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An ambitious new program at NIU is working to attract science students from underserved populations who are interested in becoming not just scientists and engineers, but also entrepreneurs.

The world sorely needs more talented engineers, and more talented entrepreneurs. By helping individuals unlock both those skill sets we can create huge opportunities for students enrolled in this program, says Nicholas Pohlman, an NIU Presidential Teaching Professor who teaches mechanical engineering in the NIU College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Pohlman, who has worked with Fermilab for 16 years, and Barton Sharp from the NIU College of Business, are overseeing the NIU effort, funded by an $850,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program known as Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW). NIUs project is titled, RENEW: Accelerating Underrepresented Engineering Careers through Accelerator Innovations.

The first step in the program is to attract talented students from underserved populations including Black, Hispanic and Indigenous students, many of whom have difficulty seeing themselves in science, technology, engineering or mathematical (STEM) fields, due to a lack of role models. Pohlman and Sharp hope to overcome that hurdle by building those role models into the program.

The goal is to have a pipeline of students, from undergrads to Ph.D. students, says Pohlman. As we build that pipeline, those more advanced students will serve as role models and mentors to the younger students entering the program.

Starting during their undergraduate years, students in the program will have the opportunity to work with NIU engineering faculty and Fermilab scientists on projects pertaining to the development of magnets that are crucial to high-energy physics. The students, who will be paid for their work, will have the opportunity to engage in a steady stream of projects that will build their knowledge, help them develop new skills and build their confidence as they progress.

The students recruited from NIU and selected for this program will be paired with a participating professor from NIU and a research mentor from Fermilabs Magnet Systems Department. The students will then conduct magnet research and development projects at Fermilab. Some of the research areas that students will work on in this program include high-temperature solenoids, fiber optics, quench antenna and machine learning.

We need to develop new experts in the field of accelerator magnet development. It can be very difficult to find the proper experts, said Stoyan Stoynev, deputy head of the Magnet Systems Department at Fermilab. We need new people with new ideas who can push the boundaries of where we are, and we want to develop our own experts and keep the know-how weve built at Fermilab.

In addition to preparing engineers for potential careers at Fermilab (and many other places where their skills would be in demand), the program also aims to turn graduates into entrepreneurs.

While scientists in the field of high energy physics may be looking to unlock the secrets of the universe, they typically have a very narrow focus, says Pohlman. They are so determined to overcome the challenge in front of them that they rarely take the time to think about the potential industrial or commercial applications of what they are working on.

To train this group of scientists to think about other potential uses for the technology, the program will engage the help of the NIU Department of Management, which teaches entrepreneurship. That aspect of the program will be led by Sharp, the Mike and Kristina McGrath Professor of Entrepreneurship in the NIU College of Business.

Sharp is uniquely qualified for the role. He has a degree in engineering and worked in research and development in the aerospace industry before pursuing a career in academe. I have seen first-hand instances where engineers had fantastic ideas, but they end up never coming to fruition because they were not able to get their ideas across to people, Sharp says.

To help students enrolled in the program avoid that fate, Sharp and Pohlman plan to help them develop soft skills like communication and teamwork that intrinsically incorporate appropriate interactions with diverse populations. Some of that work will be done at sessions each semester where the students, faculty and scientists from Fermilab will gather to discuss their work.

Those sessions will be open to anyone on campus and will be held at NIU cultural centers across campus. The goal is not only to expose students from underrepresented groups to potential career paths, but also to get as many viewpoints as possible.

At those meetings, scientists will provide brief elevator pitches describing the technical work they are doing and potential practical application of the technical advances being developed. Not only will this provide an opportunity for students and others to learn about the science, but it will also create a melting pot of ideas where the knowledge and perspectives from a diverse group of people can mix and recombine in ways that lead to new and unexpected innovations and opportunities.

We know from the literature on creativity and entrepreneurship that any successful new development comes about as the result of a recombination of pieces that were already out there, Sharp says. Once you have different ideas swimming around in the same room, theyre going to collide and recombine in ways you never anticipated.

It is from those collisions and combinations that both the NIU and Fermilab partners hope new uses for the technology will arise.

One of the primary goals of that process will be to get the students and the scientists from Fermilab to think about ways that aspects of their work could be applied to ideas far afield from the particle physics at the heart of their work, Pohlman said. Ideally, we would love for some of these ideas to become, or be incorporated into, commercial products or new tools for manufacturers, all with their roots extending to Fermilab.

Throughout the program, resources will be allocated to student-faculty combinations to explore some of those new ideas, using the fail-fast entrepreneurial approach to quickly prototype, test and iterate the different approaches so that funding and other critical resources can be allocated in the most effective and efficient ways.

While the ramp-up of activity has been incremental, one thing that both Pohlman and Sharp agree upon is that they want to involve faculty and students from across campus in the program. Pohlmans excitement is clear: There are plenty of seats available as all thrill rides are the most fun when the acceleration is highest.

We are going to be knocking on a lot of doors across campus to help make this program successful, Sharp said.

For more information, contact Dr. Pohlman at npohlman@niu.edu

NIU is home to one of the best university accelerator physics programs in the nation. The program benefits from the close proximity of major accelerator research facilities atFermi National Accelerator LaboratoryandArgonne National Laboratory. The faculty members associated with the program collaborate with these laboratories and with colleagues from around the world in high-priority accelerator projects and experiments. They also teach accelerator and beam physics courses at NIU.

In October, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded NIU Physics ProfessorBela Erdelyi and a colleague at Argonne National Laboratory a $600,000 grant over three years to study a new type of particle accelerator to be used in discovery science.

About NIU

Northern Illinois University is a student-centered, nationally recognized public research university, with expertise that benefits its region and spans the globe in a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, humanities, arts, business, engineering, education, health and law. Through its main campus in DeKalb, Illinois, and education centers for students and working professionals in Chicago, Naperville, Oregon and Rockford, NIU offers more than 100 areas of study while serving a diverse and international student body.

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Federal grant to help NIU create a generation of more diverse, entrepreneurial engineers | NIU Newsroom - NIU Newsroom