Research gives students unique opportunities

Students on the research team have traveled to Japan and Germany.
& lt;a href=mailto:viviano@vindy.com & gt;By JoANNE VIVIANO & lt;/a & gt;
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Tom Drummond said he didn't have any perspective of how special the project was when he signed on to help out in the Youngstown State University physics lab.
The research then took him to a facility in New York. There, the student helped other members of a YSU team study an isotope of the metallic element hafnium as it was blasted with a specific, unique X-ray.
Drummond said the researchers working in a station next to the YSU students asked him, "How close are you to getting your Ph.D.s?"
"No," he told them. "We're all undergrads here."
"These guys about fell out of their chairs," Drummond said with a smile as he told the story earlier this month in a Youngstown lab.
"I feel even more lucky now," he added. "It changed my perspective."
The YSU project is being funded by a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Drummond, of Niles, is one of about a half-dozen students who are part of the advanced physics research.
The grant is the largest ever given to a single faculty member at YSU.
Researcher
Dr. James J. Carroll has been at YSU since 1995 and working in this type of research since about 1987. At YSU, he's won roughly $3 million total in grant money, mostly through the Air Force and federal Department of Energy. This year, total funding comes from governmental grants amounting to $600,000.
"If people in the Valley knew not only what I'm doing but what other faculty are doing -- to expand knowledge -- that is really of a cutting edge, they would understand that YSU is a tremendous bargain," he said.
Carroll is spending the year outside the classroom to devote full-time work hours to the research. The goal is to discover if and how energy can be released from these isotopes. If it works, the team will have discovered a new source of nuclear energy that is free of radioactive byproducts.
Researchers know several isotopes store this benign energy -- per gram, one stores 100,000 times as much energy as gasoline -- but they have not figured out a "switch" that would release that energy easily and efficiently, Carroll said.
Possible uses
Counterterrorism applications could include the fueling of unpiloted surveillance aircraft that could remain in flight for months or years; or the safe disinfection of areas that contain poisons such as anthrax (bacteria don't like these isotopes), the professor said.
In the medical industry, the isotopes could be attached to biological molecules and sent to the site of tumors in the bodies of cancer patients. Turned on at that site, the isotopes would eliminate the need for whole-body radiation treatments.
"It's only amazing if it works," Carroll said. "Right now it looks as though it could take a very large machine to be the switch. If something small was the switch it could be portable."
Finding out if this will work means hitting a nearly microscopic isotope sample with a barrage of X-rays of various strengths and capabilities, Carroll said.
As that work is done, machines worth hundreds of thousands of dollars sense energy bursts coming out of the isotope sample, transform them to electrical impulses and record them. Researchers then interpret the data to see when and where energy was released and what caused it.
Valuable sample
One challenge was coming up with an isotope sample. The minuscule sample of hafnium 178 that the YSU team tests was made by accident by a team in Los Alamos that found it as a byproduct of another experiment. Carroll makes sure it is kept under lock and key.
The YSU team works with various domestic and international collaborators, including a Russian team and labs in Germany and Japan. Carroll has taken students to both labs to use the enormous, specialized X-ray machines.
This summer, they visited the Japanese lab, the largest facility of its type. The single machine is about a mile in circumference and features 100 detectors to sense energy bursts.
But YSU also has its own lab and equipment -- its "miniball" has six detectors to surround the sample. Some of the items are in a lab at the university's engineering building. The rest are in the Oak Hill Renaissance Plaza building in a former radiation oncology area of the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center. The thick shields in the walls protect students reading data from the X-ray equipment in a nearby room.
Yes, the work is sometimes frustrating, but that is part of the fun, team members said -- especially when they discover something new.
Diverse interests
The team is made up of students with various interests. Drummond, for example, is an education student who wants to be a science teacher.
Deepak Gautam of Nepal studies electrical engineering and said he was fascinated by Carroll's work and the possibility of finding more energy sources for the country.
Ron Propri of Niles is a physics major who said he "just got lucky" when he asked about a job and landed in this lab.
"It's given me some direction," he said. "Now that I'm doing this I realize that I might enjoy doing research once I get my Ph.D."
Phil Ugorowski is a postdoctorate research fellow from St. Clair Shores, Mich., who sought out the research position because it sounded interesting and had perks, such as international travel.
"It's the thrill of being the first person to know something," he said. "And it's never the same job twice."
& lt;a href=mailto:viviano@vindy.com & gt;viviano@vindy.com & lt;/a & gt;