UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012 - (Page 17)

Dr. Ray Baughman’s (above) interest in research was sparked when he was a teen working in the laboratory of Dr. George A. Jeffrey (left) at the University of Pittsburgh. Baughman is the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry and director of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at UT Dallas. It was pretty brazen of then-16-year-old Ray Baughman, drenched and wearing his Sunday best, to trek around the University of Pittsburgh one rainy summer day in 1958 making cold calls on various professors by knocking on doors. But Baughman had an earnest request. He was looking for a summer job in an honest-to-goodness laboratory. Maybe—if he was very lucky—he’d even get a chance to do some hands-on research. Growing up on a turkey farm in western Pennsylvania, Baughman had a notion early on that he wanted to be a scientist. He figured, where better to look for work than at a research university? Dr. George A. Jeffrey, the professor of chemistry and physics who answered Baughman’s knock on the door that day, might have turned away a high school kid. Jeffrey might have said Baughman was too young, too inexperienced or simply too much trouble to train—that there wasn’t enough time to devote to the task of helping him in the first place. Fifty-three years later, Dr. Ray Baughman—the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry, director of the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, a recently elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, and one of the most cited scientific authors in the world—attributes his formidable success to the day Jeffrey allowed a skinny, rain-soaked kid from a tiny rural town into his lab. “That experience crystallized my early desire to become a scientist,” Baughman said. “And it was the kind of serendipitous event that made me aware of the importance of mentorship and academic research.” Meeting Jeffrey changed the course of Baughman’s life. Research laboratories in academic settings are critical to efforts to better understand the world around us and beyond. These environments offer the building blocks and training grounds necessary to develop young scientists. Sometimes, such environments grow within a university setting over long periods of time as a result of the serendipitous accumulation of people and resources. But serendipity—while it makes for great stories and in Dr. Baughman’s case, a great scientist—isn’t enough. UT Dallas works to foster an environment that actively supports students and faculty forming research partnerships. By pairing excellent faculty with promising students, mentorships not unlike the one that shaped Baughman’s career can flourish. The University of Texas at Dallas Winter 2012 17

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012
Contents
On Campus
From the Lab
Arts and Culture
Courtside Success
Athletics
Research Is Teaching
Town and Gown
In Your Footsteps: An Alumni Perspective
Alumni Notes
In Memoriam
Hindsight

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012