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.
One of few Americans recognized for lifetime achievement in space exploration by the International Astronautical Federation and celebrated before the United Nations General Assembly, J.R. Edwards is a leading voice in global partnership development. He served as a longtime senior industry liaison to NASA and as a permanent observer to the United Nations. Helping organizations, communities, and individuals to explore big ideas, set clear vision, and realize their greatest aspirations, Mr. Edwards is pleased to serve as the Chair of the AIP Team-Up Together Capital Campaign.
Edwards, a former executive of Lockheed Martin, is the president of the board of Explore Mars, Inc., a non-profit organization that champions the human exploration of the Moon, MARS, and the Cosmos. He is a fellow of the American Astronautical Society, a lifetime member and associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a full member of the International Academy of Astronautics.
Dr. Eric Furst is the William H. Severns Jr. Distinguished Chair of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. His research interests span a range of topics in soft matter science and engineering, focusing on experiments in colloid science, interfacial phenomena, and rheology. He co-authored the book Microrheology for Oxford University Press in 2017.
Eric is an ex-officio member of the AIP Foundation board. He is the vice-chair of the AIP Board of Directors.
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.
Dr. Evgeni P. Gousev is Senior Director of Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI) in Silicon Valley, California. He leads hardware research and development. Dr. Gousev is Chairman of the Board of the tinyML Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to accelerating the growth of tiny Machine Learning technologies and innovations. tinyML is focused on supporting and nurturing the fast-growing branch of ultra-low power machine learning technologies and approaches dealing with machine intelligence at the very edge of the cloud.
He is interested in helping students, increasing diversity and an evangelist for the study of physics.
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.
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.
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.
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.