Top Penn State Scientist to Be Adviser to Rice: Three-Year Appointment Will Start in August
By Adam Smeltz, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.
Jul. 19–Just a day after President Bush named Nina V. Fedoroff a National Medal of Science winner, the State Department said Wednesday that the Penn State professor will become an adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Fedoroff, a top researcher in plant molecular biology, will advise State Department leadership on science and technology issues, the department reported.
She was nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and named to the job by Rice herself. The timing of the announcement on Wednesday — soon after the medal announcement on Tuesday — was “purely coincidental and unexpected,” said Barbara Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
Fedoroff, reached late Wednesday, said the NAS first gauged her interest in the adviser job back in September. She met with Rice in early March and received a verbal offer three days later, she said.
Since then, Fedoroff said, she has undergone a complete background investigation and a conflict-of-interest review. Her three-year, nonpolitical appointment is slated to begin next month.
“My immediate reaction was, ‘If not now, when?’ and ‘If not this, what would you like to do?’ ” Fedoroff said. She had no hesitation about accepting the appointment, even though it will mean a pay cut of more than 50 percent, she said.
She also has to give up her position as a board member at Sigma-Aldrich, a science and technology company based in Missouri, she said.
“I am passionately interested in the ability of science to make bridges across political and religious chasms that seem unbridgeable,” Fedoroff said. She plans to listen to people’s needs, she said, and “try to identify the sources of information that are most important and most relevant.”
Fedoroff will go on leave from Penn State, where she is the Verne M. Willaman chairwoman in life sciences and an Evan Pugh professor. She will continue to run her laboratory at University Park, she said.
Officials with the State Department and the NAS could not be reached for immediate comment late Wednesday.
The federal government added the advisory position in 2000. Fedoroff, the third person to hold the title, will succeed George Atkinson.
Her duties will include work as chief scientist in the State Department and as principal liaison to the scientific and engineering communities, according to a news release.
Fedoroff also will be responsible for “enhancing the science and technology literacy and capacity at the State Department, increasing the number of scientists and engineers working in Washington and missions abroad …,” the release states.
Additional work for Fedoroff will include providing advice on science and technology issues as they impact foreign policy, according to the release.
Fedoroff, who speaks Russian, has longstanding international ties and leadership roles. Among her travels, she has been to Bangladesh on behalf of the State Department to talk about genetically modified foods.
She also is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and has served on the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation. She has been a Penn State professor since 1995.
“I think that, for example, as we negotiate with North Korea, there isn’t anything more important than helping them begin to feed a really impoverished and malnourished population,” Fedoroff said. “That involves science at the very fundamental level — plant science, crop science, nutrition, public health.”
Likewise, she said, science and technology will play pivotal roles as the United States and the world face conflicts in the Middle East, global climate change and the prospects of disease.
The State Department includes perhaps more than 30 scientist fellows — a number that has grown from zero in 2000, Fedoroff said.
“You have 15 minutes of fame, and you can sit on it, or you can use it,” she said. “The National Medal of Science will give me just that little bit more clout in this new position. …
“I think it’s really, really important to use one’s accomplishments to good ends,” Fedoroff said, “to try to make the plight of humanity just a little bit better.”
Adam Smeltz can be reached at 231-4631.
—–
To see more of the Centre Daily Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.centredaily.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NASDAQ-NMS:SIAL,