MSU’s FRIB on the cutting edge of science and developing the next generation of researchers

<p>Thomas is a university distinguished professor, and in 2008, he led the team that prepared the winning <a href="https://twitter.com/FRIB_NEWS">FRIB</a> proposal, bringing <a href="http://frib.msu.edu">FRIB</a> to <a href="http://msu.edu">Michigan State University</a>. Since then, he's led a team of 850 employees to run the FRIB laboratory within Michigan State University. </p><p>“FRIB is the world's most powerful heavy ion accelerator,” Glasmacher tells Spartans athletic director Bill Beekman. “We can accelerate any element from hydrogen to uranium to half the speed of light at quite a high intensity. By doing that, we can make rare isotopes that once existed on earth that have long since decayed and continue being made in the universe and in stars. We can make those isotopes available to scientists from all over the country so they can study their properties and see how they can be applied to better everybody's life.”</p><p>Glasmacher explains how FRIB works and how the facility is a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility and what that means.</p><p>“Part of being a <a href="https://www.wkar.org/post/us-department-energy-designates-frib-doe-office-science-user-facility">user facility</a> is that scientists have to write proposals to use the facility. They have to promise to publish the results. These proposals get reviewed by a panel of other scientists. And if they're ranked high enough, they get allocated beam time. Scientists come from all over the country and the world.</p><p>“The average experiment has teams of 30 to 50 people. These instruments are too hard to run just with one scientist. You have to convince the panel that you have a group of people who can pull it off and get the data analyzed. The typical experiment is about a week-long and involves those 30 to 50 collaborators. Some of those collaborations are also from different countries. They come here a couple of weeks before, set up their instruments, get everything going, then run it for a week or two. We have about 1,500