Mancini named College of Science associate dean for research
Roberto Mancini
As college professors go, few have the versatility of Roberto Mancini, professor of physics.
Excellent teacher? Yes.
So good, in fact, he has helped redefine how physics is being taught in this country.
His course, Plasma Spectroscopy with Emphasis in High-Energy Density Plasma Applications, was taught not only to 12 University of Nevada, Reno graduate students, it was also broadcast in real time to six remote sites from California to Massachusetts via an Internet connection. Students included those at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.
Excellent researcher? Yes.
His work in helping establish suitable ways for nuclear fusion reactions to be achieved in a sustained and controlled environment – which has major implications for future power plants driven by energy released in nuclear fusion reactions – has garnered national attention.
In his own college, Mancini’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. In 2005, he was given the College of Science Outstanding Researcher Award.
So it was only natural, then, as College of Science Dean David Westfall began looking for the person to fill the college’s first associate dean for research position, that Mancini’s name popped right to the top.
Mancini, a thoughtful man with an easy laugh and generous smile, says the position is a good indicator of the College of Science’s impressive growth. Since it was established in 2004, the college has become one of the University’s research powerhouses, with annual research funding between $20 million and $30 million.
“The research in the college is a significant part of the life of the college,” says Mancini, who began his appointment Aug. 1. “I have a number of duties, including advising the dean on research initiatives, representing the college on research projects and identifying interdisciplinary projects and initiatives that can lead to collaboration across departments, programs and colleges.”
In addition to the duties listed above, Mancini hopes to address other pressing issues such as laboratory space and what he refers to as “HR or the human resources side of research,” including not only researchers but “the professional people with professional degrees who are just as important to the research enterprise. Our technicians, the people in the machine shops, are very important as you develop new instruments used in our research.”
Mancini’s goal is to meet with all of the college’s chairs and program directors (he’s more than halfway there), “to find out what they have in their college regarding research.”
“I’m in the process of absorbing data,” he says with a gentle laugh. “You may think a person can absorb too much data, but to me it’s interesting. I think that’s why anyone would want to work at a college or university — simply by being here, and interacting with these interesting and intelligent people, you are becoming broader and wider in your interests. The college is new and exciting, and the data I am absorbing is new and exciting as well.”
Mancini, who will continue to teach and do research, says the Department of Physics has many of the qualities that the fledgling College of Science is already exhibiting.
Mancini came to Nevada in 1993 from the University of Florida not only, as he puts it, “to find a tenure-track position” but because of the allure of a department that was, in a sense, reinventing itself.
“In 1992, the department hired Ron Phaneuf (a nationally recognized figure as director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Controlled Fusion Atomic Data Center) as the chair, and his job was to help relaunch and reshape the physics department,” Mancini explains. “Most of the department today is a result of that push in the early to the mid-1990s, as Ron went about hiring young, energetic and enthusiastic faculty that wanted to do things.
“We have so much talent in that department today because of the work of Ron, and then the work of Jeff (former physics chair Jeff Thompson, now currently associate dean for the College of Science), and now (current chair) Katherine McCall.
“In a much a broader sense, we have a similar situation with the College of Science. It’s a strong college, with a lot of talented faculty.”
Mancini, who doesn’t mind a quip or two, pauses for a moment, thinking of the right way to describe the future of the College of Science.
“We have a lot of potential energy here, as we like to say in physics,” he says.
John Trent, public relations director, can be reached at jtrent@unr.edu.
