Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson

Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson is the 18th President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Hartford, CT, the oldest technological research university in the U.S.. Described by Time Magazine (2005) as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” President Jackson has held senior leadership positions in government, industry, research, and academe.

Since her arrival in 1999, Dr. Jackson has fostered an extraordinary renaissance at Rensselaer. In addition, she is past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2004) and former Chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors (2005), a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and AAAS. She has advisory roles and involvement in several other prestigious national organizations. She serves as a Trustee of the Brookings Institution, a Life Member of the M.I.T. Corporation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness and serves on the board of Georgetown University. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange (and is Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange Regulation Board), the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and is a director of several major corporations.

She was appointed Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 1995-1999, by U.S. President William J. Clinton. At the NRC, Dr. Jackson reorganized the agency, and completely revamped its regulatory approach, by articulating, and moving strongly to, risk-informed, performance-based regulation. Prior to that, she was a theoretical physicist at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories and a professor of theoretical physics at Rutgers University.

Dr. Jackson holds an S.B. in physics and a Ph.D. in theoretical elementary particle physics from M.I.T., and 40 honorary doctoral degrees.

Over the past several years, President Jackson has worked successfully to bring national attention to the underinvestment in basic research and to what she has dubbed the “Quiet Crisis” in America – the threat to the United State’s capacity to innovate due to the looming shortage in the nation’s science and technology workforce. The shortfall results from a record number of retirements on the horizon, and not enough students in the pipeline to replace them because fewer American students are studying science, mathematics, and engineering and fewer students are coming from abroad to study and stay. President Jackson notes that, if the U.S. is to maintain its leadership in science and technology, we must increase the number of people choosing to pursue careers in science and technology, and to do that, we must tap into all of the talent this nation has to offer, including women and minorities – what she calls the “underrepresented majority.”

President Jackson has urged a national focus on energy research as a focal point to excite and encourage greater interest in science and engineering careers, noting that “energy security is the space race of this millennium.”