CAS CONNECT 2013

24 designs. The Department of Energy took it over, funding daily operations along with the state of South Dakota, while also looking at longer- term research through an agreement between the state technology authority and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the lab’s website states. “It’s not completely clear whether it will be success- ful or not, but this discussion has been going on for seven or eight years, and the process is very slow,” Babu says. “After a certain amount of approval, it will have to go through Congress, so we are dependent on the Congress.” If the lab is established, it’ll join 18 other national labs, some of which, includ- ing New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have been behind the greatest inventions of the last 100 years. The South Dakota lab and the neutrino project will be worthwhile investments, Babu says, because they will complement work at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (which recently turned the physics world on its head by discov- ering the elusive Higgs boson particle, explaining why matter has mass) by focusing on projects the super collider isn’t addressing, such as whether protons can decay. “If protons decay, then that would tell us that ultimately matter is not stable. It will be one of the most profound discoveries in science — implying all matter will even- tually decay away. That will be the ultimate fate of the universe if protons are unstable.” Babu, the son of a teacher, came to the United States to work on his doctorate at the University of Hawaii after finishing college in Mumbai. His younger brother is a chemical engineer, and his older brother is an economist. He enjoys teaching students. He has a lively way of talk- ing about physics and is quick with a laugh, which makes him an entertaining teacher of the introductory physics courses the department offers. “I love undergraduate teach- ing,” he says. “There are so many bright and very enthusi- astic students. It’s always fun to talk to them. Many of them come by after class to talk about what they find inter- esting in popular literature. We also get very good grad- uate students in the physics program, so I can challenge them a bit more in specialized topics, such as advanced quan- tum mechanics.” Babu’s work has appeared in dozens of journals, and he has won numerous awards and honors, includ- ing being elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the OSU Regents Distinguished Research Award, serving on the “theory panel” of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields and organizer of the Center for Theoretical Underground Physics summer program in Lead. Babu says earning the Regents Professorship has been a humbling event, one that is especially meaning- ful to him because he worked his way up to OSU’s high- est promotion from assistant professor. “I am very grateful for the honor,” he says. “There are so many incredible researchers at OSU who could’ve received it.” He lives in Stillwater with his wife Kime. Their daugh- ter Maya graduated last May from Stillwater High School and is enrolled at Boston University. They enjoy travel- ing to exotic locales in their spare time, including recent destinations such as Trieste, Italy; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Split, Croatia. They’ve also been to Japan, Russia, India, Poland, Mexico, Taiwan, Korea, Sweden and the Netherlands. His involvement in the national lab based in Lead, S.D., (pronounced “leed”) is due to his considerable expertise in physics’ Grand Unified Theory. The theory, an attempt at merging the fundamental forces behind the universe into one simplified theory, attempts to explain how matter and forces inter- act to create what we see, hear and feel. “It’s the ultimate beauty of nature that will show up in this, if it’s proven,” says Babu. He has been helping with international fundraising for the lab, which has already secured about $867 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. It will take a bit more to build the detector and acquire the 34,000 tons of ultra-pure liquid argon needed for testing. The National Science Foundation selected the mine as the site for the under- ground lab in 2007 but in 2010 stopped funding project “ I f protons decay, then that wou ld tel l us that u l t imatel y mat ter i s not stable. I t wi l l be one of the most profound di scover ies in science — impl y ing a l l mat ter wi l l eventua l l y decay away. That wi l l be the u l t imate fate of the uni verse i f protons are unstable.” — Ka l adi Babu