pervect said:
I must not be as big a physics junkie as I thought - I never heard of the place before. Looking it up on the web, for familiar names, I see Lee Smolin is one of their long term researchers, which is pretty impressive.
Lee Smolin is one of Perimeter Institute's founding physicists, and I believe he brought one or two others with him when he moved to Waterloo. Lee clearly has had a lot of influence on who Perimeter hires and how it is governed on a day-to-day basis. He is much more than just some high-profile scientist who merely happens to work there - Smolin has helped mold the culture of that institute into what is it today.
Here's an article from the Toronto Star that may be of some interest:
Oct. 2, 2004. 01:00 AM
Raising the value of research
Mike Lazaridis wants to educate Canadians about the importance of science So, he's pledged millions on an institute for pure research, writes Peter Calamai
PETER CALAMAI
WATERLOO—Even Mike Lazaridis, the BlackBerry entrepreneur, was a little awed by the futuristic new home for his bold dream to transform how Canadians think about science and how the world regards Canada's research prowess.
On a tour last week with a visitor, Lazaridis for the first time saw the building's eye-popping south wall stripped of the protective paper that had hidden the stunning geometric patterns created by reflecting black panels.
"It's really something, isn't it?" he said of the $25 million headquarters of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which has its gala opening this weekend.
That comment is being echoed by a lot of people who haven't yet seen the new three-storey building, with its rooftop bistro, tubular glass passageways, six wood-burning fireplaces in cozy lounges, soaring atrium over a garden and blackboards on the walls every few metres so that no brilliant idea is lost.
Instead, those people are referring to Lazaridis's vision in creating the institute through his $100 million donation, plus the impact Perimeter has already had in its three years' existence with a handful of senior researchers working out of funky temporary quarters.
"The whole atmosphere for science changes when someone does something like this," says Chaviva Hosek, chief executive of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR) in Toronto and a policy adviser to Jean Chrétien when he was prime minister. "Mike Lazaridis has broadened people's imagination, both about what's possible and about what's important to do."
Like Perimeter, CIAR concentrates on supporting fundamental science that's geared primarily toward expanding human knowledge without obvious practical applications in sight. That's also the focus of Artur Ekert, a pioneer in quantum physics and member of Perimeter's science advisory board.
"I see a vibrant pioneering atmosphere there with people who are aware that something exciting is being created. It's not an exaggeration to say that Perimeter could be Number 1 or Number 2 in the world," says Ekert, a professor at the University of Cambridge.
That's number 1 or 2 in some of the six challenging aspects of theoretical physics where Perimeter is concentrating its intellectual firepower: quantum gravity, string theory, quantum information theory, quantum mechanics and, soon, cosmology and elementary particle physics (see Glossary).
Yet, researchers working at Perimeter have already published more than 100 scientific papers that include notable contributions in some of these more rarefied realms of physics (see Achievements). As well, leading physicists from around the world constantly course like an electric current through the institute as invited visitors, energizing both themselves and Perimeter's resident thinkers.
"The existence of Perimeter has enabled interesting work to happen. People are inspired when they come here," says executive-director Howard Burton.
Lazaridis wants that inspiration to go well beyond the realm of theoretical physics.
His dream is for the institute to contribute to fundamental scientific discoveries that eventually transform the world and also convince Canadians and their elected leaders to put a much higher value on such basic research. In pursuit of that goal, the institute runs an extensive outreach program, including public lectures and a summer physics school for Grade 11 students from Canada and abroad.
"I'm interested in the education of our society about the importance of science," Lazaridis says. "There is no shortage of mysteries, unknowns and adventures when it comes to science. And no shortage of value for deciphering those mysteries and exploring those unknowns."
On the value of basic science, Lazaridis speaks with millions of dollars of authority. As the founder of Research In Motion Ltd. here, the University of Waterloo dropout used technology derived from basic science to create the wireless BlackBerry e-mail device.
As a successful entrepreneur, Lazaridis has been openly critical of what he considers the shameful underinvestment by governments in basic science. He's even attacked the keystone of the federal innovation strategy: increased commercialization of university research.
Yet, he's done more than criticize. Four years ago, Lazaridis pledged $100 million in his own RIM stock to endow the Perimeter Institute, with fellow RIM executives Doug Fregin and Jim Balsillie adding $10 million apiece.
But even a $120 million endowment wasn't going to generate enough annual income to erect a headquarters and pay the 130 people who will eventually work here, including 80 scientists, about 25 administrative staff and 30 graduate students. (Currently, the institute has 40 research scientists and 15 graduate students.) So, Lazaridis and Burton turned to the federal and provincial governments for funds.
Inside the federal bureaucracy, finance department officials opposed grants to Perimeter, arguing that it would create a bad precedent if wealthy private donors set national research priorities.
Yet, Lazaridis's dream found support from the heads of federal science agencies, like Tom Brzustowski, president of Science and Engineering Research Canada.
"It was exactly the sort of precedent we should encourage," Brzustowski says. "When you've got a concentration of very bright people, good things usually emerge. But governments today don't seem to have the patience for that."
Eventually, Ottawa and Queen's Park ponied up $54 million, with $11.2 million earmarked for the building. The major federal operating grant, $25 million over five years, was announced in 2002 by Chrétien when he turned sod for the new building.
The former PM's brother, noted medical researcher Michel Chrétien, is known as a strong proponent of more money for basic research. Dr. Chrétien's name nestles among the list of eminent physicists, local dignitaries and government officials invited here to Perimeter's official ribbon-cutting.
Michel Chrétien won't talk about lobbying his brother on Perimeter's behalf. But he does argue strenuously that major medical advances depend upon a marriage of physics and the biological sciences, and he ardently praises Lazaradis's own thirst for knowledge and commitment to maximum intellectual freedom for the institute's researchers.
"Mike has concluded that academic freedom is the name of the game for people to know more. And he's created an institute where people have that freedom," Chrétien says.
Not only do Perimeter's scientists have far greater freedom to follow their intellectual curiosity than all but a handful of university professors, they also wield a major say in the running of the Institute, modeled on a "community of scholars."
Perimeter's nine long-term researchers, here on renewable contracts for five to seven years, have to approve any recommendation to the institute's board to hire another one of their ilk.
"We're going very carefully, very slowly in the hiring," says Lee Smolin, a high-profile pioneer in quantum gravity and, at 49, among the oldest researchers at Perimeter.
This deliberate pace is dictated by the special culture that the institute is creating through its hiring choices — researchers who actually practise interdisciplinary co-operation, who represent competing approaches to problems and who are eager to take intellectual risks.
"We're interested in people who are going for the biggest things. We're not interested in me-too science," Smolin says.
Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara is a living example of how Perimeter's deliberate culture of challenging inquiry helps shape research. When she joined the Institute three years ago, her chief interests were in a field called loop quantum gravity.
But the institute operates an active program for visiting researchers, who stay from a week to more than a year. In particular, Perimeter sought physicists who specialize in the foundations of quantum theory, an area of study largely neglected elsewhere. And the institute's culture encourages discussion in which no line of questioning is off limits, even those challenging basic assumptions.
"Because of that, I'm actually starting to know what that field is all about and have become interested in working on programs that combine our fields," she says.
Experiences like that have probably contributed to Ekert's judgment that the Perimeter Institute has reached critical mass even before this weekend's celebrations.
"I think Perimeter is here to stay. It's going to fly," the physicist says.
