Donnell Walton on Problems, Policy, and Paving the Way for the Future

As a student, Donnell Walton took it for granted that his physics and engineering education was training him to be a critical thinker.

As Walton later learned, that wasn’t necessarily true.

“Scientists, physicists, engineers—we’re not trained to be critical thinkers,” he says. “We’re trained to be analytical thinkers.”

Analytical thinkers solve problems that are very similar to those they’ve encountered previously, he says, whereas critical thinkers go broader, questioning underlying assumptions and taking a more creative approach. They are better, in his assessment, at solving problems that are quite different from those previously encountered.

Walton believes this could be the key to expanding the impact of physics in a changing world. “It’s going to be very difficult for us to analyze our way toward solutions to exigent problems like climate change and the political implications of policy,” he says. “Creative intelligence is really being able to solve problems that are different from the kind that you’ve seen in the past.”

Walton is a retired director of the Corning West Technology Center, where he began as a research scientist focused on optical communications. As his career progressed, he went on to oversee site operations, research, and business development strategies at the applied research lab. Prior to Corning, Walton was a physics professor at Howard University, where he started a research lab focused on optical fiber–based lasers and amplifiers. Today he serves as an adjunct professor of engineering at Cornell University.

The transition back to academia was, for Walton, a natural one. While at Corning he led an innovation lab that worked with universities to prepare students for careers in industrial research and development. At Cornell his courses blend leadership and innovation, asking students to think more broadly about the impacts of their technical training.

“It’s been an evolution,” he says.

Inroads and Setbacks

Walton didn’t grow up among scientists and engineers, but in high school a guidance counselor steered him toward an introductory science and engineering course at MIT, as well as an organization called INROADS, which offers career development and internships to students from underrepresented groups.

Walton went on to double major in electrical engineering and physics at North Carolina State University and received his PhD in applied physics from the University of Michigan. He believes the programs he participated in as a high school student, as well as the AT&T Bell Labs fellowship that funded his graduate studies, were vital to his academic success, and that such programs—enacted through political policies of the early 1970s—are now in danger.

“I’m a little concerned at the current trends,” says Walton, who serves on the board of the National Society of Black Physicists and is a member of the advisory panel for AIP’s TEAM-UP, the Task Force to Elevate the Representation of African Americans in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy. The very programs that helped Walton as a young student are, he says, no longer being pursued effectively at a policy level.

“Particularly right now,” he says, “we’re seeing a retrenchment, a backlash against programs and initiatives that deal with the historical underrepresentation of women and other people who we know have a history in the United States of being excluded, and if we don’t have interventions in place, there’s nothing to say that it won’t continue.”

Broadening the Physics Approach

In 2025, Walton will be a plenary speaker at the Sigma Pi Sigma Physics and Astronomy Congress in Denver, Colorado, an event he believes can offer students exposure to physics in a broader context. As science and technology evolve, Walton says, the field must become more collaborative and able to play a partner role in breakthroughs and advancements—and that’s where critical thinking comes back in.

“We need to think about where we are in our world, what we can do, and think about not just solving problems but what social scientists call problematizing,” he says. “How do you actually make things into a problem that can be solved?”

Some questions, such as how to approach the rise of large language models and machine learning, can benefit from the ideas of people trained in physics, he says. “Unlike other knowledge disciplines, physics is not defined by what we study. It’s defined by the approaches we take, and broadening those approaches and thinking about physics that way gives us an opportunity, in going very deep, to think about where we want to drill.”

Walton encourages students to consider the different avenues they can pursue along with their interest in physics. “Fostering creativity, reading, and becoming more practical as thinkers and doers are critical for, not just our careers, but for this globe that we live on.”