Dr Andreas Altes

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I took a long way round because I first preferred to experience professional training and career before starting an academic education. Although I would not like to miss neither the practical know how by my time as electronic technician nor the work experience as development engineer these days, I did not come to inner rest at that time. So a series of happenstances, tolerating fellow men, and the permanent feeling of having much questions but only a few answers has led me into a kind of research.

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Professor Vladimir M. Borisov

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:When I was young man I hoped that science, primarily physics, would help me to understand the surrounding world more clearly. In any case I like to do experiments and obtain my own direct experience without abstraction. The area of my research is high energy, high power lasers and discharge produced plasma sources. This area gives a lot of impression, experience and new ideas.

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Dr Ronny Brandenburg

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:Already in school science and especially physics were my favorite subjects. Scientific phenomena and questions just fascinated and still fascinate me. I went into plasma physics since plasmas are very complex and exciting systems. Furthermore plasma have a high technological potential and the interrelation of basic and applied research is very interesting for me.

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Professor Masayoshi Esashi

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I entered the Faculty of Engineering because I was interested in electronics and mechanics. I have been studying MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical System) based on semiconductor microfabrication because my supervisor acquired related information abroad, and because a famous professor for prototyping semiconductor devices was in our university (Tohoku University).

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Professor Dr Manfred Fiebig

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:The reason to choose physics are: a love of nature, the desire to learn how things really work, a scientific background in my family, appreciation of thoroughness. I grew up with all that space travel going on and all those glossy pictures of planets and moons fascinated me. My earliest recollection is my parents dragging me in front of the television in the middle of the night at the age of 3½ for watching the landing on the moon.

I chose the field of laser optics because I always liked to see things with my own eyes (photography is one of my hobbies). With a laser I can do this in a literal sense – it produces light. Further, a laser allows me to control things and turn screws myself. Working on a big machine with a huge team of researchers would not satisfy me, I guess.

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Dr Eric T Lagally

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I was lucky to have had a good high school education. It was there that I took a new class entitled “Biotechnology”. We made root beer using yeast, extracted DNA from plant cells and spooled it on a glass rod, and ran simple gel electrophoresis experiments. It was then that I decided to go into this area for my career.

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Dr John J Lowke

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I was born in the Barossa Valley in South Australia from an enclave of fundamentalist German Lutherans who migrated to Australia in the 1850's. My first lesson in history at high school was on the theory of evolution, with homework set to read Genesis Chapter 1 for a different angle of our origins. The lesson deeply influenced me to want to become a school teacher. After teaching for three years in high schools in Australia I returned to university to do a PhD and then obtained a job at the Adelaide Teacher's College. I then obtained a position at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh, USA, intending to return to Australia probably in the field of education. After nearly being fired at the end of my first fairly unsuccessful year at Westinghouse I finally "cracked" it and became interested in the physics of electrical discharges in gases, which has been my life long research interest.

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Dr Anthony B Murphy

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I remember that at age 15 I nominated lawyer, doctor and politician as my three favoured careers. However, I had an excellent physics teacher, Neville Warren, in my first year of senior high school, and thereafter the die was cast. In terms of fields of research, I chose nuclear fusion plasmas as my PhD topic since the physics department at Sydney University, where I was studying, had built a new tokamak (a device that produces nuclear fusion plasmas) and had some exciting projects on offer. I changed fields to industrial plasmas to obtain a position with CSIRO (an Australian government research organisation), and have since then followed CSIRO’s research directions.

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Dr Philip Pong

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I did my bachelor degree in electrical and electronic engineering in Hong Kong. My final year project was about quantification of image quality of photolithography. It was this final year project, together with the inspiration from my final year project supervisor, which initiated my goal of getting into graduate school to do a PhD. At the time, I wanted to do my PhD in the computer chips production related areas. At the end, I got in touch with my PhD supervisor in Cambridge and he was doing nanotechnology with specific interest in scanning tunnelling microscopy, and that was how I got into science. I am now working as a postdoctoral researcher in the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the project of developing ultra-sensitive magnetic field sensor.

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Dr (Mrs) Asmita Risbud

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:In school I was equally good at all subjects: languages, mathematics and science. I was always attracted by the inventions made by great scientists, which made our lives easy. My curiosity to understand the basic working principles of the modern gadgets used in every day life made me choose science as my career path.

It was all by chance that I landed into this field of research. The topic of Cherenkov radiation was suggested to me by my teacher Prof. R. G. Takwale, for the project work at the M.Sc. level. Later on Prof. S. S. Joshi, who has to his credit the famous ‘Joshi effect’ inspired me to do research by presenting me his personal copy of the biography of Madam Curie written by her daughter, Eve Curie. It was a great real life-story of three Nobel Laureates!

Prof M. R. Bhiday was head of our department at that time. He had worked in leading laboratories in advanced countries on Cherenkov Counters. He took keen interest in my work. One day he suggested to me, “Why don’t you find theoretically what is the effect of alternating electric field on Cherenkov radiation? If you do that the credit will be worth 4 to 5 PhDs!” I accepted the challenge and started work earnestly on the suggested problem. As my work progressed I found high correlation of my work with the developing devices, ‘Free Electron Generators of Coherent Radiation’. In that context the process of Stimulated Electromagnetic Shock Radiation was proposed and I found it to be very interesting.

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Dr Georg Schmidt

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I have been interested in natural sciences since my childhood. After school I realized that somehow most of the fields like chemistry, biology or electrical engineering all meet their limits where someone else becomes responsible. This is a bit unsatisfying and it only does not happen to you when you are a physicist. So I decided to study physics. The fact that I am now in spintronics and nanotechnology can merely be attributed to the limited funding situation in the beginning of my postdoc time (which I am very grateful for now).

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Professor Masao Washizu

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:My father was a professor of aeronautics, and I might have to admit his influence. My research area is bio-nanotechnology, and the motivation I stepped into this field 20 years ago was to bring engineering technologies, such as microfabrication or electrostatic field-effects, into biology and medicine.

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