Introduction to Science Policy
J-term 2019 | 9:00am to 12:00pm, Jan. 7-11
Session 1: January 7, 9 am - Noon, Graduate Students Register Here
Session 2: January 8, 9 am - Noon, Graduate Students Register Here
Session 3 January 9, 9 am - Noon, Graduate Students Register Here
Session 4: January 10, 9 am - Noon, Graduate Students Register Here
Session 5: Janary 11, 9 am - Noon, Graduate Students Register Here
This course is intended to provide those interested in science and technology careers with a basic familiarity in science policymaking and a history of science policy globally and in the U.S., as well as an understanding of the government’s role in the science and technology ecosystem.
Participants will also learn about a variety of fellowship opportunities in the area of science policy, and how to best position themselves for such opportunities. The course will feature various in-class discussions and several guest speakers.
Instructor: Joel P. Baumgart | [email protected]
Confirmed Guest Speakers
Ali Nouri- January 11
PhD in Molecular Biology at Princeton University
President of American Federation of Scientists
Jeff Fox, PhD in Physics from Cornell University - January 11
2009-10 AAAS fellow on the Hill as an AIP Congressional fellow,
2010-2012 AAAS Fellowship in the Africa bureau at the State Dept
Karla Hagan- January 8
PhD in Physics from UVA
Senior Science and Innovation Policy Advisor at the British Embassy
AAAS Fellow, Legislative Branch, 2015-16
Kerry Bolger, PhD - January 7
Program Analyst, Strategic Planning Division Office of Planning and Program Support
Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Mahlet Mesfin, PhD - January 7
Deputy Director, Center for Science Diplomacy, AAAS
Marlit Hayslett - January 10
Director of Communication Training and Strategy UVA,
Director, Office of Policy Analysis and Research at Georgia Tech,
Communications Director of Georgia Democratic Party
Sutyajeet I. Soneja, PhD - January 9
Consultant, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization
2016-2018 AAAS Executive Branch Fellow, USAID
Tho Nguyen - January 8
PhD in Computer Science from U Washington
2013-2015 AAAS Fellow at NSF
Vaughan Turekian - January 10
PhD in Environmental Sciences from UVA
Executive Director Policy & Global Affairs at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
William Colglazier- January 9
PhD in Physics from Caltech,
Center for Science Diplomacy AAAS, Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State,
Executive Officer of the National Academies and National Research Council
Speaker Bios
Dr. Joel P. Baumgart is the Senior Research Program Officer in the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Virginia, an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at Cornell University Weill Medical College, and an Associate Editor of the journal Science & Diplomacy. Joel was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Tanzania in 2015-16. Before his time abroad, Joel was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Office of the Director at the National Institutes of Health and a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow at the National Academy of Engineering. In addition to his policy experience, Joel was a Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars Institute at Princeton University, a New York Academy of Sciences Education Fellow, an Epilepsy Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, a Visiting Scholar at the Université de Montpellier, a Visiting Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences, and a writer at the Core Knowledge Foundation. Joel is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology and has recently been selected to the New Voices program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Joel was the recipient of the Eric W. Lothman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Neuroscience, the Award for Excellence in Scholarship in the Sciences & Engineering, and the Early Achievement Alumni Award from the University of Virginia, and received the Zora Neale Hurston Thesis Award for the Social Sciences from Columbia University.
Dr. Ali Nouri is the President of the Federation of American Scientists. Until recently he served as legislative director and national security advisor to U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) where he oversaw the work of the Senator’s legislative team, drafted and negotiated bills, and represented the Senator in various fora. Nouri came to Capitol Hill in 2008 and joined Senator Jim Webb’s office (D-VA) first as a AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow and then as an advisor on issues related to science, energy, and environment. He currently serves as chair to the AAAS Science and Engineering Fellowship Advisory Board. Prior to coming to Capitol Hill, he was an advisor to the office of the UN Secretary General, and a research associate at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School where he developed initiatives to maximize the beneficial applications of biotechnology to global health, while working to cut off pathways through which biotech can be used to develop biological weapons. Dr. Nouri was recently selected to participate in the “New Voices” project of the National Academies of Sciences for outstanding leaders in science, engineering, and medicine. Nouri holds a B.A. in Biology from Reed College and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University.
Dr. Jeffrey J. Fox is Director of Research Development in the Office of the Vice President for Research at UVa. He also serves as UVa's Liaison to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Prior to his current position, he served as Managing Director of UVa's Center for Automata Processing, a public-private research center co-founded by UVa and Micron Technology, Inc. He also served as Managing Director of UVa’s nanoSTAR Institute. Before joining UVa, Jeff was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow in the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Jeff also served as an American Institute of Physics/AAAS Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman. Prior to his policy experience, Jeff was a Visiting Scientist with the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University.
