The Honorable Prof. Dr. Sekazi K. Mtingwa Shares His Inspiring Physics Journey, What Mentoring Means to Him, and How He is Giving Back to the Next Generation of Young Physicists Around the World
MIT and Princeton graduate. Stints at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory. Multi-award-winning physicist who studied and worked under the tutelage of too many other award-winning scientists to name. The Honorable Prof. Dr. Sekazi K. Mtingwa has a resume that anyone would envy, yet no one would ever know it from his humble, unassuming nature. The high-energy and nuclear physicist is currently a technical judge for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and principal consultant of Triangle Science, Education, and Economic Development (TriSEED Consultants) in North Carolina (United States). A man wearing many hats, Prof. Dr. Mtingwa is also involved in several other physics endeavors, not only at home in the United States, but also in Africa and other parts of the world. Among these is his role as a mentor for Global Talent Mentoring.
Engagement specialist Christin Graml had the pleasure of chatting with Prof. Dr. Mtingwa about his groundbreaking physics research, the importance of mentoring in his life, and the work he is doing to benefit young physicists long after he is gone.
You are a pioneer in physics, and Global Talent Mentoring is honored to have your support, both as a mentor and an endorser. Would you please tell us a little bit about your area of STEMM expertise and highlight some of your remarkable achievements in physics?
I’ve worked in several different fields in my career. I’m trained as a high-energy physicist, so I do high-energy physics and nuclear physics. Later in my career, I morphed into accelerator physics. Then I got involved in nuclear energy policy, and then later, international STEMM development. As far as accelerator physics goes, I went to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) as a post-doctoral researcher back in 1980. In the 1980s, I got involved in building two of the accelerator systems—the magnet system and the stochastic cooling system—for the accelerator called the Antiproton Source. I’m very proud of that, because those accelerator systems were used to discover the top quark, which is a crucial piece of the so-called Standard Model of elementary particle physics.
While doing that work, I got involved in some theoretical work with a renowned theoretical physicist by the name of Prof. James Bjorken, who has since left Fermilab and is now at Stanford University. We worked on a theory of how particles interact with each other called intrabeam scattering. And then there was a man named Dr. Anton Piwinski in Germany who worked on the problem independently of us and, for our work, Prof. Bjorken, Dr. Piwinski, and I received the 2017 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. I’m very proud of that.
In terms of nuclear energy policy, I led a study in 2008 that looked at the workforce needs of the nuclear energy industry in the United States. At that time, the U.S. Department of Energy was considering cutting back on its nuclear science and engineering funding at universities. I led a study that showed how continued funding was absolutely necessary. The results of my study led to the U.S. Department of Energy increasing funding in this area. As a result, the American Nuclear Society gave me its 2015 Distinguished Service Award. I’m very happy about that.
I’ve also been involved in mentoring for a long time, and so I’m very happy that I received what’s called the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) in 2017.
I’ve worked in several different fields in my career. I’m trained as a high-energy physicist, so I do high-energy physics and nuclear physics. Later in my career, I morphed into accelerator physics. Then I got involved in nuclear energy policy, and then later, international STEMM development. As far as accelerator physics goes, I went to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) as a post-doctoral researcher back in 1980. In the 1980s, I got involved in building two of the accelerator systems—the magnet system and the stochastic cooling system—for the accelerator called the Antiproton Source. I’m very proud of that, because those accelerator systems were used to discover the top quark, which is a crucial piece of the so-called Standard Model of elementary particle physics.
While doing that work, I got involved in some theoretical work with a renowned theoretical physicist by the name of Prof. James Bjorken, who has since left Fermilab and is now at Stanford University. We worked on a theory of how particles interact with each other called intrabeam scattering. And then there was a man named Dr. Anton Piwinski in Germany who worked on the problem independently of us and, for our work, Prof. Bjorken, Dr. Piwinski, and I received the 2017 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. I’m very proud of that.
In terms of nuclear energy policy, I led a study in 2008 that looked at the workforce needs of the nuclear energy industry in the United States. At that time, the U.S. Department of Energy was considering cutting back on its nuclear science and engineering funding at universities. I led a study that showed how continued funding was absolutely necessary. The results of my study led to the U.S. Department of Energy increasing funding in this area. As a result, the American Nuclear Society gave me its 2015 Distinguished Service Award. I’m very happy about that.
I’ve also been involved in mentoring for a long time, and so I’m very happy that I received what’s called the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) in 2017.
That’s quite an impressive list of accomplishments! As a young adult and throughout your career, did you have someone who mentored you on your path to excellence in STEMM?
