Knight Professor Studies Time, Space Secrets
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Jim Brau says his recent appointment by UO President
Dave Frohnmayer as a Philip H. Knight Professor of Science
provides deeply appreciated recognition of his value to
the university. It also makes offers to join research
groups elsewhere less tempting.
“To me, this appointment recognizes the great work
being done by our team in particle physics right here
at Oregon,” Brau says. “It really shows that
the university cares about this exciting effort to understand
the fundamental nature of the universe.”
The Knight professorship will also help Brau’s group
stay competitive in the drive to bring home federal funding.
“Our funding agencies look for a partnership with
the state institution,” said Brau, whose group pulls
in
$1 million in federal grants annually. “They look
for reciprocal investment from the host institution, and
that’s how support like an endowed professorship
really helps the entire research effort.”
Brau, who directs the UO Center for High Energy Physics,
also leads national and international research involving
scores of projects by hundreds of colleagues around the
globe.
“Jim is clearly one of the biggest leaders on super
small particles,” said Joe Stone, former dean of
the College of Arts and Sciences. Stone noted that Brau
is the only U.S. scientist among the three leaders of
a worldwide community of physicists preparing experiments
for what will be one of history’s biggest science
projects, a twenty-mile-long particle accelerator called
the International Linear Collider.
The collider’s twin particle accelerators will hurl
some ten billion electrons and their antiparticles, positrons,
toward each other at nearly the speed of light, fifteen
thousand times per second.
The resulting smash-ups, Brau says, will generate other
fundamental particles so far unseen by humankind. Such
discoveries would yield “the missing puzzle pieces”
needed to unlock the mysteries of space and time. Brau’s
life work focuses on the invention of tools capable of
detecting such particles, which appear for less than a
millionth of a millionth of a second.
Brau also helps shape the national direction for research
in his field as a member of both the federal High Energy
Physics Advisory Panel and the National Research Council
Board on Physics and Astronomy.
But as influential as he is among scientists and policymakers,
one of Brau’s greatest strengths is his ability
to communicate the joy of science to lay audiences. During
the year-long 2005 centennial celebration marking Einstein’s
“miracle year,” a presentation Brau created
for general audiences proved so successful that Chicago’s
Fermilab recommends it as a model for scientists planning
public programs.
The sheer pleasure of pursuing knowledge as a way to better
understand nature has motivated Brau as long as he can
remember.
“Most of the universe remains a mystery despite
the depth of our knowledge,” Brau says. “We
are working toward a radically new understanding of what
the universe is made of and how it works, and that’s
how Big Science contributes to our quality of life—by
pushing technology in every direction we can.”
The Knight professorships were created in 1996 with a
$15 million gift from Penny and Phil Knight ’59.
—Melody Ward Leslie
