University of Illinois Swanlund Professor of Physics and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics Laura Greene has been elected to the presidential line of the American Physical Society (APS) by a vote of its membership. Starting in January 2015, Greene will serve successive one-year terms as vice president, president elect, president, and past president.
Greene brings to this new role a tremendous amount of experience working to promote the interests of the scientific community, both within the US and internationally. While in office, she intends to focus on three interrelated calls to action that share the same objectives: advancing science, improving education, and ultimately enriching society. These calls to action include building stronger partnerships among universities, national laboratories, and industry; increasing public outreach and public engagement in science; and promoting increased diversity in our global scientific interactions, particularly with developing countries.
Underlying this agenda is Greene’s recognition of the pressing need for sustained and increased funding for both fundamental and applied physics research, which serves as a “fountainhead for technology.” Greene says APS must take a leadership role in promoting public engagement that would engender political support for scientific research.
Written by Siv Schwink
University of Illinois Swanlund Professor of Physics and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics Laura GreeneUniversity of Illinois Swanlund Professor of Physics and Center for Advanced Study Professor of Physics Laura Greene has been elected to the presidential line of the American Physical Society (APS) by a vote of its membership. Starting in January 2015, Greene will serve successive one-year terms as vice president, president elect, president, and past president.
Greene brings to this new role a tremendous amount of experience working to promote the interests of the scientific community, both within the US and internationally. While in office, she intends to focus on three interrelated calls to action that share the same objectives: advancing science, improving education, and ultimately enriching society. These calls to action include building stronger partnerships among universities, national laboratories, and industry; increasing public outreach and public engagement in science; and promoting increased diversity in our global scientific interactions, particularly with developing countries.
Underlying this agenda is Greene’s recognition of the pressing need for sustained and increased funding for both fundamental and applied physics research, which serves as a “fountainhead for technology.” Greene says APS must take a leadership role in promoting public engagement that would engender political support for scientific research.
“When funding is not sustained, lost resources, especially in personnel, may not be recovered,” notes Greene. “Ramifications of sequestration have been estimated to persist over the subsequent decade. If our population understood and showed support for the importance of fundamental and applied research to meet our 21st century global technological challenges, our political leaders would have to be more sympathetic.”
At the same time, Greene believes that it’s incumbent upon physicists working in the US to support the same kinds of developments across cultures: “It is vital to be concomitantly working internationally with general populations and scientists, particularly in developing nations where there remain tremendous untapped human resources.”
Greene holds that increased diversity among scientists brings increased potential for discovery:
“My passion for science is only rivaled by my passion for increasing its human diversity, not only from the human rights perspective, but also for the global gains in our advancement of fundamental and applied physics,” asserts Greene.
At U. of I., Greene is an associate director for the Center for Emergent Superconductivity, an Energy Frontier Research Center. Greene's research is in experimental condensed matter physics investigating strongly correlated electron systems. Much of her research focuses on fundamental studies to determine the mechanisms of unconventional superconductivity by planar tunneling and point contact electron spectroscopies, and on developing methods for predictive design of new families of superconducting materials. In the quest for these long-term goals, spectroscopic studies of the electronic structure of heavy fermions, unconventional superconductors, and other novel materials that show strong electronic correlations are performed. Studies of superconducting proximity effects on novel normal-state and superconducting materials are also done. Another long-term goal is in improving the current carrying capabilities of high-temperature superconductors for impacting a variety of applications, with a focus on those impacting superconductivity for energy storage, production, and transmission.
Greene has a long history of service to scientific organizations and societies—too long to list here. Among the highlights, she served on the Sloan Fellowship Selection Committee and on the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada; was recently elected to the AAAS Board of Directors; and chairs the Board of Governors for the International Institute for Complex and Adaptive Matter (I2CAM). She has served on the National Academies’ Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), on the US Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC). Greene also works with COACh to increase the number and career success of women scientists in developing nations, on the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) C5 commission (low temperature physics), and presently on the IUPAP C10 commission (structure and dynamics of condensed matter) while serving on its US Liaison Committee. She is also an active member of the Global Science Education and Engagement group, now working to start a journal on the science of public engagement.
Greene has been a visiting scientist in Orsay, UCI, and Cambridge, and has co-chaired and advised numerous international conferences. Her various editorial positions include Reports on the Progress in Physics (editor-in-chief), Philosophical Transactions A, and Current Opinions in Solid State & Materials Science (COSSMS).
Greene's service to APS includes Council, Executive Board, Committee on Committees, founding member of the Committee on Informing the Public (CIP), co-founder of the new APS Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public (FOEP), nominating, fellowship, multiple prize committees. She is presently the Chair of the Division of Materials Physics (DMP) and served as co-chair of the 2014 March Meeting.
Greene is a member of the National Academy of Science and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the Institute of Physics (in the United Kingdom), and of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2009-10), a Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society (1994) and the US Department of Energy’s E. O. Lawrence Award for Materials Research (1999). She was selected a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow (2009-2010) and was twice selected a U. of I. Center for Advanced Study Research Associate, (2006-2007; 2000-2001).
Greene received her bachelor’s degree in physics from The Ohio State University in 1974. She worked as technical staff at Hughes Aircraft for a year following graduation, before returning to academia. She received a master’s degree in physics from The Ohio State University in 1978, a master’s degree in experimental physics from Cornell University in 1980, and her doctoral degree in physics from Cornell University in 1984. Greene worked at Bell Laboratories and Bellcore for a combined total of nine years before joining the faculty at Physics Illinois.