Yes, actually there have been quite a few people who mentored me along the way. First of all, there was my mother. She didn’t finish her first year at university and always regretted that. When my brothers and I were born, she always preached to us about the importance of getting a college education. She pushed that throughout our primary and secondary school days.
Then I had two absolutely outstanding teachers in high school. One of them was my mathematics teacher, Mrs. Mary Burnside, who really pushed me in mathematics, and then Mrs. Dorothea Jackson, who taught me physics and chemistry. Mrs. Jackson was also my advisor for my high school science project, which looked at a closed system of astronauts and green algae plants. One of the things I was most proud of as a tenth grader was to win first place in botany at the then newly-integrated Georgia state science fair. That was so exciting.
I then went to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When I entered MIT, there were only about five black students out of a class of about 1,000. One role model I had was during my junior year (third year). MIT hired Prof. James Edward Young, one of the few African-American physicists at that time, and he became very close with all of the black students majoring in physics. He was a tremendous mentor.
I went on to do my undergraduate senior thesis under a very famous physicist, Prof. Victor F. Weisskopf, who had been the Director-General of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which is quite a renowned laboratory. He was so helpful.
Of course, Prof. James Bjorken has been a tremendous mentor, colleague, and friend during essentially all of my professional career.
And then the director of Fermilab was a man by the name of Prof. Leon Lederman, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics. I used to have regular meetings with him. He was also so helpful to me.
I think all of these people were extremely important in launching my career.
Yes, actually there have been quite a few people who mentored me along the way. First of all, there was my mother. She didn’t finish her first year at university and always regretted that. When my brothers and I were born, she always preached to us about the importance of getting a college education. She pushed that throughout our primary and secondary school days.
Then I had two absolutely outstanding teachers in high school. One of them was my mathematics teacher, Mrs. Mary Burnside, who really pushed me in mathematics, and then Mrs. Dorothea Jackson, who taught me physics and chemistry. Mrs. Jackson was also my advisor for my high school science project, which looked at a closed system of astronauts and green algae plants. One of the things I was most proud of as a tenth grader was to win first place in botany at the then newly-integrated Georgia state science fair. That was so exciting.
I then went to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When I entered MIT, there were only about five black students out of a class of about 1,000. One role model I had was during my junior year (third year). MIT hired Prof. James Edward Young, one of the few African-American physicists at that time, and he became very close with all of the black students majoring in physics. He was a tremendous mentor.
I went on to do my undergraduate senior thesis under a very famous physicist, Prof. Victor F. Weisskopf, who had been the Director-General of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which is quite a renowned laboratory. He was so helpful.
Of course, Prof. James Bjorken has been a tremendous mentor, colleague, and friend during essentially all of my professional career.
And then the director of Fermilab was a man by the name of Prof. Leon Lederman, who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics. I used to have regular meetings with him. He was also so helpful to me.
I think all of these people were extremely important in launching my career.
It sounds like you had a great mentoring support system throughout all of these different developmental stages of your life.
Definitely!
Definitely!
I think that my mentors’ belief in my ability to excel and their encouragement were so important.
You mentioned several names that have made a great impact on your life and career. Was there anything that really stands out about their support or mentorship?
Yes, absolutely. Growing up as an African-American physicist has been extremely tough. The common thing, I think, with all of my mentors is that they believed in my ability to excel—my mother, my high school teachers, and then those names that I mentioned during my time in college and throughout my career. When there were so many others who would try to damage my self-esteem, these people would show me that I could do it. They also created opportunities for me. Another thing that I think is very important is that a number of my mentors discussed their own experiences with me. The Nobel Laureate, Prof. Lederman, used to tell me, “In life, you have to learn how to work around people. Some people are just not worth going through. You have to work around them.” I learned a lot from these people in terms of their own experiences. They were also all very encouraging. So, I think that my mentors’ belief in my ability to excel and their encouragement were so important. These individuals helped me a lot, not only from an educational standpoint, but also with intangible life lessons that can’t necessarily be taught in the classroom.
Yes, absolutely. Growing up as an African-American physicist has been extremely tough. The common thing, I think, with all of my mentors is that they believed in my ability to excel—my mother, my high school teachers, and then those names that I mentioned during my time in college and throughout my career. When there were so many others who would try to damage my self-esteem, these people would show me that I could do it. They also created opportunities for me. Another thing that I think is very important is that a number of my mentors discussed their own experiences with me. The Nobel Laureate, Prof. Lederman, used to tell me, “In life, you have to learn how to work around people. Some people are just not worth going through. You have to work around them.” I learned a lot from these people in terms of their own experiences. They were also all very encouraging. So, I think that my mentors’ belief in my ability to excel and their encouragement were so important. These individuals helped me a lot, not only from an educational standpoint, but also with intangible life lessons that can’t necessarily be taught in the classroom.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review, a publication of your alma mater, you said, “The most important thing I learned at MIT was the value of mentoring, both as a mentee and mentor.” Why do you think mentoring is such a powerful tool?
