From Prof. C. V. Sammut

Michael Portelli, an ex-student and now apparently a self-appointed critic of the University Physics Department raises some interesting points which should be addressed as his statements betray a pardonable ignorance of facts and recent developments (TMIS, April 13).

In the local media barrage following the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted visit to CERN a few weeks before the election, no mention was made that the reason for CERN’s existence is actually particle physics and not engineering or ICT.

As Head of the Physics Department and Dean of the Faculty of Science, it is natural to expect that I would have formed part of the delegation visiting Europe’s world leading research centre for particle physics. However, it appears that the Office of the Prime Minister, not particularly noted for its scientific prowess, might have been fed partial information on one project and thus may be pardoned for concluding that CERN is only famous for engineering and ICT. Whatever the case, the Prime Minister’s visit was organised in a hurry and I was informed verbally by the Rectorate the day before the event so as to spare me the embarrassment of learning about the visit in the press. With hindsight, I am thankful to have been spared the photo opportunity. It now remains to be seen if the government’s pre-election enthusiasm for CERN will materialise in the form of Malta’s membership of that prestigious organisation. That is certainly what the undersigned, and the university, hope and expect since it would be one way of providing budding physicists with challenging employment prospects.

On the issue of employment prospects, I find it surprising that Mr Portelli is convinced that careers for physics students, aside from teaching, are impossible in Malta. Over many years I have observed an ever-growing number of our graduates finding local non-teaching positions in industry, government departments and public authorities. The problem is that these jobs are seldom advertised in newspapers. I am often contacted by officers from different organisations and asked to propose suitable graduates to fill vacancies. Indeed, some Heads of Schools also call to enquire about the possibility of recruiting some of our graduates as physics teachers. This is a vote of confidence in the competence of our graduates and the quality of the department’s efforts. It is true that we need to improve but who doesn’t? What is important is to know one’s strengths and weaknesses and to strive to reinforce the former and rectify the latter.

A first degree in physics does not prepare a student for one specific job but for a whole variety of them. It is up to the students themselves to demonstrate how suitable their university training has been and what the considerable advantages are of employing physicists in some positions that locally have been occupied by engineers or traditionally trained managers.

In this context, I quote the Physics World April issue (p15):

“One problem for physicists in industry is that what they do is often obscured by the contributions of those they work with, particularly engineers. Indeed, many physicists take on jobs where they are called ‘engineers’. Physicists who leave academia also end up being fragmented across a huge range of business sectors, from optics and semiconductors to energy, medical physics, aerospace and defence. There is no such thing as the ‘physics industry’, even though physics itself is crucial to what many technology-based firms do.”

The training provided at university, the attitude to problem solving and the flexibility offered by our graduates puts them at a great relative advantage. Indeed, it is healthy that physicists can occupy so many different roles and not just in the manufacturing industry. It is estimated that about 10 per cent of physics graduates in the UK eventually work in the financial sector. The financial capitals of the world have for many years specifically hunted for PhD graduates in physics and the chosen few are offered astronomical salaries.

So, before Mr Portelli takes it upon himself to encourage sixth form students not to choose “a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Physics” course, which does not yet exist, he is encouraged to ask former students from other departments for their own experiences and then he should write again to present a more complete picture. He is also encouraged to get in touch with more recent students, including those who have chosen to do a final year project in the Physics Department. He might be surprised to find that many of these found employment months before they even graduated.

It is pertinent to point out that the current flagship course of the Faculty of Science is the four-year joint honours BSc, where one of the subject areas could be physics. Most students taking physics also take mathematics but others have selected chemistry, statistics and operations research, IT and computing science. All subject combinations involving physics have proved successful in terms of job prospects. I therefore fail to comprehend the motivation for Mr Portelli’s version of “harsh reality”.

For the benefit of the increasing numbers of enthusiastic potential physics students who have helped make our regular physics seminars an overwhelming success, I can state that we are working on a three-year honours degree physics programme, which will be offered for the first time in October 2009. Members of staff are working hard in their respective fields of research and have made their mark locally and internationally in air quality modelling, atmospheric physics, climate change, electromagnetics, seismology and geophysics.

The latest interest in CERN may well add particle physics to the list of activities of this department but it may not depend exclusively on the university. I would therefore advise prospective students to actively consider a career in physics. This fundamentally important field has never had such exciting prospects locally. The number of research projects being planned will soon make it difficult to find sufficient numbers of local researchers, unless more students decide to study physics.

Professor Charles

V. Sammut

Head, Department

of Physics

Dean, Faculty of Science

University of Malta