President Barack Obama announced on May 20, 2016, his intent to appoint Dr. W. Carl Lineberger to a second term on the National Science Board. The National Science Board serves as an advisory board to the President and Congress on issues involving science and engineering. Lineberger’s duties will include helping to establish the policies of the National Science Foundation. He is currently completing a five-year term on the National Science Board that began in August 2011.
Lineberger is the E. U. Condon Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of JILA, a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently serves on the National Research Council’s Committee on Responsible Science and Laboratory Assessments Board, as well as the Ethics Advisory Committee of the National Academy of Engineering.
He has chaired or co-chaired the National Science Foundation Advisory Committees on Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Science and Technology Centers, the Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, and the National Research Council Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Applications. Lineberger recently received the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences.
"I am truly honored and delighted to be afforded this continued opportunity to work with superb colleagues in shared efforts to enhance the National Science Foundation's role as the nation's preeminent fundamental research-funding institution," said Lineberger.
Lineberger earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His former graduate students and postdoctoral associates hold major research-related positions throughout the world.
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.