When you’re new in something, a mentor points you in the right direction, which saves you infinite time. To me, the most important thing about a mentor is that they’re someone who’s been there. A mentor has to be someone who has already achieved it. They’ve done something. They know the route to get there, and they can point you in the right direction.
When you’re new in something, a mentor points you in the right direction, which saves you infinite time. To me, the most important thing about a mentor is that they’re someone who’s been there. A mentor has to be someone who has already achieved it. They’ve done something. They know the route to get there, and they can point you in the right direction.
You are one of the distinguished mentors at Global Talent Mentoring. What do you think is the most important aspect of the Global Talent Mentoring experience?
The most important aspect of Global Talent Mentoring is that it connects professionals to students in the far reaches of the world, even students that are far from any major city or major university. Many of these students have dreams, and Global Talent Mentoring is extremely important in connecting those students to top professionals to give them hope that they, too, can become a top professional one day.
The most important aspect of Global Talent Mentoring is that it connects professionals to students in the far reaches of the world, even students that are far from any major city or major university. Many of these students have dreams, and Global Talent Mentoring is extremely important in connecting those students to top professionals to give them hope that they, too, can become a top professional one day.
When you’re new in something, a mentor points you in the right direction, which saves you infinite time. To me, the most important thing about a mentor is that they’re someone who’s been there. A mentor has to be someone who has already achieved it. They’ve done something. They know the route to get there, and they can point you in the right direction.
That insight shines through in the work you do for young people in physics, especially young African-American physicists. You mentioned that, as an African-American physicist, you’ve faced some challenges along the way. What does being an African-American leader in physics mean to you and what are some ways that you support young African-American physicists?
I have a tremendous responsibility, and I try to fulfill my responsibility. It’s important for me to make opportunities for others, just as my mentors did for me. One of the things I did was a little controversial at the time. I was involved in some groundbreaking research at Argonne National Laboratory on a concept called the plasma wakefield accelerator. This is an accelerator of the future. I was working on the theoretical proof of plasma wakefield acceleration in the late 1980s, and it’s only now sort of coming into its own. During this time, I left the group, and people thought I had lost my mind, because I started working at a university that had no graduate program in physics. It’s one thing to go from a place like Argonne to a research university—people do that all the time. But nobody leaves a groundbreaking experiment to go to a university that has no graduate program in their field and essentially no research in their field being conducted. I was committed at that time, however, to go to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) of the United States. So I wanted to go there and try to build a strong research program in physics, and I’m so happy that I did that. I look back and see that we were able to do some great things. Their physics department now gives PhDs as an interdisciplinary-type degree. Some of the faculty have won outstanding research prizes. In fact, one faculty member is now up for being the top research faculty in the whole University of North Carolina system, because he led an experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), which gave the most precise measurement of the radius of a proton. It’s just an absolutely fantastic experiment. I think of that as my legacy.
And then there’s an organization called the Interdisciplinary Consortium for Research and Educational Access in Science and Engineering (InCREASE), for which I serve as president. At InCREASE, we try to connect faculty and students from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) to the suite of national laboratories in the United States. Our national laboratories have many facilities that are open for university faculty and students to use, and I try to make those known. We have about 300 faculty members in our community and about 50 MSIs. These largely include HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Native American-serving institutions.
I have a tremendous responsibility, and I try to fulfill my responsibility. It’s important for me to make opportunities for others, just as my mentors did for me. One of the things I did was a little controversial at the time. I was involved in some groundbreaking research at Argonne National Laboratory on a concept called the plasma wakefield accelerator. This is an accelerator of the future. I was working on the theoretical proof of plasma wakefield acceleration in the late 1980s, and it’s only now sort of coming into its own. During this time, I left the group, and people thought I had lost my mind, because I started working at a university that had no graduate program in physics. It’s one thing to go from a place like Argonne to a research university—people do that all the time. But nobody leaves a groundbreaking experiment to go to a university that has no graduate program in their field and essentially no research in their field being conducted. I was committed at that time, however, to go to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) of the United States. So I wanted to go there and try to build a strong research program in physics, and I’m so happy that I did that. I look back and see that we were able to do some great things. Their physics department now gives PhDs as an interdisciplinary-type degree. Some of the faculty have won outstanding research prizes. In fact, one faculty member is now up for being the top research faculty in the whole University of North Carolina system, because he led an experiment at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), which gave the most precise measurement of the radius of a proton. It’s just an absolutely fantastic experiment. I think of that as my legacy.
