SEAS Weathers Economic Storm

The same gas that makes balloons fly and voices rise is also an important tool for Harvard researchers conducting specialized scientific research—a tool that will be in shorter supply thanks to cutbacks faced by University scientists in the current financial climate.

The cancellation of a helium liquefier—promised as part of the designs for the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering—has served as an uncomfortable reminder for some professors that research agendas may have to take a backseat to fiscal prudence as University administrators make tough decisions about how to cut budgets.

In areas of research such as condensed matter and quantum physics, certain phenomena can only be realized and controlled at low temperatures, making liquid helium—one of the simplest means of cooling a specimen—a precious commodity.

“It’s really a lifeline,” said physics professor Amir Yacoby. “If you run out of liquid helium your experiment warms up and when this happens it could set you back months.”

Currently, researchers who use liquid helium must buy it from external suppliers, which has become problematic due to erratic suppliers as well as the element’s steadily rising costs, Yacoby said.

The liquefier would have solved those problems by allowing Harvard scientists to prepare liquid helium themselves and would have benefitted the research of a variety of groups in the Physics and Chemistry Departments as well as the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“It was supposed to be a University-wide service that anyone who requires liquid helium would be able to buy,” Yacoby said

But in December, the group of researchers involved in planning for the liquefier was notified by Dean of the Physical Sciences Jeremy Bloxham that the project had been postponed indefinitely—a decision made jointly with SEAS, whose interim dean, Frans A. Spaepen, pointed to the machine’s multi-million dollar price tag as the reason for the decision.

Spaepen said in an interview this week that the loss of the liquifier could be weathered without grinding research to a halt, but the decision struck an ominous chord for Yacoby.

“The sad thing about the note is that it says that it is postponed indefinitely,” Yacoby said. “It wasn’t. ‘Let’s pass these times and see what will happen in a year or so.’”

While he said that the research groups he has talked to are all cutting down on their low-temperature experiments, he remains hopeful that this is not the “final blow.”

“If you look across the country, you see that institutions that currently do not have liquefiers are eventually stopping doing cryogenic [low-temperature] research,” Yacoby said.

SEAS STRUGGLES

While the liquifier was meant to serve researchers in both the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and SEAS, the latter body faces an independent set of challenges, having transitioned from a division to a school less than two years ago.

In a letter sent to the SEAS community in December, Spaepen outlined the School’s plans for dealing with the economic downturn, including an immediate cut of $1 million of unrestricted expenses for the current academic year.

Much of the gap was closed by freezing hiring for open staff positions—a move also taken by the divisions of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and cutting nonessential discretionary spending, said Harry E. Dumay, dean of finance at SEAS.

But while the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has slashed its planned hires in half in response to the financial decline, prioritizing the upkeep of existing academic programs, SEAS—as a recently-minted school—has maintained an emphasis on growth and has cut none of the seven faculty searches that it had authorized prior to the financial crisis.

A project to expand the school’s faculty from 60 to 100—which would bring it on par with most medium-sized engineering schools—will go forward, although more slowly than expected, according to Spaepen.

“You have to think, ‘If I stop my recruitment and stop building labs I can save a lot of money,’” said former SEAS Dean Venkatesh ‘Venky’ Narayanamurti.

“But we would rather not stop our growth plans unless we are really broke,” he said.

SEAS’ plans to expand into Allston along with other parts of the University may also prove to be of concern, both for bioengineering research and undergraduate teaching.

SEAS is slated to have a major part in the new Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, funded by a $125 million dollar donation and touted as a part of the Allston science complex that would strengthen the University’s nascent engineering efforts.

The project is complemented by a new bioengineering concentration already in the works for undergraduates.

But the need for University cutbacks has spurred calls to slow down Harvard’s expensive expansion project, with news emerging this week that plans are being made that may keep the Department of Stem Cell Regenerative Biology—meant to be a centerpiece of the new Allston campus—in Cambridge.

University officials have yet to release a decision on the pace of Allston construction, leaving leadership at SEAS and elsewhere unsure about what the future will hold. Spaepen said hope remained that the economic environment would only affect the timing and the pace at which SEAS can achieve its original goals.

“It has not changed the object of what we’re doing,” Spaepen said.

“The enthusiasm on the outside from potential donors remains quite high and we hope to get more means to supplement what we have to move things along,” he said.

—Staff writer Paul C. Mathis contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Alissa M. D’Gama can be reached at adgama@fas.harvard.edu.