SLAC Internship Opportunities: Follow Your Dreams

Black Collegian, Oct 2003 by White, Linda DuShane

Many students dream of bright futures, but they fack information on how to fulfill those dreams. Opportunities abound if you know where to look. One excellent avenue for career experience is the summer internship.

The three internship programs offered by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) for outstanding students in science, engineering, mathematics and computer sciences are as follows:

1). Historically Black Colleges and Universities Partnership (HBCU) is designed to bring together faculty and students from the HBCU to partner with SLAC, primarily in areas of research and educational outreach.

2). National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering, Inc. (GEM) aims to alleviate the underrepresentation of minorities and women in engineering and acts as a clearing house to accept applications for full scholarships to minorities pursuing graduate degrees in engineering.

3). DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI), brings 25 students, minorities, women, and those attending small colleges, to SLAC to contribute to and gain experience in scientific lab research.

Consider the story of Jerrod Williams, who was recruited to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the summer of 2001 by Al Ashley and Sue Von Gee of SLAC's Affirmative Action office. Originating from the small, country town of St. Stephen, South Carolina and armed with a B.S. degree in Computer Sciences from Clemson University, Jerrod came to SLAC determined to learn all he could from his world-renowned coworkers in hopes of making a name for himself in the process. By Christmas 2001, Williams was employed at SLAC full time as a computer programmer, loving his work and feeling at home. "It (SLAC) is a research facility and there's so much to absorb. I'm on a different project every day, " said Williams. One of those projects placedjerrod as part of an international relay team that was recently awarded a certified data transfer speed record by the Internet2 consortium. This group of 200 universities is working in a worldwide partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. When Williams attends graduate school, part of his tuition will be paid by SLAC. He advises students that, "To want to come out here and be successful, you have to step out of your comfort zone. Don't let your inhibitions keep you from taking advantage of an opportunity such as this. You have to take a chance, to take some risks in life."

SLAC, located in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, is a national laboratory operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It is home to one of the longest buildings on earth, the "klystron gallery" of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the world's largest electron microscope, a landmark that can be seen from the moon with a good telescope.

Since 1966, the accelerator has been generating intense, energetic beams of electrons and photons for scientific research on the structure of matter. SLAC physicists have won three Nobel prizes for discoveries of quarks and an elementary particle called the tau lepton, known today as fundamental building blocks of matter. Researchers from all over the world come to SLAC each year. Laboratory research results are published openly in scientific and technical journals. No classified research occurs here.

Particle physics is the principal focus of SLAC research. High-energy beams of subatomic particles collide with stationary targets or with each other, providing insight into the behavior of matter and energy at tiny distances or under violent conditions that previously occurred only during the Big Bang birth of the Universe. Stanford University and SLAC have pioneered the acceleration and use of electron beams for this research.

A new kind of particle accelerator called a "linear collider" has been developed by SLAC physicists, and in collaboration with scientists from laboratories in Europe, Japan and the U.S., they are designing a next-generation machine called the Next Linear Collider, which will be about 20 miles long and will serve the international scientific community.

The B Factory is central to SLAC's current high-energy physics program. An upgrade of an earlier electron-positron collider, this colossal instrument rests in a circular tunnel that runs for more than a mile beneath the hills of the 450-acre site. Electrons and positrons collide at unequal energies inside a sophisticated, 1 ,200-ton particle detector called BABAR, creating millions of short-lived subatomic particles know as B mesons. An international collaboration of more than 500 scientists from 72 institutions on three continents is examining how B mesons disintegrate, seeking subtle differences between matter and antimatter.

Another major SLAC facility, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), is home to cutting-edge research on the behavior and structure of matter at atomic and molecular levels. Circulating high-energy electrons through magnet arrays generates extremely intense X-ray beams, millions of times brighter than conventional X-ray tubes produce. Every year, around 1,600 scientists use this radiation to conduct research in such areas as designing new drugs, developing advanced information technologies (i.e., flat-panel computer displays and high-density microchips), and the environmental remediation of contaminated sites.