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CORVALLIS - A new bachelor's degree program in "computational" physics has been developed at Oregon State University to help address the huge need for graduates skilled both in computer usage and the traditional sciences, and it may form a model for the creation of other degrees using this approach.

The degree was recently cited as being only the second of its type in the nation.

"This is a great option for students who have an interest and aptitude in science and mathematics, but are attracted by all of the career options in computing," said Rubin Landau, an OSU professor of physics and director of the new program. "Our society increasingly needs people who really understand computing and can apply it to real-world scientific problems. For that, you need diverse training in computers, math and one or more fields of science."

The program at OSU began with physics, Landau said, but the concept could be equally relevant to chemistry, economics, zoology, biology or many other areas. Many of the most exciting advances in biology and biomedicine, he said, increasingly involve the use of computers.

"Students in any modern college use computers in some form or another, but the more advanced uses of these systems take some fairly rigorous training," Landau said. "When you do have both advanced computing skills and knowledge of a scientific field there are some exciting new possibilities. It used to be that scientific advances were built on theory and laboratory experimentation. Now we can add to that the broad field of computer analysis and computer simulation."

Some OSU students are already pursuing the new computational physics degree, Landau said, and there's strong potential for that degree program to expand and others similar to it to be developed. It requires a large amount of interdisciplinary collaboration across traditional academic boundaries, Landau said, but that's a process OSU is trying to broaden and encourage.

At its heart, Landau said, this degree is about problem solving.

An OSU graduate student in botany, for instance, recently turned to one of Landau's students for help in identifying the function of a particular gene in tomatoes. A computer program was developed that compared the tomato DNA to genomes of other plant species, and discovered that the tomato gene in question helped influence the function of growth hormones in the plant. Tomatoes are a $1.7 billion annual crop just in the U.S., and this research is hoping to develop higher yields.

OSU was able to develop the new program on a modest budget and without having to hire any new faculty, Landau said, by adding a limited number of new courses to the broad array of course offerings already existing in different departments and colleges at the university. Landau has already authored one of the leading textbooks in this emerging field of study.

The new degree offers OSU undergraduates a chance to become deeply immersed in original research projects, in their final year doing their own experiments and a thesis in the new Advanced Computational Physics Laboratory. That lab was created in part with assistance from a three-year, $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, and support has also been received from the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure.

Development of the degree, Landau said, was driven in part by private industry and national laboratories that were unable to find enough professionals with training not only in science but advanced computing. Too often in the past, universities bound by traditional disciplines produced students skilled in one area or the other, but not both.

Summer internships are also a frequent part of this program, Landau said, and scholarship support is often available.

Career opportunities for students receiving this degree exist in such fields as energy, aerospace, chemistry, finance, medicine, environmental science, oceanography, material science, computer science, and other areas, he said.