Physicist seeks to resolve energy crisis, will lead team of ‘rising star’ researchers

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Oct 3, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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A new faculty team led by a professor LSU calls a superstar in the field of material sciences plans to tackle the world’s sustainable energy challenges.

LSU announced the hiring Thursday of physicist E. Ward Plummer of the University of Tennessee and much of his newly picked team.

Plummer is the first National Academy of Sciences member in LSU’s history, according to the university.

“Every state is having financial trouble, and to be able to bring this group (to LSU) really is important,” Plummer said.

Plummer will be the faculty team leader and also serve as special assistant to Brooks Keel, LSU’s vice chancellor of research and economic development.

Plummer will start with a $310,000 annual salary, Keel said, calling it “money well spent.”

Plummer is currently director of the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, which combines the research expertise at Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The faculty hiring coup, as described by LSU officials, is part of LSU’s Multidisciplinary Hiring Initiative, or MHI for short.

The initiative was started last year under former Chancellor Sean O’Keefe as a way to hire teams of top faculty members under certain research umbrellas that contain multiple research disciplines.

The first three major “cluster” research areas are material science, computational science and Atlantic studies.

Material science includes studying nanotechnology and micro-fabrication of new materials and tiny devices, such as the miniature components of iPods, said Kevin Carman, LSU College of Basic Sciences dean.

“It’s quite a remarkable assembly of outstanding scholars,” said LSU Provost Astrid Merget of the new team. “Simply put, he (Plummer) is a world-class scientist who will bring enormous credit to LSU.”

MHI involves hiring the “very best minds, the luminaries in each field, who in turn will recruit the rising stars,” Merget said.