Brinkman, Poneman and Nacht nominated by Obama administration

Former American Physical Society president and Princeton physicist William Brinkman has been nominated to head the Office of Science at the Department of Energy (DOE). The announcement came out of the White House on Friday .

Daniel Poneman, a lawyer and former National Security Council official, has been nominated as deputy secretary of energy in charge of the nuclear weapons complex. Poneman is the only nonscientist among the Obama administration’s four deputy secretaries nominated to lead DOE.

Michael Nacht, has been nominated for assistant secretary of defense (Global Strategic Affairs) at the Department of Defense.

“I am grateful that these fine individuals have made the admirable decision to serve their country,” said President Obama in a released statement. “Their expertise and dedication will be a valuable asset both to my administration and our nation as we work to bring about the real change that the American people need today.”

Brinkman

William Brinkman, currently a senior research physicist in the physics department at Princeton University, is the third scientist to be appointed to a high-level position at DOE. He is a former vice president of research at Bell Laboratories and a former vice president of Sandia National Laboratories .

After achieving a PhD in physics from the University of Missouri in 1965 and a one-year fellowship to Oxford University, he joined Bell Laboratories .

In 1972, he became head of the Infrared Physics and Electronics Research Department, and in 1974 became the director of the Chemical Physics Research Laboratory. Seven years later he became director of the Physical Research Laboratory until moving to Sandia in 1984.

He returned to Bell Labs in 1987 to become executive director of the Physics Research Division, eventually rising to vice president of research nine years ago.

Brinkman is a member of the American Physical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has chaired the National Academy of Sciences Physics Survey and the NAS Solid-State Sciences Committee. Brinkman was the recipient of the 1994 George E. Pake Prize.

Poneman

Harvard and Oxford graduate Daniel Poneman has years of experience working on nuclear and defense issues. More than $10 billion per year is spent by DOE on nuclear nonproliferation, superfund cleanup sites such as Hanford, and the stockpile stewardship program.

Since 2001, Poneman has been working for the Scowcroft Group , an international business advisory firm based in Washington, DC. From 1993 through 1996, Poneman served as special assistant to the president and senior director for nonproliferation and export controls at the National Security Council . He joined the NSC staff in 1990 as director of Defense Policy and Arms Control, after serving as a White House Fellow in the Department of Energy.

Poneman has served on several federal commissions and advisory panels, and has authored books on nuclear energy policy.

Nacht

Michael Nacht is currently a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley . He has a BS in aeronautics and astronautics from New York University and began his career working on missile aerodynamics for NASA before earning a PhD in political science at Columbia University.

Nacht served a three-year term as a member of the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, for which he chaired panels on counter terrorism and counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, reporting to the deputy secretary of defense.

Nacht also consults for Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on arms control issues. From 1994-1997, Nacht was assistant director for Strategic and Eurasian Affairs at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, leading its work on nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia and initiating nuclear arms control talks with China. He participated in five summit meetings with President Clinton - four with Russian president Boris Yeltsin and one with Chinese president Jiang Zemin.

Nacht has testified before Congress on subjects ranging from arms control to the supply and demand for scientists in the workplace.