In my submitted application that I put together July 2009, I had to include a proposal for a research project and a few course syllabi for the course(s) I would teach at UCR. This was part of the 5 page personal statement that I had to submit. But before I could even write that, I had to make contacts at UCR to 1) get a letter of invitation from the host saying that they would like me to come to their university and 2) figure out what my research project was going to be. Judging by the website of the physics and chemistry departments, I knew that they had some equipment that I know how to use and some equipment that I wanted to learn to use, so that was a good sign. But, it turned out that a friend of a friend in CR happened to be writing a proposal for a new project combining archaeology and materials science characterization techniques! What are the chances of that happening?! I get to be Indiana Jones with a physics background??! (side note: I almost minored in Archaeology at UCLA) So, I was able to write a decent personal statement/proposal that had specific goals, mentioned specific people and projected outcomes. I had no idea what my chances were for receiving the award or how many people applied for the award I applied for. The cool (but also scary) thing is that the Fulbright program does not offer any help with finding a position, contacts, picking a country, housing etc, so it is very independent but also flexible. They simply offer a list of countries and list the openings of awards (what field are they funding awards for in that specific country for that specific year?). There were no Physics awards for any Spanish speaking countries, so I applied under the "all disciplines" award for the only university that wrote back to my 'cold email' tactic asking if they were interested in hosting me at their university.
When I arrived, I was busy preparing for my course (I'll write a different post about that experience), so it was ok that the archaeological samples that we planned to examine were not in our possession (the museum did not release them). However, once we got the samples, my research project took off and I was able to get my hands dirty. Unfortunately, not dirty from digging at an archaeological site (maybe someday?!).
The research project team roughly consists of an archaeologist, 2 chemists, and me. We are basically trying to study the properties of ceramic samples (pieces of pottery) from a few local archaeological sites around Costa Rica. The use of scientific instruments to study archaeological samples is called Archaeometry (archaeological science). These pieces are pretty old, BC times even! What kind of properties are we studying, you ask? The general term is spectroscopy, seeing how light waves of different energy/wavelength interact with matter (ie my samples). Depending on what the sample is made of (molecules, minerals, elements, crystal structure, special bonds etc) the incoming light reacts/scatters differently, and that difference can be measured. The incoming light can be Xray, Infra-red, or visible light (lasers). My challenge is learning as much as I can about this field and applying it to our samples, this has nothing to do with my nanoscience background, but a lot to do with physical chemistry (my PhD specialization was Chemical and Material Physics, not pure Physics or Astrophysics). By learning about the composition of these samples we can trace the history of the specific civilization that made them, what did they use, are the style and materials used similar to other civilizations in the area, what temperature was the pottery fired at, etc. It is adding one more piece of a puzzle that tells a story of a civilization(s) in a certain region.
Because this is so interdisciplinary, it requires an interdisciplinary team.
It has been a great experience so far to add more tools to my scientific tool box and CV, and learn more about Archaeometry as a field. Passing up doing a traditional Post-Doc in a university/national laboratory right out of graduate school was the best decision for me, now just have to figure out what I want to do next . . .
