Q&A: Michael Moloney settles into the top AIP job

Michael Moloney, the new CEO of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), traces his interest in physics to an inspiring high school teacher and to seeing a Moon rock when he was four years old. He went to the American embassy in Dublin to see the rock that Apollo astronauts had brought back, and the experience, he says, was “welded into my mind.”

Moloney went on to study physics at University College Dublin and Trinity College in Ireland. After earning his PhD, he veered from the academic track. His first job was with Ireland’s Foreign Service. From there he moved to the US National Academy of Sciences, where he stayed for 16 years, with a gap year back at the Foreign Service, working at the Irish mission to the United Nations in New York.

Moloney took the helm of AIP in March, becoming the ninth CEO of the 87-year-old organization (which publishes Physics Today). The portfolio that Moloney oversees includes the Niels Bohr Library, statistical research, career resources, and programs in history, science journalism, and public policy. He says he is strategizing with the AIP board, management team, and staff on how to make AIP “robust for a second century.”

PT: How did you move from science to policy?

MOLONEY: I always had a background interest in policy and politics alongside my interest in science. I decided following my graduate work that I was not motivated enough to be an experimentalist, to continue on the research track, or to do a teaching track. So I was looking for an alternative career path. I ended up applying for, going through the various exams and interview processes, and being taken on as a member of the Irish Foreign Service. I was a diplomat for just over seven years.

PT: What did you do in the Foreign Service? And did you use your physics background?

MOLONEY: When I served at the Irish embassy in Washington, there were seven diplomats, including the ambassador. It was a very small team, and we had a very large portfolio of work. This was at the time when the peace negotiations with Northern Ireland were at their height, and what became known as the Good Friday Agreement dominated the embassy. I did not play much in that dynamic, but anything technical ended up coming my way. I was covering things like disarmament policy, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the chemical weapons convention, and even US relations with North Korea. My technical background helped me provide an extra level of detail of reporting back to the ministry in Dublin. I was also the science attaché, which meant dealing with federal agencies like the National Science Foundation. So it gave me exposure to the federal science infrastructure for the first time.

PT: How did you move to the National Academy of Sciences?

MOLONEY: I was leafing through the Washington Post and saw that the academy was looking for somebody with a PhD in physics and a government policy background to join the staff of the Board on Physics and Astronomy. I applied for the position and joined in 2001. That was the start of 16 years at the academy’s National Research Council [NRC].

The idea of working there resonated with me because I still had this interest in science policy. Also, while I was at the embassy, it had become clear to me that the reports that the academy produces can have real impact on federal policy and programs across the science agencies.

PT: What was your job?

MOLONEY: I was a staff officer responsible for ensuring that study projects involving committees of volunteers met the schedule and answered the charge posed to the committee. I made sure that reports were delivered to the federal agency that had asked for them and that they were delivered on time and on budget.

We’d obviously help with editing and organization. But when it came down to the really technical detail work, we were dependent on the expertise of the volunteers. I used a lot of the skills I had gained at the Foreign Service, but the added layer of well-defined timelines with budget numbers attached was a new perspective for me.

I left the academy for a year to go back to the Foreign Service. But then I returned because I decided I wasn’t going back to Dublin. Luckily I was able to slot into a different job at the NRC. That was the materials board, which gave me exposure to a whole different community of researchers with a very different culture, so that was very interesting.

PT: How was working on materials science different?

MOLONEY: The materials scientists were more engineering focused. They were often more product oriented. The materials scientist is there to understand the physics of the material in order to achieve a level of performance that will then be used down the road by turbine manufacturers or whatever industry might be interested. It’s a different focus, a different motivation—one that often I found very compelling.

The mid to late 2000s was an interesting time to work with materials scientists. The community was going from being focused on metallurgy and other traditional perspectives to working in nano, bio, and interdisciplinary materials sciences. It was in rapid transition.

PT: What did you like most about working at the academy?

MOLONEY: Working with the volunteers, folks who gave up their time from very pressured academic or corporate careers. The people were top-notch, inspirational to work with and to get to know. Being in that environment, and being able to influence the federal science program, was tremendously exciting.

PT: Do any reports or other experiences stand out from your time at the academy?

MOLONEY: I was involved in dozens and dozens of reports. My involvement in the space science decadal surveys that set priorities across the scientific fields, such as astronomy and astrophysics, planetary sciences, heliophysics, and Earth observations from space, was a particular privilege and responsibility.

But one study always stood out. The Treasury Department asked us to put together a committee of materials scientists and engineers tasked with brainstorming materials solutions that could be incorporated in future US banknotes as anticounterfeiting measures.

The committee was given free rein to be as crazy as it liked. We learned a lot about banknotes—for example, they’re not really made of paper, but a paper–linen mix. We didn’t learn about any of the secret anticounterfeiting technologies that are in banknotes, but we learned about the Treasury’s philosophy and about some of the challenges that the Secret Service has to deal with in regard to tracking counterfeiting.

Other studies also had a real impact. We did a study for the [George W.] Bush administration about whether the US should join the ITER program on fusion, and that led to a presidential decision to join the international consortium.

PT: How did you happen to work at the UN?

MOLONEY: The Foreign Service asked me to come back for a year to go to the United Nations during Ireland’s presidency of the European Union, from the summer of 2003 to the summer of 2004.

We were chairing meetings of 24 member states back then. I was a young diplomat, but because the Irish service is so small, you were thrust into leadership roles. We had to do a lot of coordination. We had to understand member states’ various positions and try to accommodate all those perspectives. That experience at the UN is something I still draw on today.

PT: How so?

MOLONEY: It emphasized the importance of listening when you have different stakeholders around the table. It led me to understand the importance of group and one-on-one dialog and how both are effective in different ways.

I also think it led me to understand the importance of team efforts to pursuing strategic goals and of the various levels of a team—there is a close-knit team around you, operating within a much bigger team of stakeholders. I applied those skills at the NRC, and I am finding them helpful now at AIP, a federation of 10 member societies. The subject matter is different, the strategic goals are different, but the dynamics are familiar.

PT: How else do you see your previous experiences being useful at AIP?

MOLONEY: At the Foreign Service I had a multitude of responsibilities. I learned quickly how to prioritize and how to deal with a diverse portfolio. Also, building relationships with stakeholders, as well as maintaining and cultivating relationships, was an enormous part of the job there.

AIP has a lot in common with the academy from the perspective of pursuing a mission in a manner that depends on excellence, integrity, and independence.

PT: What do you want to achieve at AIP?

MOLONEY: I really think I’ve been brought into the AIP team to help prepare the organization for its second century. AIP has been through a lot of changes in the last five to seven years or so [AIP spun off its publishing division in 2013], and we need a further evolution to really prepare AIP for a robust and sustainable future.

PT: Do you think AIP should play a more visible political role? For example, it didn’t participate in the March for Science last year.

MOLONEY: All the elements of the things we do, including our public policy posture, are up for discussion as part of the strategic planning process. That is something we are going to work through. We have a board meeting in September, and by then I think we will have a better idea of how the overall planning process is going to play out.

PT: What do you see as challenges?

MOLONEY: The science community is always evolving. The physical sciences are becoming more multidisciplinary. You could argue that the traditional boundaries have already broken down, but I think we are still responding to that as organizations within the physical sciences community. The mission of this organization expanded from physics to physical sciences four years ago.

AIP has to think about how we place ourselves strategically going forward. The life experience in the age of the internet is just very different from what many of us leaders of a certain age have been through. We have to decide how to evolve the traditional organizational constructs that have built up over the past century to respond to the evolving needs of the community.