UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 37, Page 3
July 18, 1996
IBM experience; Rabolt named new chair of materials science

     I don't care whether someone's a physicist or a chemist or an
engineer," John Rabolt, recently appointed chairperson of the
Materials Science Program, said. "I care about the information they
have; what they know."
     Joining the University after almost 20 years at IBM, Rabolt said
he feels strongly that successful collaborations-whether between
academic departments or among universities, industries and
government-are based primarily on familiarity and mutual respect.
     "We're dealing with important cultural differences here," he
said. "They're not insurmountable, but they are very real barriers to
working together. Those in industry often see universities as
unwilling to be practical, while the perception in academia is that
industry is interested only in the bottom line.
     "At IBM, I was working in a 'quasi-industrial lab,' where we were
doing a lot of basic science," he said. "So, in a way, it was as close
to academia as you can get in an industrial environment."
     Most recently, he was a member of the Science and Technology
group at IBM Almaden Research Center, where he was instrumental in
establishing the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center on Polymer
Interfaces and Macromolecular Assemblies, a cooperating effort among
Stanford University, IBM, and the University of California at Davis.
     "The NSF program gave us a chance to try on an official basis
what we had been doing informally for 20 years," Rabolt said. "We had
always had good relationships with these local universities, but
industry had consistently played a secondary role in any joint
efforts. We wanted to get beyond that, to reach a point where we had
mutual respect for what each of us brought to the table. Once you have
that, then you have a solid foundation on which to build a research
program."
     The approach apparently has been successful, winning the program
favorable reviews in its first three years.
     According to Rabolt, "The government now wants to know why a
project should be funded, what its potential impact is. It has to be
more than just an inherently interesting problem. And, even if we
can't solve the problem tomorrow, we do have to understand the context
in which it fits."
     He said he believes that all students, including undergraduates,
should be encouraged to work in industry, in an intern-type role
during the summer, for example. "This type of experience lets students
see that they can have an impact, that they can make a contribution
and enrich the knowledge of the group." He also said he thinks that
students should be well-trained in their technical field of choice,
but also in communications skills, ethics and project financial
management.
     Research centers like the Center for Composite Materials can
contribute to this approach by providing an interdisciplinary
environment where collaboration is already occurring. To some extent,
proximity alone goes a long way toward fostering such relationships,
according to Rabolt.
     "If you tell university people to work on an IBM problem, they're
probably not going to be interested," he said. "But, if you put the
IBM people and the university people in the same room, innate
curiosity will take over, and they'll start getting interested in the
problem by talking about it and sharing ideas."
     Rabolt's ideas about changing the academic culture were formally
explored with others during "Materials 2000," one of his first
projects at UD. The workshop focused on educating materials scientists
for the 21st century and brought together industrial representatives
and faculty who discussed such questions as "Will the Ph.D. be needed
in industry in the future?" and "Should we require students to
participate in more off-campus experiences?"
     He also is seeking representatives from industry who are willing
to serve on a steering committee/ advisory board.
     "Coming from industry," Rabolt said, "I'm not afraid to ask them
their vision of future needs in materials. After all, they, along with
students, are key 'customers' of universities.  More importantly,
though, we have to build bridges to industry, and bridges are built
from both sides. If it's done right, they meet in the middle,
providing a pathway for the interchange of ideas."
                                                         -Diane Kukich