And then there’s an organization called the Interdisciplinary Consortium for Research and Educational Access in Science and Engineering (InCREASE), for which I serve as president. At InCREASE, we try to connect faculty and students from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) to the suite of national laboratories in the United States. Our national laboratories have many facilities that are open for university faculty and students to use, and I try to make those known. We have about 300 faculty members in our community and about 50 MSIs. These largely include HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Native American-serving institutions.
The most important aspect of Global Talent Mentoring is that it connects professionals to students in the far reaches of the world, even students that are far from any major city or major university. Many of these students have dreams, and Global Talent Mentoring is extremely important in connecting those students to top professionals to give them hope that they, too, can become a top professional one day.
You’re also involved in several physics and STEMM organizations in Africa, many of which you helped start. Could you please highlight some of these initiatives?
Over the years, I’ve also gotten involved in synchrotron light sources, which are electron accelerators that generate intense beams of X‑rays. These are revolutionizing physics, material science, biology, and more. It’s amazing! If you want to study protein structures, that’s one of the hottest ways to go. You can shine these X‑rays on the proteins to reveal their structure so that you can know how to design drugs for things such as the coronavirus. So I helped to found an organization called Lightsources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Middle East, and the Pacific (LAAAMP). We identify faculty and students from those regions, send them to the light sources for two months of training, and then try to send them for another two-month training period the following year.
We also want to try to bring a light source to Africa, so I’ve been serving as the deputy chair of an initiative called the African Light Source, which tries to get African governments to pool their resources to build one of these electron accelerators that generate these intense bursts of X‑rays. These devices cost around half a billion U.S. dollars, so they’re not cheap. But we have the idea of a Pan-African facility, and we’re working with African governments and representatives to try to convince them to do that. The president of Ghana has taken this on as a major issue that he wants to promote to his fellow heads of state.
About twenty years ago, I helped start another organization called the African Laser Centre, hosted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which is a network of many laser laboratories across the African continent to try to forge collaborations. I travel to South Africa every year, where I help choose research grants to bestow upon research faculty. We give student fellowships, scholarships, and host physics conferences dealing with lasers for students. We also do technician training, because in Africa, when equipment breaks, it’s very difficult to get it repaired. Oftentimes, you have to wait for parts to be shipped in. We hold workshops for technicians so that they can locally repair their equipment. So the African Laser Centre has been an extremely important project to me.
Another program that I’m involved in is another CSIR program called the Rental Pool Programme, where South Africa lends a lot of top-notch laser equipment to laboratories. At one point, South Africa and France had a uranium-enrichment program where they were using these lasers to do that. That program disbanded, and South Africa was left with all of this equipment. So we use all of this equipment to lend out to researchers. All of these programs are very important.
Over the years, I’ve also gotten involved in synchrotron light sources, which are electron accelerators that generate intense beams of X‑rays. These are revolutionizing physics, material science, biology, and more. It’s amazing! If you want to study protein structures, that’s one of the hottest ways to go. You can shine these X‑rays on the proteins to reveal their structure so that you can know how to design drugs for things such as the coronavirus. So I helped to found an organization called Lightsources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Middle East, and the Pacific (LAAAMP). We identify faculty and students from those regions, send them to the light sources for two months of training, and then try to send them for another two-month training period the following year.
We also want to try to bring a light source to Africa, so I’ve been serving as the deputy chair of an initiative called the African Light Source, which tries to get African governments to pool their resources to build one of these electron accelerators that generate these intense bursts of X‑rays. These devices cost around half a billion U.S. dollars, so they’re not cheap. But we have the idea of a Pan-African facility, and we’re working with African governments and representatives to try to convince them to do that. The president of Ghana has taken this on as a major issue that he wants to promote to his fellow heads of state.
About twenty years ago, I helped start another organization called the African Laser Centre, hosted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which is a network of many laser laboratories across the African continent to try to forge collaborations. I travel to South Africa every year, where I help choose research grants to bestow upon research faculty. We give student fellowships, scholarships, and host physics conferences dealing with lasers for students. We also do technician training, because in Africa, when equipment breaks, it’s very difficult to get it repaired. Oftentimes, you have to wait for parts to be shipped in. We hold workshops for technicians so that they can locally repair their equipment. So the African Laser Centre has been an extremely important project to me.
Another program that I’m involved in is another CSIR program called the Rental Pool Programme, where South Africa lends a lot of top-notch laser equipment to laboratories. At one point, South Africa and France had a uranium-enrichment program where they were using these lasers to do that. That program disbanded, and South Africa was left with all of this equipment. So we use all of this equipment to lend out to researchers. All of these programs are very important.
