Board of Trustees
Chair
The Honorable France A. Córdova was the 14th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent federal agency.
Córdova has been a leader in science, engineering and education for more than four decades. She has a distinguished career in both higher education and government; she has served in five presidential administrations, several universities, and in three federal agencies. Her contributions in multi-spectral research on x-ray and gamma ray sources and space-borne instrumentation have made her an internationally recognized astrophysicist. She was the first woman to become President of Purdue University, and the first Latina Chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. Formerly, she was vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Córdova served as chair of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution and on the board of trustees of Mayo Clinic. She also served as NASA's chief scientist (first woman and youngest person to hold this position) and is a recipient of the agency's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. Her first government job was with DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Córdova was honored as a Kilby Laureate in 2000, recognized for "significant contributions to society through science, technology, innovation, invention and education." She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a National Associate of the National Academies and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS). She was named a distinguished alumna of Caltech and today is on its Board of Trustees. She is in Stanford’s Multi-Cultural Hall of Fame and the California Hall of Fame and has a number of honorary doctorates. She has been honored with significant awards from the countries of Ireland and Chile.
Anneila Sargent is a Scottish-American astronomer who specializes in star formation. Sargent was nominated in 2011 by President Obama to serve a six-year term on the National Science Board. She has served on committees such as the NRC Committee for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee, and in 1995/6 chaired the Visiting Committee to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. She has been Chair of NASA's Space Science Advisory Committee since 1994.
Vanessa E. Wyche is the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, home to America’s astronaut corps, Mission Control Center, International Space Station, Orion and Gateway programs and its more than 11,000 civil service and contractor employees. She is responsible for overseeing a broad range of human spaceflight activities, including development and operation of human spacecraft, commercialization of low-Earth orbit and Johnson’s role in landing the first woman and first person of color on the surface of the Moon. Wyche previously served as deputy director at Johnson, a position she held since 2018.
Treasurer, Chair of AIP Finance Committee
Susan K. Avery is President Emerita of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, having served in the leadership role there from 2008‐2015. During that period she led the development of an intermediate strategy for the institution to attain fiscal stability based on an external and internal landscape analysis.
Mountain View, CA
Google Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence.
Sandeep Giri's career focuses on building products in the high-tech sector. He has first-hand experience solving audacious engineering problems across multiple industries and several cultures. He has primarily focused on emerging technology development, driving systems from concept to production, fundamental analysis of project viability at scale, and building end-end infrastructure. Products impacted thus far include flat panel displays, MEMS devices, solar panels, head-mounted displays, smartwatches, e-readers, stratospheric balloons, datacenter infrastructure. He holds multiple patents and has published academic papers.
He has built teams and products across Asia, Europe, North America. He has conducted projects at Fermi and Oak Ridge national labs. He is an honorary member of Sigma Pi Sigma. He has also served as a member of the Joint Task Force on Undergraduate Physics Programs.
As part of AIP, he wants to Make Physics Diverse, Relevant, and Cool. MS from Stanford University in materials science and engineering; BS from Coe College, physics and mathematics.
Bethesda, MD
Nancy Thorndike Greenspan was a health economist and in the 1980s began a writing career as the co-author of four books with her husband, the late child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan. She is the author of two biographies, The End of the Certain World: The Life and Science of Max Born (Basic Books, 2005) and the recently published Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs (Viking, May 2020). She has served on the boards of numerous environmental organizations and committees and boards of the American Institute of Physics. An ice dancer, she spends her free time at the rink. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Maj. Gen. Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., (USMC-Ret.) was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 12th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Bolden received a bachelor’s degree in electrical science from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. He became a pilot and between 1972 and 1973 flew more than 100 combat missions in the Vietnam War. Bolden received a master’s degree in systems management from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland.
In 1980 he was selected as an astronaut by NASA. During his time at NASA, Bolden made four spaceflights, serving as pilot on his first 2 flights – STS-61C and STS-31 (Hubble) – and commander on his final 2 flights – STS-45 and STS-60, the first joint US-Russian shuttle mission.
At Google, Vint Cerf helps to grow Google’s Public Sector Cloud business and supports continued spread of the Internet. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He has served in executive positions at the Internet Society, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and on the faculty of Stanford University.
Vint Cerf served on the US National Science Board and is a Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He serves on the NASA Advisory Committee and the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Cerf is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Swedish Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Computer Society, Worshipful Companies of Information Technologists and Stationers and is a member of the National Academies of Engineering and Science.
He is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. Most recently, Vint was the 2023 recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor in recognition of co-creating the Internet architecture and providing sustained leadership in its phenomenal growth in becoming society’s critical infrastructure. This is the highest IEEE award, given to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution or an extraordinary career in the IEEE fields of interest. He has also received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, US National Medal of Technology, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the Prince of Asturias Award, the Japan Prize, the Charles Stark Draper award, the ACM Turing Award, the Legion d’Honneur and 29 honorary degrees.
Dr. John C. Mather, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). His research centers on infrared astronomy and cosmology. As an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (New York City), he led the proposal efforts for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) (1974-76), and was at GSFC as the Study Scientist (1976-88), Project Scientist (1988-98), and also the Principal Investigator for the Far IR Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE.
As Senior Project Scientist (1995-present) for the James Webb Space Telescope, he leads the science team, and represents scientific interests within the project management. He has served on advisory and working groups for the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, and the National Science Foundation (for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and for the Center for Astrophysical Research in the Antarctic (CARA). He has received many awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics for his precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation using the COBE satellite.
Phillips served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Sandia National Laboratories, retiring from the Laboratories in 2015 after nearly 20 years. As Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, she led the Laboratory/s internally funded research and development program, research strategy, and intellectual property protection and deployment. She began her career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, performing fundamental research on thin films of technological interest.
Phillips is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Materials Research Society (MRS), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Physical Society (APS). She has served on the NAE Council and AAAS Board of Directors, and chaired the APS Panel on Public Affairs, the APS Topical Group on Energy Research and Applications, and the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics. She also served as President of the MRS.
In 2008 Phillips received the George E. Pake Prize from APS for her leadership and pioneering research in materials physics for industrial and national security applications. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Materials Research, Journal of Applied Physics, and Applied Physics Reviews. She has edited books, written book chapters, and authored more than 100 journal publications, 12 major review articles, and 45 refereed conference proceedings publications. She also holds five patents, along with the following degrees: B.S. Physics, College of William and Mary; M.S. Applied Physics, Yale University; Ph.D. Applied Physics, Yale University.
Phillips is a member of the National Science Board’s Class of 2022, and recently chaired the AIP expert panel which authored Peril and Promise: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Physical Sciences.
Washington, DC
Ninth CEO of the American Institute of Physics (AIP)—a federation that provides the means for its ten Member Societies to broaden their impact and achieve results beyond their individual missions and mandates, and an independent institute that advances the discipline of the physical sciences. Previously Moloney served as the Director for Space and Aeronautics at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where he spent more than 15 years working on over 100 reports across a diverse set of scientific, engineering and technical fields. Moloney, originally from Ireland, and spent 7 years as an Irish foreign service officer. He earned his PhD in physics from Trinity College Dublin.