B

Recommendations

The list below contains each recommendation made in the report, both general and specific.

EMERGENCE OF A NEW FIELD

General Recommendation: Realizing the promise of biological physics requires recognition that is distinct from, but synergistic with, related fields, both in physics and in biology. In colleges and universities it should have a home in physics departments, even as its intellectual agenda connects profoundly to efforts in many other departments across schools of science, engineering, and medicine. (Part I)

General Recommendation: Physics departments at research universities should have identifiable efforts in the physics of living systems, alongside groups in more traditional subfields of physics. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: The biological physics community should support exploration of the full range of questions being addressed in the field, and assert its identity as a distinct and coherent subfield embedded in the larger physics community. (Part I)

EDUCATING THE NEXT GENERATION

General Recommendation: All universities and colleges should integrate biological physics into the mainstream physics curriculum, at all levels. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: Physics courses and textbooks should illustrate major principles with examples from biological physics, in all courses from introductory to advanced levels. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: Physics faculty should modernize the presentation of statistical physics to undergraduates, find ways of moving at least parts of the subject earlier in the curriculum, and highlight connections to biological physics. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: Physics faculty should modernize undergraduate laboratory courses to include modules on light microscopy that emphasize recent developments, and highlight connections to biological physics. (Part III, Chapter 8)

General Recommendation: Physics faculty should organize biological physics coursework around general principles, and ensure that students specializing in biological physics receive a broad and deep general physics education. (Part III, Chapter 8)

General Recommendation: University and college administrators should allocate resources to physics departments as part of their growing educational and research initiatives in quantitative biology and biological engineering, acknowledging the central role of biological physics in these fields. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: Universities should provide and fund opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in biological physics research, as an integral part of their education, starting as soon as their first year. (Part III, Chapter 8)

Specific Recommendation: Funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense, as well as private foundations, should develop and expand programs to support integrated efforts in education and research at all levels, from beginning undergraduates to more senior scientists migrating across disciplinary boundaries. (Part III, Chapter 8)

SUPPORTING THE FIELD

General Recommendation: Funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense, as well as private foundations, should develop and expand programs that match the breadth of biological physics as a coherent field. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: The federal government should provide the National Science Foundation with substantially more resources to fulfill its mission, allowing a much needed increase in the size of individual grant awards without compromising the breadth of its activities. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: The National Institutes of Health should form study sections devoted to biological physics, in its full breadth. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: Congress should expand the Department of Energy mission to partner with the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation to construct and manage user facilities and infrastructure in order to advance the field of biological physics more broadly. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: The Department of Defense should support research in biological physics research that aims to discover broad principles that can be emulated in engineered systems of relevance to its mission. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: Industrial research laboratories should reinvest in biological physics, embracing their historic role in nurturing the field. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: Federal funding agencies should establish grant program(s) for the direct, institutional support of graduate education in biological physics. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: Federal agencies and private foundations should establish programs for the support of international students in U.S. PhD programs, in biological physics and more generally. (Part III, Chapter 9)

Specific Recommendation: Federal agencies and private foundations should develop funding programs that recognize and support theory as an inde

pendent activity in biological physics, as in other fields of physics. (Part III, Chapter 9)

General Recommendation: To maintain the flow of concepts and methods from biological physics into medicine and technology, the federal government should recommit to the vigorous support of basic science, including theory and the development of new technologies for experiments. (Part III, Chapter 9)

HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF SCIENCE

General Recommendation: All branches of the U.S. government should support the open exchange of people and ideas. The scientific community should support this openness by maintaining the highest ethical standards. (Part III, Chapter 10)

General Recommendation: Federal agencies should make new resources available to support core undergraduate physics education for underrepresented and historically excluded groups, and the integration of research into their education. (Part III, Chapter 10)

Specific Recommendation: Recognizing the historical impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities, faculty from these institutions should play a central role in shaping and implementing new federal programs aimed at recruiting and retaining students from underrepresented and historically excluded groups. (Part III, Chapter 10)

Specific Recommendation: In implementing this report’s recommendations on introductory undergraduate education and its integration with research, special attention should be paid to the experience of women students. (Part III, Chapter 10)