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Letter from Boston

Nsf Site Visit

By MASAKO YAMADA


NSF による現場視察

雅子さんはアメリカの科学研究を支える連邦機関から奨学金を受けて大学院に通っています。その機関の監督者は、年に一度、奨学金を受けている学生たちの研究状況を視察しに現場にやってきます。雅子さんも研究の成果を発表しました。

I'm currently studying and living on a scholarship that is granted by the National Science Foundation. The NSF is a government organization that funds graduate students and researchers in the sciences. The sciences are broadly defined, including soft sciences like economics and political science as well as hard sciences like physics and chemistry. The NSF pays BU my tuition and it also pays me a monthly stipend. That stipend is my primary source of income.

The NSF offers many different kinds of scholarships and grants. Some of the graduate student scholarships are oriented by research topic in my case, I'm required to study computer simulations of molecular dynamics and others require that the recipients concentrate on teaching. In addition, there are highly coveted fellowships that allow students to pursue any research topic at any school of their choosing, provided they are accepted by the school and can find an appropriate thesis advisor. Both schools and advisors like taking on students who have scholarships from outside sources it means that the school doesn't have to worry about supporting those students financially so getting a scholarship is not just a matter of financial convenience for students.

Of course, the NSF expects results from its investments but it doesn't interfere with how the money is actually used. It is understood that producing good work takes many years after all, Rome wasn't built in a day and for that reason, the organization isn't very strict about monitoring day-to-day research activity. Even if NSF scholarship students decide to leave the field before completing their doctorates, they are not punished. Attrition rates are quite high in graduate school, but money-granting organizations must risk losing some students; it's a part of the inevitable scheme of things.

For the most part, written progress reports are what keep the research groups in touch with the NSF administration. Whether or not a grant is renewed often depends on the skill of the person who writes the grant proposal. However, about once a year, a NSF overseer visits the sites that receive funding and reviews their performance in person. Because funding may be cut off from (seemingly) incompetent sites, students and researchers make an effort to be on their best behavior when the overseer comes.

The NSF overseer for my scholarship, Dr. Jennings, visited recently, and the five students who are under the molecular dynamics scholarship program organized a small program to show off our work to him. Dr. Jennings is not a practicing physicist, so the focus of our presentation was not centered on the details of our research. Instead, we tried to give a broad picture of how the scholarship is helping us become better scientists.

One of the perks of our being a part of this program is that we are exposed to a variety of different research approaches. Of the five scholarship recipients in my program, two are in the physics department, one is in chemistry and two are in engineering. Interdisciplinary research is a buzzword these days. This is because the lines between the various fields are getting more blurred, and it's becoming necessary to collaborate with researchers from other fields in order to learn techniques and gain insights that may help one's line of research. Even as students, we are being exposed to this kind of fluid thinking, which will surely help us later as professional researchers.

Our short presentations went very smoothly and we had a great general discussion on the trend toward interdisciplinary collaboration. After this formal meeting, we joined Dr. Jennings for lunch. Since there were over 10 people present at the lunch, I didn't get to speak to him at all. However, I did get to chat with the other people who are being funded by the program. We spoke of many things, including the next hot trends in physics. At first I thought the point of the lunch was lost because the group was too large, but then I realized that the individual members of the group were collaborating. We were fulfilling our duties even as we ate.


Shukan ST: Aug. 15, 1997

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