Mary Carlucci Dayton and her scanning transmission Xray microscope (MSI 1999).

This special course of study is open to students holding a Bachelor's degree in physical science or engineering who wish to pursue a career in today's high technology research and development laboratories. It is designed to meet the needs of modern industry, hospitals, and research laboratories for technically trained people with very thorough scientific background. Such jobs are often filled by over-qualified or under-qualified people whose education is not directed toward this particular need. Many of these people presently take on-the-job training in precisely the topics this program teaches. Its graduates are therefore highly desirable in almost every technologically oriented industry in the country.

   M.S.I. students are drawn from a very large pool of Bachelor degree holders in physical science and engineering who wish further training toward a scientific or technical profession, but not to become Ph.D.'s. At first, students are supported by the department as teaching assistants in undergraduate courses. Later, they work in well-equipped research laboratories such as the Van de Graaff accelerator, the superconducting linear accelerator, laser spectroscopy labs, low temperature facility, electron micro-lithography facility, x-ray microscopy apparatus, surface and associated ultrahigh vacuum facility, helium liquefier, high energy research labs, and our beam lines at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Lab.

Common to all of these facilities are sophisticated analog and digital supporting electronic instruments too numerous to list. Many possess high vacuum equipment and computerized data acquisition systems. The department has just opened a new laser and optical sciences facility that is particularly well-suited for MSI projects in this rapidly expanding technology. In addition, the students receive training in our modern machine shop, welding facility, electronics center, and advanced technology laboratory.

Diode laser stabilization system built by Carlos Avila (MSI 1998).

The Department has a faculty of about 60, some 30 of whom conduct research in experimental physics and participate in this program. Many of the faculty eagerly seek M.S.I. students for their laboratories because of the utility of the instrumentation systems developed by the students. There are about 175 graduate students in the Ph.D. program, and the M.S.I. students have a strong symbiotic relationship with them. The considerable overlap of interests of these two groups provides motivation and stimulus for each of them while the diversity of viewpoints and skills enables mutual enrichment. Many of the projects are directed toward the Ph.D. work of students who therefore help, encourage, and instruct their M.S.I. counterparts. Similarly, the M.S.I. students help in laboratories with a large number of instrumentation and electronic projects.

     The Stony Brook area has a large number of scientific and technologically oriented enterprises. The campus has Ph.D. granting departments in all the major scientific disciplines, a modern and comprehensive health sciences center offering undergraduate and graduate degrees, and a large number of science-oriented professors. It is expected that strong ties will develop with a variety of local industrial concerns that will result in a cooperative effort with the university. Such relationships need to be developed over a period of several years. This institution is therefore ideally suited for the education and training of capable scientists whose specialty is the modern instrumentation associated with scientific research and modern industry.