Every country’s most precious resource is its young people. Students learn that the essence of science is not looking up answers or carrying out recipe-style programming assignments,  but solving problems that have never been solved before.  For this reason, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy sponsor student research opportunities at colleges, universities, and national laboratories.

The training of students to understand fundamental concepts of nature and to solve difficult problems is one of basic science’s main contributions to society. For example, Dr. Gibbons recently made these remarks about his graduate studies: "Graduate school was a good place to learn how to define and solve problems, whether theoretical or experimental. I didn’t realize it until later, but the skills and sensitivities I developed in graduate school — learning how to ask questions and dig for the answers, understanding which variables are important and which you can safely ignore, the ‘sense of things’ you gain in hard science — are relevant not only for basic research, but also for generic problem solving."

Researchers exploring the frontiers of knowledge carry their excitement into the classroom to motivate and inspire students.  Further, research opportunities and experiences improve the quality of undergraduate education faculty members provide.