States: Current Status and Future Directions¹ (hereafter the “2013 NRC report”), which included a recommendation that has yet to be fulfilled:

A high-field-magnet science and technology school should be established in the United States. The school could use the U.S. Particle Accelerator School as a model for its organization. Oversight and support should be drawn from a consortium of government agencies, laboratories, universities, and, possibly, industry. The National High Magnetic Field Facility could be the initial host site, with the laboratory facilities providing an excellent resource for laboratory courses. (p. 165)

The committee reiterates this as one of its key recommendations:

Key Recommendation 12: A high-field magnet science and technology training program should be established in the United States. The school could use the U.S. Particle Accelerator School as a model for its organization. Oversight and support should be drawn from a consortium of government agencies, laboratories, and universities, and possibly, industry. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory could be the initial host site, with the laboratory facilities providing an excellent resource for laboratory courses.

The committee notes that a program of this type has yet to be implemented.² Recognizing that multiple government agencies fund research that benefit from the science and technology of high-field magnets (National Science Foundation [NSF], Department of Energy [DOE], National Institutes of Health, and Department of Defense), there could potentially be broad-based support for such an educational initiative.

For example, the U.S. Particle Accelerator School (USPAS) referenced in the recommendation above is supported by the DOE Office of High Energy Physics to train a workforce capable of building and operating particle accelerators. The USPAS³ format runs like a “boot camp” by compressing the traditional classroom teaching for a three-credit semester course (32 to 36 hours) into a 2-week session. The compressed format is a duration that accommodates laboratory or industry

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¹ National Research Council, 2013, High Magnetic Field Science and Its Application in the United States: Current Status and Future Directions, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/18355, pp. 165–167.

² In addition to the models suggested for a magnet school, one established European training models for reference is the EMBO (https://meetings.embo.org/event/24-nmr): it requires speaker diversity “at least 40% of speakers must be from the underrepresented gender.” It includes participation fees (Student/postdocs/academic EUR 420, Industry EUR 1000), which includes the week-long course registration, materials, accommodation, meals, and social events. For diversity, equity, and inclusion, childcare grants, special travel grants, and registration fee waivers applications are offered in addition.

³ Fermi Laboratory, 2024, “U.S. Particle Accelerator School,” https://uspas.fnal.gov.

researchers, and there may be advantages for graduate-level academic curricula. The school is offered twice per year, summer and winter, at various locations around the country where housing can be packaged with classroom or meeting space. Typically, three to six classes are selected from the full curriculum of ~30 courses, which allows sequential training to be accomplished by attending several USPAS sessions. Florida State University (FSU) has been asked to host the winter 2025 USPAS session in recognition of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) significance in the particle accelerator community, and experience from hosting the USPAS could readily translate to a similar educational platform for the high-magnetic-field community of students and researchers.

This NSF/NHMFL course could also follow a compressed 2-week format to make it accessible to both students as well as research professionals with interests in high-temperature superconductor (HTS) and magnet technologies. Faculty for the courses could be paid by the school or drawn from the research faculty at the DOE national labs and NHMFL and faculty from Florida A&M University and FSU. Industry has a strong role, as well to ensure that the curriculum will meet the rapidly evolving needs of the magnet community and the workforce needed for the successful implementation of superconducting applications in the energy, health care, biotech, and other industrial applications.

Finding: In response to the recommendation from the 2013 NRC report to develop a high-field magnet science and technology school in the United States, NHMFL and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are developing a comprehensive plan to implement a National High Magnetic Field School (NHMFS) in the next few years. The plan outlines a new partnership between the already existing DOE USPAS and NSF/NHMFL to address training for the rapidly evolving HTS magnet technology and commercialization environment.

Another example of a community that NHMFL could draw on comes from the area of fusion science. Fusion has the potential to be a safe, on-demand, abundant, noncarbon-emitting, and globally scalable energy source and will require significant workforce development in the near future. The U.S. Bold Decadal Vision for commercial fusion was recently developed to support a rapidly growing field of high-magnetic-field fusion where significant efforts from the private sector are focused on the compact high-field approach to mature HTS magnet technology.⁴ High-field fusion magnet education is complicated by the intrinsic complexity

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⁴ White House, 2022, “Readout of the White House Summit on Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/04/19/readout-of-the-white-house-summit-on-developing-a-bold-decadal-vision-for-commercial-fusion-energy.

of education in concepts related to applied superconductivity intermixed with cross-disciplinary training among mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, nuclear engineering, physics, and chemistry disciplines. There are specialized topics such as high-voltage cryogenic engineering that are unique to this technology. A robust program of this type does not fit into a single traditional academic department. Currently the committee believes there is a very small number of educational programs that focus on high-field fusion magnets and these small numbers represent a significant threat to the creation of a thriving fusion energy industry. However, one program to highlight has been developed with the Princeton University. Since the establishment in 2018 of the Graduate Summer School (GSS), the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) GSS welcomes students from a broad range of fields: magnetic fusion energy sciences, HTS magnet design, large-scale superconductivity, high-energy-density plasmas, astrophysics, low-temperature plasmas, materials science, etc. The PPPL Apprenticeship Program is also the first-in-the-nation registered apprenticeship program in fusion energy and engineering. It is designed to equip the next generation of technicians with the skills necessary to help build the experiments needed to unlock fusion as a clean, safe, and virtually limitless source of energy. The PPPL annual GSS is also developing a fusion magnet education program to train the next generation workforce at all levels (namely HTS scientist, fusion magnet design engineers, cryogenic technicians, and others).

Finding: A PPPL apprenticeship is an industry-driven, high-quality career pathway for high school graduates, veterans, and others looking to join the exciting field and a good start toward a realization of NHMFS.

