Orbach Brings Enthusiasm for Research and Desire for Increased Funding to Office of Science

Two weeks after being sworn in as the director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, theoretical physicist Raymond Orbach was still brimming with excitement about his new job. “First of all, the science in the Office of Science is beautiful,” Orbach responded when asked why he’d left his previous position as chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. DOE is a “magnificent enterprise and it’s just delightful to be a part of it,” he said to a small group of journalists gathered around a table near his new office. “I’m like a kid in a candy factory.”

After more than 40 years of working as a self-described “bench scientist” supported in large part by federal funds, Orbach said “this was an opportunity for me to try and return the wonderful support I’ve had and hopefully respond to the needs of the government in terms of science.” While he was enthusiastic about his new circumstances, he was not Pollyannaish. The Office of Science has a substantial $3.3 billion budget, but the administration’s fiscal year 2003 budget proposal calls for only a 0.1% increase for the office, and overall DOE R&D funding would actually decline by 0.5%.

“We have essentially a flat budget, as have the physical sciences across the government for the last decade, and it’s become very tough,” Orbach said. “I know what it’s like from a university perspective. It’s been very difficult to support the research efforts at universities … and it’s been no less difficult in the [DOE] laboratories. There is a special role that I see the Office of Science playing in the support of basic research in the United States.”

Orbach said one of his key priorities is “developing new initiatives that will build on the base of science to provide more funding and more support for university science and for the laboratories.” He said he was “in tune” with calls on Capitol Hill to increase physical science funding above the level proposed by the administration. While his funding goals for the Office of Science are not as lofty as the five-year budget doubling that is occurring at the National Institutes of Health, Orbach would like to see his budget increase by 30% or 40% over the next five years.

He is aware of concerns among physical scientists that the large jump in the NIH budget—17% proposed for FY 2003—and the flat funding for most physical sciences is creating an overall imbalance in federal science funding. The seeming imbalance can be explained in part by the science itself, he indicated. With the dramatic advances in biological sciences, especially in the new field of protein research called proteomics and in the wide-ranging bioinformatics, the traditional divisions between biology, chemistry, physics, and other fields of science are blurring, Orbach said. When the Spallation Neutron Source comes online, he said, “there will be as many biologists as there are condensed matter physicists and chemists” using the machine. The same is true of synchrotron light sources, he said. “I believe there are more biologists working with light sources for structural determinations and dynamics [in cells] than there are physicists.”

Enthusiasm for both physical and biological sciences is high in the administration and Congress, he said, and the success of the health sciences depends on the “vitality of the fundamental physical and life sciences. They are the underpinnings of health science. What I hope is that physical and life sciences can be funded at a sufficient rate that we cannot only do our thing, but also help the health sciences do their thing.” He also said that he is an “advocate of a diverse funding base for science. I think the great strength of the United States science programs is the multiagency support.” Having science funding spread over several agencies, Orbach said, “avoids the possibility of fads or attitudes that a single funding agency for science might develop. I think in large part the vitality of American science can be laid to the diversity of funding sources within the federal government.”

Orbach stressed nanoscience and fusion as two research areas in which he is particularly interested. There is $24 million in the administration’s budget proposal to begin construction of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and, Orbach said, that center will be the first of five nanoscience centers to be supported by his office. The other four are expected to be at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sandia–Los Alamos (run jointly by the two labs), Argonne National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. “What we will be creating is a nanoscience network that uses the full force and power of the labs to illuminate the materials and the science. These [centers] will be complementary, not duplicative.”

Orbach was also enthusiastic about fusion research and said, “we’re approaching the point where burning plasma is a possibility.” He praised the Joint European Torus, a fusion machine located near Oxford, England, as “remarkably successful,” and said it has set the stage for development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The US completely pulled out of the ITER project in 1999, partly due to costs, but the main ITER partners—Europe, Japan, and Russia—have moved forward with plans for a scaled-down program that, at about $5 billion, is significantly cheaper than the original proposal (see Physics Today, March 2000, page 65 ).

Orbach said he is “very much in favor” of the US rejoining ITER as a junior partner. “I think the opportunities for burning plasma are so exciting that if we don’t have ITER, the problem facing us would be to construct a burning plasma facility within the United States. That is an expensive business. Just to do burning plasma would be more than $1 billion just in terms of a machine.”

Using US involvement in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN as an example of a good international program, Orbach said he assumed with ITER that “we could come in at a reasonable support level that has to be negotiated. What would happen is if the Secretary [of Energy] signs on and the president supports it, we would then go into negotiations with the other ITER partners and try to define the American participation. It makes sense for us to be a junior partner.”

Orbach also wants the Office of Science to play a more significant role in science education. He noted that the number of PhDs in science is dropping, and K–12 science scores are falling. “This is not something one agency can fix, but I would like to see the DOE use its resources for education, and do it primarily through our labs. We have a unique strength in our laboratories, and in teacher training and support they can play a very special role.”

The fundamental role of DOE is US security, Orbach said, and that means more than just military security. “It is also energy security and the security of our economy. Security means this country can continue as a major world power, and one of the areas that’s most profound is science. I see the Office of Science as being responsible for the energy and economic security of this nation.”