New State Department Fellows

Science gained a stronger foothold at the US Department of State recently when Secretary of State Colin Powell named five senior academic scientists as the department’s first Jefferson science fellows. The scientists will spend one year “on assignment” at the department and then continue as “experienced consultants] to the department for five years after returning to their academic positions,” said chemist George Atkinson, Powell’s science adviser. In announcing the fellows, Powell said, “The program gives the State Department the opportunity to benefit from the counsel and expertise of tenured academic scientists.”

The Jefferson fellowships grew out of efforts by Atkinson and his predecessor, chemist Norman Neureiter, to bring science back to the department after a decade of decline in science positions. There are now about 100 science-related fellowships and internships in the department. Indeed, Atkinson was the first American Institute of Physics fellow in the department before assuming the adviser position last year. AIP currently has two fellows in the department.

Sponsored by the department, their home universities, and several philanthropic organizations, the Jefferson fellows are Julian Adams, a University of Michigan evolutionary biologist; Bruce Averill, a University of Toledo biochemist; Melba Crawford, a remote-imaging engineer from the University of Texas at Austin; David Eastmond, a toxicologist from the University of California, Riverside; and Kalidas Shetty, a microbiologist from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.