Recommendation 9-1: National Science Foundation and Department of Energy (DOE) should work with the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and other DOE laboratories to further develop and then implement the complete National High Magnetic Field School plan within the next 3 years.

In Chapters 1 and 2, it was noted that in the United States the education and training of the next generation of scientists and engineers in areas related to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), MRI, and magnetic resonance, generally, depends heavily on decentralized university- or national laboratory–based facilities. Only with hands-on experiments at these instruments will students be adequately trained in all aspects of the experiments from sample preparation, the design of the NMR and MRI experiments, to the evaluation of data. To complement these hands-on experiences at university laboratories and research institutions, there are multiuser facilities that concentrate unique instrumentation that come, however, with high capital costs. The opportunity for hands-on access to students, postdoctoral

researchers and early career researchers is critical for the ongoing health of the U.S. research enterprise.

With that in mind, it can be summarized that exposure to state-of-the-art magnetic resonance equipment and methods are often gleaned through large-scale, multi-user facilities. The importance of these facilities for research and training is contrasted by the fact that many of these facilities must charge very high user fees to cover the costs for operation and maintenance.

In Europe a consortium system exists for the decentralized NMR facilities, that covers the costs of the facilities for granting 30 percent access of outside users to these facilities. There are no costs to internal or external users for NMR instrument usage at these decentralized facilities. In the United States, the large high-field-magnetic facility (Tallahassee) has a similar policy providing free use for approved projects from academia. Following those models, adoption of waived user fees for decentralized NMR facilities in the United States would strongly benefit student and postdoc training.

Finding: The current U.S. research center model that requires user fees to access national facilities hinders workforce development. High fees result in a small user base that provides training in magnetic resonance applications. The United States could benefit from taking an approach used by the European Union that offers free use of facilities at international research centers.

Key Recommendation 4: The National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Energy should together establish an operation funding system similar to what the worldwide competition has established, where part of the experimental time at the decentralized facilities is managed centrally and in return the facilities are provided with funds for operation, maintenance, and further technology development.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

It is recognized that diverse points of view in the execution of research is critically important in order to make significant advances. Teams that are “cognitively diverse” have been studied and found to find solutions more rapidly,⁵ in part owing to different perspectives, and the National Academies have in more than 80 studies outlined opportunities to improve the cause of underrepresentation of women, and minority groups in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine

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⁵ A. Reynolds and D. Lewis, 2017, “Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse.” Harvard Business Review, March 30, https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-theyre-more-cognitively-diverse.

(STEMM) disciplines. Other groups that are underrepresented in the STEMM labor force include those from lower socio-economic backgrounds as well as those from across racial and ethnic minoritized groups, disability status, and gender identity.⁶

Women are underrepresented in the STEMM workforce and account for 35 percent of all science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) workers in 2021.⁷ Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, and American Indian or Alaska Native individuals are underrepresented among science and engineering degree recipients at the bachelor’s degree level and above and also among STEM workers with at least a bachelor’s degree.⁸

An important step for the ultrahigh-magnetic field community will be to improve the individual and interpersonal experience of these students and scientists by providing an inviting, inclusive, and equitable environment, offering educational and professional opportunities to a more diverse group of researchers, and to support new programs where the goal is to achieve excellence through diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Conclusion: Diversity and inclusion of the high magnetic field needs to be further increased both concerning gender balance as well as the inclusion of more students and scientists with underrepresented minority or lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Additionally, role models of experienced scientists in the high-magnetic-field science with such underrepresented backgrounds at universities and national laboratories will be especially important for the recruitment of students with similar backgrounds. Here it will be important to hire more individuals in positions where role models are often missing (institutional leadership and faculty and senior mentors in academia). The goal would be to build a critical mass of scientists in the high magnetic field with diverse backgrounds, to enable younger researchers to envision themselves in these roles. All members of the high-magnetic-field community must engage in providing a welcoming environment that encourages young scientists with diverse backgrounds to engage in high-magnetic-field research and aim for a career in this exciting field in academia and industry.

In this respect, it would be important to incorporate more prominent examples of minority role models in media stories and publications, encourage students and

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⁶ National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), 2023, “Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities. Special Report NSF 23-315,” https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/acknowledgments-and-citation.

⁷ NCSES, 2021, “The STEM Labor Force of Today: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers,” https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20212/executive-summary.

⁸ NCSES, 2024, “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2024,” National Science Foundation, https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20243/talent-u-s-and-global-stem-education-and-labor-force.

researchers with minority background to participate in high impact high-magnetic-field experiments and present their work at national and international conferences.

Conclusion: The numerical diversity needs to be improved by academic institutions, national labs, and industrial employers via the admission, hiring, and inclusion of minoritized individuals at all levels.

Conclusion: To track the progress, it would be very important to establish information systems across high-magnetic-field institutions, to collect data and track progress, enabling the identification of areas of disparities and improvement in the diversity of the workforce in the high magnetic field.

Many examples of evidence-based frameworks for the improvement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce already exist and can be utilized by these institutions, including the Office of the Undersecretary’s report Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education⁹ and the University of Massachusetts Center for Employment Equity report What Works.

Recommendation 9-2: Academic institutions, national laboratories, and industrial employers should get support from subject-matter experts to develop quantifiable metrics to evaluate equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals. These experts also are needed to help institutions with the implementation of improvements in the workplace to ensure achievement of these goals.

These experts also are needed to help institutions with the implementation of improvements in the workplace to ensure achievement of these goals.

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⁹ Department of Education, 2024, “New Report: Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education,” https://sites.ed.gov/ous/2023/09/diversity-and-opportunity-in-he.