Brookhaven National Lab's 1st female director, JoAnne Hewett, discusses supercolliders, STEM and life on Long Island

In the three months she has been director of Brookhaven National Laboratory — where she will oversee construction of the lab's "crown jewel," a new atom-smashing supercollider — JoAnne Hewett has seen some of the best and worst of Long Island. 

Hewett, who is living in a home on the lab property in Upton, said she has spent most of her free time searching for a house in a highly competitive market amid a housing shortage. In an interview last week, Hewett said she has finally closed on a house in Old Field, about 18 miles from the lab.

She's also learned that Long Islanders are willing to lend a hand to newcomers.

"People are very nice," said Hewett, 63.

"I ran out of gas once on a road because I wasn’t familiar with all the gas stations and where they were, and I had literally three people stop to try and help me, and a couple more came later with gas cans."

Hewett, the first female director in the lab's 76-year history, arrived in Brookhaven in July after a long career at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a federal lab on the Stanford University campus in Menlo Park, California.

At Brookhaven, the theoretical physicist will oversee two major projects: construction of a $3 billion supercollider expected to open in 2032, and an $86.2 million initiative to build a welcome center and Discovery Park, which will serve as a business incubator for local entrepreneurs working with laboratory scientists.

The electron-ion collider will replace the lab's two-decade-old relativistic heavy ion collider, which will be phased out in 2025. The new collider, which will be constructed by adding a third ring, will propel high-energy beams of electrons, protons and other atomic material through rings measuring 2.4 miles in diameter to study subatomic particles such as gluons and neutrons that form the basis of all life from planets to people.

“For Brookhaven, it’s going to be the crown jewel of the laboratory," Hewett said.

"There's a lot of properties of a proton and the neutron that we simply do not know how they have those properties, and this collider will tell us.”

Hewett, who is married to John Pease, an electrical engineer, spoke at the lab's National Synchrotron Light Source II, a sprawling electron storage ring that generates the world's brightest light and can be used for up to 28 simultaneous research projects --  to study anything from the atomic structure of plants to the chemistry of batteries. 

Hewett's comments have been edited for space.

What inspired you to enter the science field? 

“I took my first physics class as a sophomore in college; I took it to fill a science credit. I started out as a math major in college, because I was just always good at math in school. So I took this physics class and I was six weeks into it and I knew this is what I wanted to do, because you could take all of this stupid math that I was learning and actually use it for something.

"You can use it to explain how the universe works — and there’s just not a job that’s cooler than that.”

Are you getting back to research?

“A lab director is actually a very demanding job. You’re basically on call 24/7. … There’s just not time for research, but you know that’s OK. Because I feel in management, I’m actually contributing more to science now than I was by my individual contributions.

"I think one more paper by JoAnne Hewett does not make as much difference as getting a new science program funded at the lab.”

Any advice for young women pursuing the sciences? 

“Women can do it. ... It’s harder for women than for men. You really have to prove yourself harder.

"There’s some study that says you have to be 2.2 times better than a man in order to succeed in science, at least in physics. The [percentage] of women graduating with PhDs in physics is the same now as when I graduated 35 years ago ... so that number has not changed at all. But those of us that sort of started the wave, if you like, 35 or 40 years ago, we’ve now graduated to where we are more senior and in leadership positions and I hope that makes a difference to the early career folks coming up. 

"One thing I know that is particularly difficult for women is that you tend to marry who you meet. ...  And so if you’re in school as a woman scientist, you tend to marry a male scientist and then [his] career tends to takes precedence. This is something that I see over and over again, that the woman is usually the trailing spouse and gives up her career or takes a lesser job in order to follow her husband.” 

What drew you to BNL? 

“I’m here because of the electron-ion collider. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime to actually build a collider.

"This is the only major collider being constructed on the planet for the next one to two decades. It’s very rare and it's very exciting."

Is too much money being spent on scientific research?

“Very basic science is incredibly important. If we do not learn more about the basic laws of nature now, 50 years from now we will not have the new technology. ... The perfect example was in, I think, the 1860s. Queen Victoria of England asked [Scottish physicist James Clerk] Maxwell, what’s this electricity stuff you’re studying good for? And he says, I don’t know, I can’t tell you, but I guarantee someday you’ll tax it. And that’s an old example, but it’s a perfect example and it has replayed itself throughout history, with quantum mechanics and transistors and lasers, computers, the World Wide Web.

"Building this colossal collider [and] the huge cathedral-like detectors that take the data from this collider is on the cutting edge of technology. ... It really draws students into the field, into physics, into science in general. They get excited reading about this and it increases the flow of the talented young people into STEM fields.”

What purpose will Discovery Park and the welcome center serve? 

“It will add so much to the laboratory. With the new collider and the new light source, we have a very large volume of users coming onto the lab, and these are scientists from around the globe that come to Brookhaven to use our facilities.

"It will also house a 300-seat conference room and auditorium, which is something that this laboratory greatly needs, where we can host lectures, host scientific conferences and forums, forums for the community. It’s going to be great.”

With Shari Einhorn

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.