If you appreciate that your cell phone fits nicely in your pocket or purse, you can thank 1980 SUNY Oswego physics graduate Paul Vianco and the contributions made by his team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque to the electronics industry. He recently also decided to contribute toward the next generation of researchers by creating a physics scholarship for students at his alma mater.
For 35 years, his team at Sandia helped revolutionize electronics through the development of surface mount technology. Specifically, his team worked to understand the strength properties of solders that have allowed for the further miniaturization of electronics such as cell phones and defense systems. The Sandia researchers had an integral role in finding new solders to replace the traditional lead-containing alloys to avoid toxic electronic waste in landfills.
“The last time I checked, an iPhone 10 (it was a while ago) had well over 1,000 solder joints,” Vianco said. “If one of those joints fails, you may lose a picture or the capability to receive messages or some other critical function –- all because the components are so compacted to provide miniaturization -- you can fit it in your pocket. That’s the electronics revolution.”
Throughout his accomplished career as a senior scientist at a cutting-edge national laboratory, Vianco helped to make those advances, and he credits his SUNY Oswego education with setting him on that path to success.
In gratitude, he has made a point of sending a donation to the physics program every November around Thanksgiving for 41 years. In June 2023, he increased his support significantly to establish the Dr. John J. O’Dwyer Memorial Physics Scholarship, named for the late professor emeritus of physics and past department chairman who was a mentor to Vianco.
When new SUNY Oswego President Peter O. Nwosu announced his Vision 4040 to increase the number of students who benefit from an Oswego education, Vianco decided to establish another scholarship –- the SUNY Oswego Physics Scholarship (for High School Students).
The two objectives for establishing the scholarships were to encourage students to enroll in the physics curriculum and complete the four-year program, and to ease the financial challenges of paying for a college education.
“There is a third objective, and it supports President Nwosu's Vision 4040 of increasing enrollment at SUNY Oswego,” Vianco said. “We are targeting high school students in the Central NY region defined by the counties: Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego. This area tends to have more of a working-class demographic so that students would be more likely to need financial assistance towards pursuing that physics degree at SUNY Oswego.”
Like many physics programs on university campuses, SUNY Oswego’s Department of Physics and Astronomy is small, typically graduating 5 to 10 students a year. The four-year renewable scholarship will be awarded annually to one incoming physics student who can then renew that scholarship for each of the subsequent three years to complete the physics program. This approach will build an exclusive cohort of scholars, said Mohammad Islam, chair and associate professor in the department.
“The scholarship will give the department a tremendous boost in terms of our recruitment, retention and graduation rate,” Islam said. “Students are apprehensive about the rigors and time commitment required to pursue a physics degree. The Paul Vianco scholarship will give prospective students incentives to seek admission and remain within the program through to graduation.”
Vianco and Oswego faculty hope these additional resources will encourage more students to pursue physics as a major.
“Physics is the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ as a scientific discipline because it requires knowledge in all of the technical specialties: materials (chemistry), electricity, mechanics, mathematics –- and the list goes on,” Vianco said. “Physics offers the broadest experience and as such, opportunities after graduation from SUNY Oswego, whether that individual decides to enter the workforce or pursue an advanced degree in graduate school. This broad knowledge base is also beneficial from the ‘liberal arts standpoint’ because it allows the physicist to assist society with understanding the increased complexity of technology and explain critical phenomena such as climate change as well as ethics of technology and all of the consequences that are the results of these and similar socio-technical issues.”
Shashi Kanbur, SUNY Distinguished Professor and director of the astronomy academic program, said that many of the major global challenges, such as man-made global warming and the search for fresh water, facing society will only be solved by science.
“Physics is at the core of many of these sciences,” Kanbur said. “Any engineer has to have a strong physics and mathematics base; any chemist will have to know some physics; and those in the biological sciences will also have to know some degree of physics.”
Physicists also need coursework outside of the sciences.
“When you’re an engineer, it’s basically about problem-solving. But, I would say that 25 percent of the problems that a scientist or engineer will face are people problems,” Vianco said. “I made it a point to instill in my team members at Sandia that people problems and dealing with other people is going to be a major part of your job description –- whether you’ve been told that or not. So classes like philosophy or foreign languages that teach you about understanding different perspectives are absolutely critical in executing your job. In my role as a scientist, I wrote technical papers and had to explain complex technologies to the general population. So English was extremely important.”
That’s why Vianco has stipulated that the physics scholarship recipients must maintain good grades in all of their liberal arts courses in order to renew the scholarship in future years.
“You can no longer be a physicist who sits in a corner and does your equations and goes home for dinner,” he said. “There’s more to it than that now. The tools that allow you to do that are the liberal arts.”
Vianco said as a Ph.D. student in materials science at the University of Rochester, he sat beside students who graduated from MIT, Oxford and other top universities from around the globe.
“I held my own just fine, and that says something about the quality of my Oswego education,” he said. “I want SUNY Oswego to stand firm in its commitment to teaching students and being a teaching college. It is because of that position that I believe is why SUNY Oswego was such a fundamental part of my success.”
Vianco said he is pleased to see how faculty members like Kanbur and Islam involve their students in their own research and in the coursework.
“The professors are well engaged with the students, and I see the enthusiasm of the students and it reflects on the faculty,” Vianco said. “That’s the takeaway I had when I was at Oswego, and although the faculty have changed over the past 40 to 50 years, that aspect hasn’t. That legacy of the teaching college and the connections between students and faculty is the reason that I have made 41 years of donations and established these scholarships.”
-- Submitted by University Advancement