Director's Page

Frans Spaepen—September 2011

Since the merger with Harvard in 2002, the Rowland Institute continues Dr. Edwin Land's vision of the ideal laboratory: a broad view of science and an appreciation for the rich potential for discovery in the contact between the traditional disciplines; a dedication to small-scale laboratory science; an emphasis on superb technical for experimentation; and a desire to let the best minds be creative without concern for the vagaries of the funding world.

Central to the Institute is the Junior Fellows program. Young scientists have the opportunity to perform independent experimental work for five years, with full institutional support and access to the Institute's outstanding technical and scientific resources. Every year, we look for candidates in all the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, ...) as well as in engineering, with special attention to interdisciplinary opportunities and the development of new experimental methods.

Each year, we receive a great number of applications from highly motivated, skilled and imaginative young scientists. Selecting the few Fellows therefore is a challenge, but, as a result, we have had here over the years a remarkable group of young scientists with both "good ideas" and "good hands".

A look at the rest of this website will show the scientific diversity of the group, both present and past. Not only is this diversity in keeping with the spirit of Dr. Land's vision, it also gives us a large talent pool to draw on and it fosters exchange of ideas across disciplinary boundaries.

It has been very exciting to see each class of new Fellows come in, set up their laboratories, develop their experiments and make new friends, scientifically and personally. The independence they enjoy is almost unique for experimentalists at this stage of their career, and providing it is the Institute's foremost aim. I strongly encourage the incoming Fellows to be ambitious, to use this unique opportunity to pursue the ideas they're really enthusiastic about, not the safe, "most fundable" ones that they would have proposed elsewhere. In fact, the Fellows should go after just those ideas that they know will be turned down by that hide-bound peer reviewer for the funding agencies.

The disappearance of the great exploratory industrial research laboratories has been a major loss for the scientific world. Our Institute aims to be a place where some of that spirit is revived, and I am pleased to see that there are a number of initiatives worldwide that have followed suit.