Northwestern and Argonne National Laboratory established the Northwestern-Argonne Institute for Science and Engineering this month to maximize the impact of research collaborations.
The institute builds on the 30-year relationship between NU and Argonne, the first national laboratory in the U.S., according to the laboratory’s website. Owned by the Department of Energy and managed by the University of Chicago, Argonne conducts mission-driven research in fields such as energy, sustainability, the environment and national security.
Argonne Director Dr. Eric Isaacs said successful NU-Argonne collaborations such as the DOE-funded Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center, which works to improve the efficiency of solar cells, played a role in starting the new initiative.
“Because of those successes, we’re able to declare this institute, and the institute will build on those successes,” Isaacs said. “To have an institute with my scientists going up and visiting Northwestern and vice versa, putting us in the same place, would be very powerful.”
Besides strengthening existing collaborations, the institute will allow Argonne engineers and scientists to hold faculty appointments at NU as well as provide NU faculty and students with increased opportunities to use Argonne’s facilities, including an advanced computing facility and the Advanced Photon Source. Findings from the APS, an X-ray research facility where NU runs two of 34 sectors, promote developments in areas such as pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Jay Walsh, NU’s vice president for research, said while the APS has remained one of the most significant links between Argonne and NU, the computing facility presents newer chances for collaboration.
“As we move forward with the computational science that we’re doing, it’s useful to have this relationship with a supercomputer facility,” Walsh said. “The other side of that is we have some really strong computational scientists here at Northwestern… (This) will allow the facility to do more and more important and impactful research.”
The institute will decide on and proceed with projects depending on the specializations of the faculty and scientists who join, Isaacs said.
Some students, including McCormick rising sophomore Neel Kunjur, believe the institute’s establishment could not have occurred at a better time.
“I think that there are a lot of students – at least the students I know that are my age – that are starting to look at research right now,” Kunjur said. “For engineers, it’s a lot of really interesting and sort of futuristic engineering topics that are exciting, so I think a lot of students would be really into working with that.”
Kunjur said researching at Argonne would be ideal because he is interested in solar energy, and NU and Argonne collaborate in that field.
Despite undergraduates’ interest in research at Argonne, the distance between the institutions could present a problem. Walsh said traveling to Argonne, which is about 90 minutes away from NU in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, during the school year is difficult because there is no shuttle between the two locations. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who research at Argonne commute by carpooling.
Walsh said NU is open to expanding its carpool program as its connection with Argonne grows.
“What (the ties a university has with an outside laboratory) do is they provide a different, intellectually stimulating environment for the faculty and the students different than what you’re going to get in a university environment,” he said. “I can envision the day when we actually have a shuttle.”
