Physics Professor Becomes Program Director at the National Science Foundation

Photo by Peter Gea

Julio Gea-Banacloche

Julio Gea-Banacloche, a professor in the Physics Department, just joined the National Science Foundation as a program director in the Physics Division. At the moment, he is responsible for the Atomic, Molecular and Optical (AMO) Physics – Theory, and Quantum Information Science programs, but he expects to share some of the responsibility for both programs with a new hire in the coming months.

The NSF is an independent federal agency established in 1950 "to promote the progress of science." Today it funds approximately one-fourth of all federally supported basic research conducted in America's colleges and universities. In many fields such as mathematics, computer science and the social sciences, NSF is the major source of federal funding. Last fiscal year, the Quantum Information Science and AMO-theory programs each awarded grants for approximately $10 million to investigators all over the country.

Although relatively new compared to the AMO-theory program, the Quantum Information Science program at NSF has been in existence for a while, and today it is considered part of the "Quantum Leap" initiative at NSF. This means that studies of quantum information are viewed as a subset of fundamental work on quantum simulation, quantum communication, quantum metrology, and quantum technologies. The Quantum Leap is one of 10 Big Ideas put forward by NSF in 2016 to "identify areas for future investments at the frontiers of science and engineering."

Although most program directors live in the Washington, D.C., area, close to the NSF headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, for Gea-Banacloche relocating was out of the question, so he worked out an arrangement with the Physics Division that will allow him to do most of his work remotely. It is working well so far, although he realizes that there will be times when face-to-face meetings will be necessary, particularly when panels are convened to evaluate proposals.

Interestingly, although Gea-Banacloche himself has received funding from the Physics Division in the past, much of the research currently going on in the Physics Department at the U of A is funded by a different division, the Division of Materials Research, which, for historical reasons, has always been the main source of support for condensed-matter physics. This is fine, says Gea-Banacloche, because it means fewer conflicts of interest for him in his new job. On the other hand, this does not mean that the U of A Physics Department is sitting out the "Quantum Leap"; on the contrary, a large interdisciplinary proposal led by physics professors Hugh Churchill and Salvador Barraza-Lopez (and also including Gea-Banacloche) was submitted earlier this year to the NSF Q-AMASE-I (Foundries for Quantum Materials Science, Engineering and Information) program, with good reviews that suggest it will probably be funded next year.