Dr. Mahlet Mesfin joined AAAS in May 2017 as the Deputy Director of the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She also serves as executive editor of the open-access policy journal Science & Diplomacy. Prior to AAAS, Mahlet was the Assistant Director for International Science and Technology (S&T) at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She led the strategic planning, coordination, and execution of the S&T-focused bilateral and multilateral engagements under the responsibility of the President’s Science Advisor, strengthened international engagements across OSTP, and championed science and technology as an element of the broader U.S. government’s foreign policy agenda. Mahlet entered the government through the AAAS S&T Policy Fellowship program, where she worked at the Basic Research Office at the U.S. Department of Defense and worked on the coordination and strategy of international S&T engagement across the Department. She was also a policy fellow with the Committee for Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Engineering. Mahlet received a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a M.S.E. in biomedical engineering and B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mahlet was a Mirzayan fellow in 2011
Marlit Hayslett serves as the Director for Communication Training and Strategy in the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Since 2016, Marlit has worked with over 400 graduate students and 75 faculty members on sharing their research with general audiences such as the public, media, industry, and policymakers. Prior to joining UVA, Marlit served as the founding director of the Office of Policy Analysis and Research (OPAR) at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to leading OPAR’s applied policy research, she supported the Georgia General Assembly’s House and Senate Science and Technology Committees for over seven years. Marlit collaborated with Georgia’s technology business community to introduce and enact legislation calling for a task force to explore the role of a strategic plan for science, technology, and innovation in the state of Georgia. In 2012, she was honored by the Georgia General Assembly with two legislative resolutions commending her work in science and technology policy. As a result of years of engaging policymakers on scientific and technical topics, Marlit has led several national and international conference panels and workshops on communicating science to policymakers. Prior to GTRI, Marlit’s work experiences include service on a gubernatorial campaign and the Governor’s Office of Georgia. She also served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Krompachy, Slovakia, teaching English tostudents in middle school, high school, and adult factory workers. Suffering from an insatiable appetite for learning, Marlit holds a B.S. and M.S. in International Affairs, and an M.S. in Public Policy, all from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In her leisure time, Marlit is also a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in Athens, Georgia. Her dissertation is a comparative analysis of American and European policy documents on three science policy issues (cyclamate, hormone-treated beef, and bisphenol A).
Dr. E. William Colglazier is currently Visiting Scientist at the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He served as the fourth Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014. His role was to provide scientific and technical expertise and advice in support of the development and implementation of U.S. foreign policy. From 1994 to 2011, he served as Executive Officer of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) where he helped to oversee the studies that provide independent, objective advice on public policy issues. From 1991 to 1994, he was Executive Director of the Office of International Affairs at the NAS/NRC. From 1983 to 1991, he was a Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee where he directed several research centers: Energy, Environment, and Resources Center; Waste Management Research and Education Institute; and the Water Resources Research Center. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1971, and prior to 1983 worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. While at Harvard, he also served as Associate Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Humanism of the Aspen Institute. In 1976-77, he was an AAAS Congressional Science Fellow. He is past chair of the Forum on Physics and Society of the American Physical Society (APS) and a Fellow of the AAAS and APS.
Dr. Tho H. Nguyen manages the VP for IT’s flagship ACCORD Advanced Cyber instrument Program. ACCORD is a complete research computing environment that integrates HPC/HTC with compliance-driven security provisions to protect sensitive data. The ACCORD program includes a Consortium of ten (and growing) leading Virginia universities and research institutions to deploy this next generation cyberinfrastructure supporting data-enabled research across the Commonwealth. In addition to his appointment in the VP for IT Office, Tho is concurrently a Senior Research Program Officer in the Department of Computer Science where he is primarily responsible for project and program development in Cyber-Physical Systems and Software/Hardware Systems Research.Tho’s past work focused on sensing, modeling, and application of controls for large-scale environmental systems. His current research interests include secured cyberinfrastructure for “data-collaborations”, and extending cyber-physical systems theory and technologies to mitigate the impact of disruptions to interdependent systems (i.e., resiliency). Tho has also had extensive international research experience and has received funding from NSF, USAID, and VEF for his international work. He is currently leading the effort to develop SCICADA, a secured and lightweight research data sharing platform deployed in the Lower Mekong region.Tho earned his PhD from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in the Department of Electrical Engineering (Systems, Controls & Robotics) in 2009. Prior to joining UVA, Tho served as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was appointed to the National Science Foundation, where he worked on the Cyber-Physical Systems Program (2013-2015). He is also a former J. William Fulbright Fellow to Vietnam (2006-2007).
Dr. Sutyajeet ‘Sut’ Soneja is serving as a Joint Technical and Policy Advisor to the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group. Sut was a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow from 2016 to 2018 at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). At USAID, he worked within the U.S. Global Development Lab's Office of Evaluation and Impact Assessment on the strengthening of health information systems in West Africa as a part of the post-Ebola recovery effort. He also served as an Embassy Science Fellow (October 2017-Jan 2018) at the U.S. Embassy to Italy in Rome, where he attended the G7 Health Ministerial as a member of the U.S. delegation, as well as advised on a range of other issues that included the impact of climate upon health, antimicrobial resistance, and the Global Health Security Agenda. Prior to his AAAS fellowship, Sut obtained his Ph.D. in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he lived in Nepal for an extended period of time and researched the impact that cookstoves utilizing biomass fuels have on household air pollution and climate change in South Asia. Sut also served as a Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the U.S. CDC and State Health Department of Maryland leading initiatives to assess how climate change is affecting a variety of health outcomes at a local level within the U.S., which is part of a larger policy framework informing climate adaptation strategies within the U.S. Concurrently, he consulted for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) where he worked to assess safe access to energy resources for displaced populations in Rwanda. He also holds dual B.S. degrees in Biomedical and Biological Engineering from NC State University and worked as a project engineer for Colgate-Palmolive prior to attending graduate school.