A Love of Learning Found in Africa Leads All the Way to ORNL

Growing up in the arid, hill country of northern Ethiopia, an eight-year-old Kalayu Belay would run barefoot to school in the dark hours before dawn with six other youngsters from his rural village. As the first child from his family to attend school, Belay said he knew a formal education was a rare opportunity, and he worked hard to make the most of it.

Often staying late at school or studying by streetlight because his home had no electricity, Belay nonetheless excelled, finishing first in his class and thereby earning accolades not only from his family but from the governor of his region as well. For a young boy from a small town to get to shake hands with the governor was no small accomplishment.

“That was a really big thing for me,” Belay said. “It motivated me to work very hard and remain one of the top students at every stage of my school.”

Belay’s hard work in the classroom and his love of learning continued to result in more opportunities—first college in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, then graduate school at the University of Delaware in the United States, and recently, a research program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

As part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory/ORAU Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Education Institutions Faculty Summer Research program, Belay, who is now an associate physics professor at Florida A&M University (FAMU), spent the summer of 2004 conducting research with Dr. David Geohegan in the Condensed Matter Sciences Division at ORNL.

During the program, Belay and the rest of Geohegan’s team studied how tiny tubes of carbon grow in order to learn how to make them in large quantities for real-world applications.

Belay and Geohegan found more in common than their interest in studying nanoscale materials. The two often traded their microscopes for tennis rackets and spent time outside of the lab working on their serves.

“Kal and his student, Jeremy Jackson, were extremely productive and helpful to our research this summer—both of them putting in long hours and getting nice results.” Geohegan said. “They both learned a lot, and I learned that I’d better play a lot more tennis if I want to be ready for Kal next year! We really hope that this is a collaboration we can see continue.”

Belay said his research in the lab, which involved heating nanoscale-level materials in a furnace and then observing them with Raman and electron microscopes, had many positive implications for the future.

First, the research itself could help in the development of many real-world applications, including the development of faster and more powerful computer processors. In the short term, Belay said he also hopes the research he did this summer will continue to benefit himself and others at FAMU.

“I would like to see a continued collaboration between my institution and ORNL so that students will be trained in new technology and contribute to the highly skilled manpower that our country needs,” Belay said.

In the longer term, Belay said he hopes the prestige of conducting research in the lab and later presenting the research results at conferences and in refereed academic journals could lead to opportunities to secure funding for laboratories at FAMU to train students. That desire reflects the high value Belay places on both teaching the next generation of scientists and growing as a researcher himself. The love of learning he found running barefoot to school in the highlands of Ethiopia continues to drive him and inspire his students.

“Because of the number of years I have spent teaching, I have become more of a teacher than a researcher. I have been known to explain things in simple terms, and my students often tell me at the end of the semester that they never thought physics could be fun as they have come to know it,” Belay said. “ORNL has provided me opportunities to advance my understanding of materials at the smallest scale possible, and I am excited to continue this research. As both aspects are important for me, I try to balance by dividing my time equally into research and teaching.”