NSF, NSB Bestow Honors

NSF and the National Science Board, the 24-member policy body of NSF, presented their awards at the annual NSB awards dinner held this past May in Washington, DC.

The board’s Vannevar Bush Award went this year to Mary L. Good, dean of the Donaghey College of Information Science and Systems Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. The NSB acknowledged her “life-long contributions to science, engineering, and technology, and … her leadership throughout her multi-faceted career.” That career has involved stints in academia, private industry, and government.

Early on, Good was a chemistry professor at both Louisiana State University and the University of New Orleans. She later became the Boyd Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at LSU before joining the private sector. She was senior vice president of technology with Allied Signal Inc in New Jersey, was subsequently appointed as Under Secretary, Technology Administration, at the US Department of Commerce, and also served as NSB’s chair.

Receiving NSF’s 2004 Alan T. Waterman Award, the foundation’s highest honor for a young researcher, was Kristi Anseth, Tisone Professor in the chemical and biological engineering department at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an assistant investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. NSF recognized her “groundbreaking work in new biomaterials that are engineered to help the body heal itself.”

Anseth’s other research interests include photopolymerizations and degradable polymer networks. The foundation characterizes her as “a creative scientist [who] combined her knowledge of biology, chemistry, and engineering into an interdisciplinary focus on tissue engineering.”

The NSB presented a Public Service Award this year to an organization for physics-related work. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation was cited for its contributions to increasing public understanding of science and engineering. According to an announcement released by NSF, the foundation’s book program “has supported biographies and works about controversial or pressing scientific issues” and its “support of public television programming produced numerous documentaries about the role of technology in society … and shows about women and minorities in science.” The Sloan Foundation has supported National Public Radio news programs; teamed up with theaters to commission plays about science and technology; supported plays such as Copenhagen and QED; and joined with members of the film industry to develop film and TV shows portraying scientists and engineers. “These programs,” adds NSF, “have positioned Sloan as a media giant for science, engineering, and technology, and helped reveal to the public the humanness at the heart of the scientific process and discovery.”