On April 7, 2011, the White House announced that President Obama intends to nominate JILA Fellow W. Carl Lineberger to the National Science Board, National Science Foundation, one of the nation's most important science policy organizations. The board sets policy for the National Science Foundation and serves as a key advisory organization to the President and Congress on science, engineering, and education. Lineberger’s nomination will take place soon. He will then be considered for confirmation by the U. S. Senate.
"Dr. Lineberger's willingness to take on this challenge is a great opportunity for science in the United States," said Thomas O'Brian, chief of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST's) Quantum Physics Division. "In addition to Lineberger’s remarkable scientific career, he has a long and highly effective history of leading and serving on national science policy organizations."
Lineberger is the E.U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) and a Fellow of JILA, a joint institute of UCB and NIST. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves on the Report Review Committee of the National Research Council (NRC), and the NRC Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space. In the past, Dr. Lineberger has chaired the National Science Foundation Advisory Committees on Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Science and Technology Centers, the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, and the NAS/NRC Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications. He recently completed service on the National Academy of Sciences Council, the NAS/NRC Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, and the NRC Governing Board. Dr. Lineberger earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.