Jones, Sean L.
Oral history interview with Sean Jones, 2020 October 23.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Sean L. Jones, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Jones recounts his fathers scientific career at IBM and his own childhood in South Carolina, and the opportunities he had to pursue his interests in math and science. He discusses his undergraduate work in ceramic engineering at Clemson and the opportunities for him to become a McKnight Fellow at the University of Florida for graduate school, where he worked on increasing the luminescence of thin film phosphorous. He describes his postgraduate work at Bell Labs and how the internet bubble affected him at the turn of the century. Jones discusses his subsequent work as a professor of optical engineering at Norfolk State University and the enjoyment he derived in teaching at an HBCU. He explains why meeting Bruce Kramer at NSF was so formative and why he chose to join NSF as a program director after working at Applied Plasmonics. Jones describes the flatness of the NSFs organizational structure and how the Obama administrations commitment to science and technology research resonated for his program. He discusses his work at the OSTP in the Executive Branch and his tenure as Executive Secretary of the National Science Board. Jones discusses his increasing responsibilities at NSF and the overall improvement of the budgetary environment since he started. He talks about the current opportunities to expand diversity in STEM and his current work in managing research support as costs continually rise. At the end of the interview, Jones explains why the appetite for taking risk must be central to the future of good scientific policy at the national level.
American engineer, professor, program director, and public administrator. Ph.D., Materials Science Engineering, University of Florida, 1997. M.S., Materials Science Engineering, University of Florida, 1995. B.S., Ceramic Engineering, Clemson University, 1990. Named head of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Science Foundation, in November 2020.
Holdren, John P.
Holloway, Paul H.
Kramer, Bruce M. (Bruce Michael)
Obama, Barack
Williams, Quinton L.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Clemson University
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
Norfolk State University (Va.)
United States. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
University of Florida
African American engineers
Ceramic engineering
Civil service
Diversity in the workplace
HBCUs (Historically black colleges and universities)
Optical engineering.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979-, interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA