these days, though? From the anecdotes I’ve heard, research funding is tougher than ever. It’s probably too sensitive to blog about, but it would be interesting to learn about how funding agencies decide to allocate money among the various disciplines. What factors come into play, how do you estimate return on investment, that sort of thing. Because it seems to be a sort of zero-sum game at some level–if the federal government were supporting stem cell research, which could potentially benefit health, a very practical and noble goal, would that then take away from more exploratory research whose potential applications are less immediately realizable, such as building another supercollider or sending people to Mars? I’d be curious to understand the metric(s) by which these comparisons are made.
Just curious, is all.
TheShortFatKid // April 10, 2007 at 9:55 am
I really dig the image you have in your banner. Is it a pic you snapped?
Mike Procario // April 11, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Yes. I was driving to Pittsburgh one morning and the sun was just rising as I enter Pennsylvania on I-70. The whole photo is on Flicker. http://www.flickr.com/photos/procario/343430723/in/set-72057594090550386/
I cropped it to fit the banner format.
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