In a 2020 interview given toFederal University of Pará in Brazil, Wieman recalls his youth and his journey as a physicist; the influence of other people, like teachers and his parents, on his trajectory; his path through science education and the foundation of the open educational resourcePhET Interactive Simulations.[9][10]
Wieman joined theUniversity of British Columbia on 1 January 2007 and headed a well-endowed science education initiative there; he retained a twenty percent appointment at theUniversity of Colorado Boulder to head the science education project he founded in Colorado.[11] On 1 September 2013, Wieman joinedStanford University with a joint appointment in the physics department and the Graduate School of Education.[12][13]
In the past several years, Wieman has been particularly involved with efforts at improvingscience education and has conducted educational research on science instruction. Wieman served as Chair of theBoard on Science Education of theNational Academy of Sciences from 2005 to 2009. He has used and promotesEric Mazur'speer instruction, a pedagogical system where teachers repeatedly askmultiple-choice concept questions during class, and students reply on the spot with little wireless "clicker" devices. If a large proportion of the class chooses a wrong answer, students discuss among themselves and reply again.[14] In 2007, Wieman was awarded theOersted Medal, which recognizes notable contributions to the teaching of physics, by theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).
Wieman is the founder and chairman ofPhET, a web-based directive ofUniversity of Colorado Boulder which provides an extensive suite of simulations to improve the way that physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math are taught and learned.[15]Link
Wieman is a member of theUSA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.[16] Wieman was nominated to be The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy Associate Director of Science on March 24, 2010. His hearing in front of the Commerce committee occurred on May 20, 2010, and he was passed by unanimous consent. On September 16, 2010, Dr. Wieman was confirmed by unanimous consent. He left that post in June 2012 to battlemultiple myeloma.[17]
^Perkins, Katherine; Adams, Wendy; Dubson, Michael; Finkelstein, Noah; Reid, Sam; Wieman, Carl; Lemaster, Ron (2008). "PhET: Interactive Simulations for Teaching and Learning Physics".Collected Papers of Carl Wieman. pp. 702–709.doi:10.1142/9789812813787_0097.ISBN978-981-270-415-3.
Carl Wieman on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture December 8, 2001Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Gas; The First 70 Years and Some Recent Experiments
