http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/science/21CONV.html?pagewanted=print&position=
October 21, 2003
A CONVERSATION WITH | PRAVEEN CHAUDHARI
New Chief at Physics Lab Tries to Polish Faded Star
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

PTON, N.Y. — When Dr. Praveen Chaudhari was appointed director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory last winter, he took over a vast research organization that was at once distinguished and troubled.

For much of the 1950's and 1960's, the 5,300-acre center operated for the Atomic Energy Commission (since absorbed by the Department of Energy) was a star in the federal research laboratory system and an international leader in particle and atomic physics.

But by the 1990's, Brookhaven administrators found themselves embroiled in a series of damaging disputes with local political figures over environmental practices at the laboratory.

The controversies reached critical mass in 1997 when one of Brookhaven's three nuclear reactors was discovered to be leaking radioactive tritium. A second reactor, inactive since 1969, was also discharging radioactive contaminants in the soil and ground water.

In the furor that followed, the Department of Energy responded to community pressure and shut down the leaking reactor citing economic and not environmental reasons. In 2000, Brookhaven officials shut down a third reactor, a small one used in medical research.

After the closings, much of the neutron-scattering science was moved to laboratories elsewhere. Since then, a war of resentment has simmered between some Brookhaven researchers who say the reactor closings were unreasonable and activists who view the laboratory as an insensitive neighbor.

The man now in charge of Brookhaven hails from the comparatively tranquil world of private industry. Before accepting the Brookhaven post, succeeding Dr. John H. Marburger III, now President Bush's chief science adviser, Dr. Chaudhari was a vice president at I.B.M.

He directed its scientific research and engaged in a fair amount of scientific investigation himself. A materials scientist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Chaudhari filed some 22 patents while at I.B.M., including one for the erasable read-write compact discs now commonly used to burn music.

"Brookhaven has a very rich history, and it has the potential to become one of the foremost laboratories in the world," Dr. Chaudhari said, sitting in his modernistic office on the Brookhaven campus. "I see all of this potential there, and I know it can be molded to do superb science."

Q. We've heard you were recruited for this job by an employment service. Is that true?

A. Yes. A woman called me one morning at I.B.M. to say that the Brookhaven directorship was open. I thought she was asking me to recommend a possible candidate. "No," she said, "we were thinking about you." I was stunned. They'd been looking for someone for a year.

Q. What was it about heading Brookhaven that intrigued you?

A. Like many people at private labs and at universities, I had this preconception of the national labs as places where second-class science was being done. I thought, If that is true, then here is an opportunity to try something challenging.

Q. Among federal researchers, Brookhaven has a reputation as a corner of the federal laboratory system without a clear mission or identity. The weapons labs like Los Alamos are known for their weapons, Fermilab for particle physics. Is Brookhaven a laboratory in search of an identity?

A. I wouldn't characterize it that way. Ours is a multipurpose lab. Brookhaven is probably the world's best high-energy nuclear physics lab. They've discovered here this new state of matter we believe probably existed in the first microsecond of the Big Bang.

There's also a great strength at Brookhaven in medical imaging and we also have the world's most-used light source. There are many other areas, homeland security, for instance, where we are strong. We're working on protecting New York City with sensors that would detect nuclear materials.

Q. Going back to the events of the late 1990's, do you have any sympathy for the community concerns over the nuclear reactors?

A. I've spoken to many people of divergent points of view, and the one consistent view is, The closing of the reactors was not commensurate with what actually happened.

Now, if I was a neighbor of Brookhaven, not knowing what was going on and suddenly learning that something will be coming my way in my drinking water, or in my soil, I'd worry about it, too. And I might respond in a certain way. But the newspapers got involved, and they had a story to write. The net result was that it all spiraled out of proportion.

Q. One of your predecessors here as director, the Nobel physicist Leon Lederman, claims that a downside to this job is having to confer with endless Energy Department officials, whom he describes as more interested in "safety, procurement, administrative details, security" than scientific achievements. Is he right?

A. I think that the D.O.E. has a very interesting way of dealing with the national labs. They have an area office over here where you have the folks who observe what we do. We have regular meetings with the Washington office, the local D.O.E. office and another office in Chicago. So there are three D.O.E. offices that we interact with.

Now I certainly understand the value of safety and the environment. Particularly given our history at this lab, we have to be very careful. As far as environment is concerned, I think it's important that scientists, of all people, should respect the environment. They understand nature. They know how complex and beautiful nature is. So you have to respect it. I don't find environmental constraints irritating, at all.

Q. What about the new security constraints? Since 9/11, security has been stricter around the various national laboratories. Several scientists have complained to me that these restrictions cut the national labs off from the public, create fear about what is going on within them and undermine attempts by scientists to build bridges to the public.

A. No, we've got radioactive material in this lab. We can't have people wandering around, picking it up and walking away.

We worry about that and so we have to protect the lab and safeguard it. That's part of homeland security. So if you see more guards these days at the gate, it's for that reason. It doesn't stop science. It doesn't stop people from coming in.

Q. On a quite different subject, how did you come to invent that bane of copyright lawyers, the erasable read-write compact discs on which music can be burned?

A. We were looking for ideas for storage on computers at I.B.M. that were different from what was conventionally being used. That was in the 1970's. The idea that we eventually used had already been discussed, but there was no practical implementation of the idea.

So my two colleagues and I, we were working on this alternate storage technology called magnetic bubble storage. One afternoon, we were in a bar talking about the difficulties of that technology. We wondered if we couldn't try it a different way, one that we weren't even certain was possible within the laws of nature.

So we went back to the lab and did an experiment. We were trying to build a material which would have a special sense of direction. Yet the material we were choosing — glass — by definition, had no sense of direction. Well, it worked.

Q. As the co-inventor of the read-write disc technology, are you a rich man?

A. No. I.B.M. owns the patents.

Q. Do you ever use your own read-write discs?

A. I don't use it at all. I'm not into mobile music. If I listen to music, that's what I do.

Q. Many of the scientists working in American laboratories are originally from Asia. Do you have any insight on why this scientific immigration wave has come to be a reality?

A. I can't tell you about China, but in India, it's well known that you can go to the U.S. and do well. The reason most South Asians come is because they hear in the newspaper about all the great things that are possible, the jobs, the lack of discrimination, so it builds up.

Q. Are opportunities for people outside the United States opening up here because many native-born Americans don't study math and science anymore?

A. I think some of it is because American kids grow up in a society where money is greatly valued. Since they have many options open to them, they move toward professions where they can do that. Science is not something you associate with making money.

In developing countries like India, science is looked at as noble and important. If someone wins a prize, their picture is in the newspapers and they are photographed with the prime minister. Kids follow that and it gives them a sense that this is something they'd like to do.

Q. What is one big difference between being an I.B.M. vice president and being a director of a federal laboratory?

A. I had one boss there. Here I have five.