Renowned University of Colorado at Boulder physics professor and Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman has been tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as associate director for science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.
The nomination of Wieman was announced today along with three other administration appointments.
“I am grateful that these exceptional individuals have chosen to dedicate their talents to serving the American people,” Obama said in a news release. “I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”
In a prepared statement, CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano lauded the news, saying he is “extremely gratified” by Wieman’s latest accomplishment.
“If confirmed by Congress, Dr. Wieman will be a dynamic leader in helping to form effective science and technology policies for our nation,” DiStefano said. “He has been a peerless researcher and teacher, and has been tireless in his devotion to science education over the last decade, revolutionizing how we teach at CU-Boulder and changing the landscape of teaching globally and nationally.”
Wieman, is a fellow of JILA, a joint institute between CU and the National Institute for Standards and Technology. He won a share of the Nobel Prize in physics in 2001 with fellow CU researcher Eric Cornell for their landmark 1995 creation of the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter that occurs at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero.
Wieman was named Carnegie Professor of the Year in 2004. His CU recognitions include being named a Distinguished Professor and a President’s Teaching Scholar.
But in March 2006, he accepted a position as physics professor at the University of British Columbia and started spending 80 percent of his time there, while maintaining his appointment at CU.
He said his decision to accept the UBC position was driven in part by the lack of funding for higher education in Colorado and the fact that the CU administration had been too distracted by state politics and scandals in the athletics department to pay enough attention to education reform.
UBC agreed to pay him $10.6 million to start a science education reform initiative similar to the one he started at CU.
