NSF director optimistic after YSU lab ceremony

By Harold Gwin

Dr. Arden Bement was impressed by the diversity evident in YSU’s program.

YOUNGSTOWN — The head of the National Science Foundation said research projects done by students at Youngstown State University gave him “fresh hope in the future.”

Dr. Arden L. Bement Jr., NSF director and a New Castle, Pa., native, was on campus Monday to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new chemistry research laboratory on the fifth floor of Ward Beecher Hall.

He got a chance to review 13 research projects and speak with the students who created them before visiting the lab.

“There’s a lot of intellectual discussion going on here,” observed Dr. David C. Sweet, YSU president, as he watched Bement spending time with each student talking about their work.

Bement got so involved in those discussions that it was difficult to keep the program on schedule, Sweet said.

This research facility has broad implications in various fields of science, Bement said later, and he offered high praise for YSU’s use of sophisticated research instruments in its undergraduate programs.

Many schools don’t have that advantage for their undergrads, he said, noting that often it is only graduate and doctorate candidates who get to use those types of machines.

Bement also noted a lot of diversity in YSU’s program, pointing out that a significant number of women and minorities were among the 13 students making their presentations.

Getting those groups interested in science is a national effort, and YSU seems to be doing that very successfully, Bement said.

He also offered praise to U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, for his efforts to secure federal funding for the lab as well as other research and development programs at YSU. Ryan has the foresight to understand the importance of the instrumentation needed to carry out that research, Bement said.

“Step by step, we are changing the image of our community,” Ryan said. “The opening of this lab and the partnership we’ve had with the NSF is another major step in our region moving from older industries to science and research-based jobs.”

The lab is funded in large part by a $475,000 NSF grant, the latest in a total of $2.1 million in NSF support for math, science and engineering research efforts.

“With partnerships seeded by federal funding, a region can quickly build competitive research capacity that in turn sparks new companies, new jobs and a more robust economy,” Bement said.

The new YSU lab includes diagnostic equipment that allows chemists to identify substances and to characterize specific arrangements of atoms within molecules.

Dr. Allen Hunter, professor of chemistry, said the lab already has a series of research partnerships with a number of other institutions of higher learning, essentially lending those other schools dedicated access time to use YSU’s equipment by remote control from their own locations. That greatly expands the lab’s teaching capacity beyond just the YSU campus, he said.

gwin@vindy.com