Physics - A unifying framework in the development of science and technology

Physics education and career choices

The physics profession has an exceptionally wide range of career choices in research, development, consulting, and teaching in the basic and applied areas of physics and engineering. In addition, a college degree or a good course work in physics is an excellent preparation for careers in patent law, business, finance, medicine, and even in politics, in order for a politician to acquire in-depth understanding of proper energy and environmental initiatives so as to formulate cost-effective energy policies and effective environmental programs for the country — considering that the Philippines has a great potential for a well-developed tourism industry. It is unfortunate that in developing countries, like the Philippines, physics does not seem to be considered a prerequisite for studies of all the sciences, including economics, health, political and social sciences.

Therefore, it is imperative that Philippine universities must have strong physics departments to support a rapid science and technology development program for the country, to serve as the coordinating disciplinary framework for the Philippine science and technology infrastructure. Moreover, Philippine flagship universities around the country must develop world-class physics research programs, particularly in collaboration with other research disciplines (chemistry, microbiology, computer science, marine sciences, and engineering, etc.), and in line with the needs of domestic and multi-national industries within the country and those of outsourcing industries around the world, in order to directly impact on the country’s economy.

Indeed, a highly interdisciplinary area of research, which presents itself as a great opportunity for Filipino scientists and engineers to perform world-class research work while serving the outsourcing economies around the world, resides in the emerging discipline of Computational Sciences and Engineering.

The case for Computational Sciences and Engineering

The appearance of largely affordable powerful high-performance computational facilities has led to the emergence of a new approach to fundamental research, namely computational modeling and computer-based numerical simulations, with applications in practically all areas of basic and applied sciences, from physical sciences to biological sciences, from medical sciences to economic and social sciences. The applications of computational simulations over the past two decades have been so phenomenal that a new academic discipline, called Computational Sciences and Engineering (CS&E), with its own research centers, laboratories and academia, has appeared in the educational and industrial establishments in almost all the developed, and many developing, countries. The rationale for the need of CS&E is that too many science and engineering graduates do not have strong enough backgrounds in computation to take advantage of these recent developments, while many computer science graduates do not have the background in mathematics and science needed for technical fields. Clearly, the capital investment for computing facilities for establishing CS&E research centers and academic departments is doable in the Philippines. An area where physics is clearly serving as a framework for the advancement of the field of scientific research is in the discipline of CS&E. Of course, advances in computer science, namely advances in hardware, code-development software, and numerical algorithms play an enabling role. CS&E is a promising discipline in shaping future research and development activities in both academia and industry, in fields ranging from engineering, science, finance, and economics, to arts and humanities.

(To be continued)

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Dr. Felixberto A. Buot is a research physicist (retired) from the US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. He is currently a research professor at the Center for Computational Materials Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. He is a fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and a senior member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). He is the guest editor of a special issue of the Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience on “Transport Physics of Low-Dimensional Systems, Mesoscopic Structures and Nanodevices: Theory, Modeling, and Simulation” (American Scientific Publishers, August 2009 issue). He authored a new book entitled “Nonequilibrium Quantum Transport Physics in Nanosystems” with subtitle “Foundation of Computational Nonequilibrium Physics in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology” (World Scientific Publishing Co., July 2009). E-mail him at [email protected].