The National Science Foundation has chosen Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D., president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, to receive the 2007 Vannevar Bush Award. A leader in higher education and and in government, Dr. Jackson was selected to receive the award from the National Science Board for her lifetime of contributions in science, education and public policy.

In addition to her Bush award, Dr. Jackson, the first Black female Ph.D. out of M.I.T. and first African American to chair the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), was named Black Engineer of the Year by US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine in 2001. She was the first woman to receive the award in its 21-year history.

 
The National Science Board established the Vannevar Bush Award in 1980 to honor Bush’s unique contributions to public service. The annual award recognizes an individual, who through public service activities in science and technology has made an outstanding “contribution toward the welfare of mankind and the Nation.”

"Shirley Ann Jackson has been a leader on many fronts, and she has incorporated scientific approaches into all of her work, especially on policy issues of international importance and in reforming one of the nation's important educational institutions," said NSB Chairman Steven C. Beering. "She's a national treasure deserving of the Vannevar Bush Award for her widely valued public service and contributions to the nation and the international community."

The board is an independent 24-member body of policy advisors to the President and Congress on matters of science and engineering research and education, and is the oversight body for the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent federal agency that supports almost all areas of fundamental research nationwide.

A theoretical physicist with a long string of "first" behind her name, Dr.  Jackson is a driver of engineering development, here and around the world.

In her current role as president of the oldest technological university in the U.S., she runs an institution with more than 4,000 undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students pursuing bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, management, architecture, the humanities and social sciences. She also is on the board of trustees of her alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).

As the first African American to serve on the NRC beginning in the early 1990s, and the first to chair the agency, Dr. Jackson crisscrossed the nation, reviewing troubled nuclear facilities and unsnarling knotty environmental-safety issues, while also bringing down the temperature of critical debates about community acceptance of nuclear power.

But physicist Jackson's reach into technology began well before she joined the NRC. The theoretical work, which led to her becoming the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. at M.I.T., in any discipline, took her to AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1976.

For 15 years there, the practical effects of her explorations in solid-state physics worked out in rapid improvements in the signal-handling capabilities of semiconductor devices. That helped keep Bell Laboratories in the forefront of the rapidly advancing field of electronic communications.

Dr. Jackson, who continued her education with summer theoretical courses in Erice, Sicily, and l'Ecole d'ete de Physique Theoretique at Les Houches, France, during the mid-1970s, also served as a lecturer at the Advanced Study Institute run by NATO at Antwerp, Belgium. She lectured at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, in California, and served as a visiting scientist at the Aspen Center for Physics, Aspen, Colorado.

Dr. Jackson also began a course of development in public policy roles. A member of MIT's board since 1975, she joined the board of the nation's oldest historically Black university, Lincoln University, Pa., in 1980. Five years later, she was on the Executive Committee, where she remained until 1992.

Rutgers University's Board of Trustees also welcomed her membership, in 1986, and she moved up, in 1990, to the Board of Governors, serving on the Educational Planning and Policy Committee. In 1993, she joined the board of Associated Universities, Inc., operator of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. She joined the board of the Brookings Institution, in June 2000.

From 1980-95, she promoted advancement of women in science as a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Education and Employment of Women in Science and Engineering and its Committee on Women in Science & Engineering, and has served as a member, board member or officer of numerous other scientific organizations.

Meanwhile, her technical research continued at a furious pace. A list of her publications includes 44 articles. Dr. Jackson has continued active teaching duties during her career.

In addition to her 2007 Bush award, Dr. Jackson was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, in 1998, and won the National Society of Black Engineers' Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia, in 2000. She was named Black Engineer of the Year in 2001.

On May 14, the National Science Board will honor the 2007 recipients of the Vannevar Bush Award (Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and 2007 Public Service Awards for an individual (Bassam Shakhashiri, University of Wisconsin chemist) and for a group (CBS Paramount's Numb3rs dramatic television series).