The man whose job it is to keep America at the forefront of science and engineering said that being schooled in New Castle gave him a strong start in establishing his distinguished career.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Arden L. Bement Jr.

Arden L. Bement Jr., director of the National Science Foundation, was at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center last week for the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind Cray machine called Big Ben. The foundation last fall awarded the center a grant to acquire the supercomputer.

"We've come a long way since the days when a mainframe computer took three to five seconds to perform a simple multiplication," Bement said at the ceremony. "The system we dedicate today is capable of an amazing 10 trillion multiplications per second."

His own math skills may not have escalated as dramatically, but he has come a long way also since his youth in Western Pennsylvania.

Bement, 73, was born in the Dorseyville section of Indiana Township. When he was 4, his family moved to New Castle in Lawrence County. World War II was soon under way, and the community was bustling.

"It had a number of steel operations, cutting and making bridges and so forth, making steel assemblies, much of which was for the war effort," he recalled. "Even the pottery companies were going full out."

Bement said that he always appreciated the "very strong" education in science, math, reading and writing he got in New Castle, and the close relationships he had with many of his teachers. He returns every few years for class reunions, and has taken note of the many changes, like the absence of Forbes Field in Oakland.

Back then, due to the pollution, "you could smell Pittsburgh and Youngstown miles away," he said, chuckling. "At night they lit up the sky because of the Bessemer converters. Most of that is all gone now."

After high school graduation, Bement and his family relocated to Colorado. He worked at a mine for a while, and then attended the Colorado School of Mines to study metallurgical engineering. He received his master's degree in the field from the University of Idaho, and his doctorate from the University of Michigan.

"It was also the beginning of [the] Atoms for Peace [concept] and the development of nuclear reactor technology," Bement said. "So I got in the ground floor for most of that."

He also has an honorary engineering doctorate from Cleveland State University and an honorary science doctorate from Case Western Reserve University.

In 1970, after several years in industry, Bement joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor of nuclear materials. Six years later, he became the director of the office for materials science at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1979-80, he served as the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

For more than a decade, Bement was a vice president at TRW Inc., a global manufacturing company. Beginning in 1992, he held several appointments at Purdue University, including head of the school of nuclear engineering.

In 2001, the Bush administration invited him to be director of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, overseeing an annual budget of $773 million and a staff of 3,000. Last year, while he was still heading NIST, he became acting director of the National Science Foundation, which has an annual budget of about $5.5 billion.

Bement did both jobs for 10 months, until his appointment as the full-time NSF director was confirmed in November by the U.S. Senate. The role requires him to maintain the country's stature in science and engineering and he also aims to broaden the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in the fields.

Science education programs that serve children to seniors are also a major component of the foundation's activities, he said.

"It's K[indergarten] to grave, almost," Bement noted. "We support also informal education at science museums and through media, television and other public outreach activities."

After the six-year term is complete, he'll probably return to teaching.

"I've always tried to get on new learning curves," Bement said. "Whenever I get on the flat side of one learning curve, I try to get to the next one. It's one way to keep from becoming brain dead."

He also places a high value on mentorship.

"Throughout my career, I've worked under many outstanding leaders and I always learned something from them," he said. "They always had my interests at heart and I think that more than anything else was probably a factor in my career development and eventual success."