Last night the U.S. Senate confirmed a new director of the National Science Foundation, Dr. France Cordova. She succeeds Subra Suresh, who stepped down from NSF one year ago to become president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
An astrophysicist, Dr. Cordova earned a Ph.D in physics from the California Institute of Technology. She went on to become the first female chief scientist at NASA before returning to the academic world. She was vice chancellor for research at UC Santa Barbara, chancellor of UC Riverside, and later president of Purdue University. A more in-depth biography can be found on the NSF website here.
Also in NSF leadership news, NSF named Northwestern University Professor Fay Lomax Cook to lead the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate on Thursday. Dr. Cook will begin her appointment as Assistant Director in September of this year. More information can be found here.